VoxCarnyx

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski has been touting his potent coupling of Brahms and Bartok for a while now. That the former consists of a variable selection from the sizeable Op 116 – 119 collections ensures that not every recital manifestation is the same. On the other hand the Bartok – his fascinatingly experimental 14 Bagatelles – remain an exhilarating constant.

For this Queen’s Hall recital, Anderszewski threw his morning audience by altering the printed menu, his original Brahms choice now filtered down to the three later opuses. Not that it mattered. Rarely will you hear such detailed and insightful interpretations of Brahms, and such is the extraordinary range of character, colour and inventiveness the composer invested in these pieces –  mainly Intermezzi in this cross-section – that the expressive options for the pianist proved endless.

These were highly personal interpretations, Anderszewski easing us in with an almost Impressionistic opening to the B minor Intermezzo from Op 119. His tonal control was mesmerising throughout, endlessly explorative, his use of pedal and the piano’s natural resonance resulting in some hypnotic, surreal moments, as in the last of his Op 116 choices. Opting to play the entire Brahms first half without interruption introduced a macro dimension, the encompassing arc of which both heightened and deepened the listener experience 

There was one non-Intermezzo – the Rhapsody in E flat from Op 119 – which offered a moment’s intellectual respite, its punchy framework and lyrical inner episodes preciously refreshing the ears. 

So, too, the Bartok took us into another world, an early 20th century (1908) reminder of the journey the Hungarian composer was embarking on with his fusion of gnawing modernism and native folk song. Anderszewski’s performances captured both the precision of the writing – sometimes stripped down to single tantalising monodic line – and the penetrating warmth of its folk-inspired motifs. For his encore, Anderszewski turned to his homeland and the preciously romantic world of Chopin. Like all that had gone before, it was exquisite.

If expectations were high for Wednesday’s ad hoc ensemble of Ian Bostridge (tenor), Sir Antonio Pappano (piano) & Members of the LSO, the outcome was perfectly amiable, by its very nature spontaneous, but just short of all-embracing. Like the artists (a convenience arising out of the LSO’s 2025 Festival residence) the programme was a solid English-based composite: song cycles by Britten and Vaughan Williams, and the stormy ebb and flow of Elgar’s hefty Piano Quintet in A minor.

Bostridge’s performances are often ones you might care to digest with your eyes shut, such are their anguished physicality and wretched declamation. But these were markedly more relaxed, in a way that allowed the idiosyncratic tenor to project the music’s sentiments with considered affection, often bundles of wit.

He and Pappano (the LSO’s current chief conductor) opened with Britten’s Winter Words, eight settings of Thomas Hardy, written in 1953. These are gorgeously economical in concept, their charismatic imagery amplified by utter clarity of texture. At its heart is the extended narrative of The Choirmaster’s Funeral, which the duo performed with alluring charm, not least its ghostly sentimentality. Images of train whistles, solo fiddling and the final song’s moving ambiguity added to the generally rich enjoyment. Only momentarily did Bostridge overcook the higher notes.

A quartet of LSO strings joined the ranks for Vaughan Willams’ E A Housman settings, On Wenlock Edge, adding an additionally luscious layer to the sound palette. The rich suggestiveness in the string writing – not least its influencing by Ravel – wasn’t lost in a performance that, when all cylinders were perfectly firing, attained thrilling heights. Bostridge, again, embraced the music with calibrated intimacy, whether in the light satire of Is My Team Ploughing?, or the more expansive transcendence of Bredon Hill. 

Not entirely consistent was the string quartet, fine players individually – including LSO leader Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, more familiar to Edinburgh concertgoers as ex-leader of the SCO – but not always finding complete compatibility together. Not everything sounded instinctively together, an apprehensiveness that weakened some attacks and, more generally, the dynamic synergy of the group.

That was tested more in the Elgar which, by and large, flowed with engaging intent. Pappano, at the piano, was the driving force, egging on the feverish impetus of the outer movements. By far the most sumptuous, contented playing came in the central Adagio, its wistful stillness an oasis of calm between the agitations of the opening Allegro and the brighter moods and resolute conclusion of the Finale.  

Ken Walton