Tag Archives: Schubert

Hebrides Ensemble

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RSNO Centre, Glasgow

We’re getting used to the mayhem associated with the mad music of Jörg Widmann, through his associations with Scottish Orchestras (he’s back this week with the RSNO) and in his multiple personae as composer, conductor and clarinettist. It was in the first of these roles that he made his mark again over the weekend, when his 5-movement Octet featured in a thoroughly pleasant afternoon recital by the Hebrides Ensemble.

The event was part of the RSNO’s new partnership activity with smaller Scottish ensembles, which in Glasgow’s music calendar has added a occasional new Sunday treat. This one, consisting of eight mixed instrumentalists matching the requirements of Schubert’s famous Octet, offered a programme that dressed old works in new attire.

It should have opened with Cassandra Miller’s About Bach, but with the Hebrides’ artistic director and cellist William Conway unfortunately indisposed, that risk wasn’t taken. Though inevitably disappointing – appetites were whetted for the Canadian-born composer’s music several weeks ago when Lawrence’s Power and the SCO gave a compelling account of her new viola concerto “I cannot love without trembling” – the resulting programme, albeit shortened, had a satisfyingly purposeful flow to it.

The theme remained intact, opening with Mozart’s re-tailored couplet for string quartet of his own Andante (from the Symphony No 8, KV48) and one of the five Bach Fugues transcribed as K405. They made perfect bedfellows, bringing one genius mind into direct touch with another.

That eased the passage into Tom David Wilson’s Three Schuberts, a reimagining of short selected works by the earlier composer in which Wilson takes tasteful liberties, using the full mixed octet resources to apply hyperactive twists and modernist techniques. Thus the impish eccentricities of Schubert’s Moment Musicaux No 3; the supercharged sound world of Erlkönig, its adapted instrumentation lending it the same melodramatic OTT-ness of a Midsomer Murders soundtrack;  and the quivering spookiness of Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) from the song cycle Die Winterreise.

All roads led to the grand finale, Widmann’s Octet, which took the art of reimagining to its furthest extremes. We had the benefit of replacement cellist Christian Elliott, who had performed it with Widmann himself, to prepare our ears for the zaniness to come. Clear references to Schubert were few and far between, including the famous octet whose scoring configuration it replicates.  

Nonetheless, a fearless performance was all that was needed to take Widmann’s wile and wit in the nature of its intentions. Tingling Stravinsky-like chords and timbres lit up the Intrada; the Menuetto, a scherzo (joke) in its literal sense, played mischief at every turn; the extended loveliness of the Lied Ohne Worte took us deep into the weirdly oscillating world of microtones; while the Intermezzo and Finale steered a manic course from full-on riot and surreal intensity to resolution. 

Very Widmann, but as for Schubert……….?

Ken Walton 

Steven Osborne @ 50

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STEVEN OSBORNE / 50th Birthday Concert
Wigmore Hall, London

Current circumstances prevent friends gathering for a major birthday bash; but there’s a way round it if you happen to be a highly-respected solo pianist and your close friends also warrant a place among today’s classical music elite. 

Thus Steven Osborne and friends were the starry concert party last Friday in an audience-less 50th birthday bash for the Scots pianist, forming part of the Wigmore Hall’s excellent live-streamed concert series, and featuring music chosen by Osborne himself. The outcome was a warm-hearted feast of Schubert and Ravel.

The friends – if you’ve followed Osborne in the many brilliant collaborations he has enjoyed over and above his international solo career – were personally chosen and predictably so: pianist Paul Lewis, the other half of a recently-released duo album with Osborne, the soprano Ailish Tynan, violinist Alina Ibragimova, Lewis’ cellist wife Bjørg Lewis, and Osborne’s own wife, clarinettist Jean Johnson. Their socially-distanced presence was a sequence of duo and trio combinations. 

Osborne’s single solo contribution came in the magically impressionistic sonorities of La Vallée des Cloches from Ravel’s 1904-5 suite Miroirs, which he introduced as “an aperitif” to the same composer’s Piano Trio in A minor – a typically modest touch; a typically breathtaking performance.

As for the Piano Trio – the personally chosen favourite around which Osborne planned the rest of his programme – its homogenous warmth summed up the extraordinary musical symbiosis that had thus far distinguished an evening beginning with the intimate salon charm of Schubert’s The Death and the Maiden (Osborne, Johnson and Tynan relishing – as we all are at the moment – the ultimate anticipation of Spring), and the Fantasie in F Minor for piano duo. 

In the latter, Osborne and a masked Paul Lewis went for the Covid-safe option of two separate pianos rather than the one-piano-four-hands Schubert intended, but the outcome was one of singular entrancement, an interaction of instant and instinctive ideas, and never once a suggestion that either pianist was going it alone. 

But it was that final Ravel which summed up the true nature of this celebration. It was not about noisy prima donna voices showing off among themselves, but rather a cosy respect for the music that defines their lives. The Trio featured the lustrously tasteful violin playing of Ibragimova alongside the equally amenable Bjørg Lewis and Osborne, all with personal flavourings to offer, but always with the common goal of respecting Ravel’s unmatchable ear for instrumental colour.

The story goes that Ravel picked up the opening theme of the Piano Trio from watching ice cream vendors dancing a fandango on the Basque coast. That’s as riotous as this exquisitely tasteful birthday celebration got. No encore, no histrionics, just a quiet recognition by some fine musicians that they were able to share a good friend’s special moment together. 
Ken Walton

Available to watch at www.wigmore-hall.org.uk