Inconcert

Chamber music can be profound, difficult, emotionally wrenching. But much can be more fun, a delight for friends or scratch ensembles to play just for the enjoyment of it.

Last year, while in Manchester to play concerts as a soloist with the Hallé, Elisabeth Brauss got together with the orchestra’s Sergio Castelló López and Simon Turner to play Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11 for piano, clarinet and cello (known as the Gassenhauer Trio). The Hallé have just newly put a video recording online, and it is captivating, with the players’ enjoyment indeed shining through. So I thought I would share!  [Just 22 minutes]

Not my usual kind of music! But, this week, here is a performance of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Double Piano Concerto of 1966. The soloists are Peter Jablonski, who last year released a very well received CD of Bacewicz piano works, and Elisabeth Brauss. And since this concert in December, they have recorded the Concerto together for another CD to be released in the spring. Visit the concert page here, press Katso (play), and go to about 22.30 for the Concerto (which last less than twenty minutes). I’m not sure what to make of the music, but I much enjoyed watching them play!

Peter Jablonski and Elisabeth Brauss also play a very short and delightful encore by Ligeti, at 42.10. And then, if you want something a lot calmer, here is another very short piece, this time by Hindemith, quite beautifully played by Elisabeth. Hopefully a trailer for a DG solo disk by her.

Here is a video of the wonderful Chiaroscuro Quartet at a recent concert in Stockholm. They begin with Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 33, No. 4, followed (at 16:30) by Emilie Mayer’s String Quartet No. 1 (first performed in 1858). The concert concludes (from 47:30) with Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 3.

I leave you to make your own mind up about the Mayer piece. But I’m really linking this video because of the performance of the third Rasumovsky. That quartet has been a quite special favourite of mine ever since I saw Godard’s One Femme Marieé at a very impressionable age — do you remember this scene? I have never found out which quartet’s performance was used in the film — though of the recordings from that era which I know, it is quite similar to that by the Amadeus.

The greatest live performance I’ve ever heard was by the Pavel Haas about three years ago, who were absolutely on fire at Wigmore Hall. I have never heard the transcendental second movement played more affectingly, or the final movement propelled with such passion. Astonishing (as the audience obviously felt at the time). But this performance by the Chiaroscuro, with their distinctive timbre on gut strings, is very fine indeed.

Since earlier in the pandemic, one cheering lifeline has been provided by filmed concerts. Here’s a plan. At least until the sunnier days of spring are here, I’m going to post a weekly link to share some performances, ones that you too might find really worth pausing over for a reflective moment one evening. They might be old or new, probably in fact just part of a concert, perhaps just half an hour more or less — and available online at least for the next couple of weeks, so you can find a chance to stop to watch and listen. Let’s see how it goes.

I’m starting with the opening of Pavel Kolesnikov’s Wigmore Hall concert just before Christmas. He began with a deeply felt, mesmeric, performance of Schubert’s D899 set of Impromptus. Kolesnikov astonished in the great G major sonata recently too; I find him a quite wonderful Schubert pianist. Enjoy!

(The impromptus last just over 30 mins: the rest of the concert — Bach, Adès, Schumann — is predictably excellent too!)