International Piano: Nicolas Namoradze Review
I’m not often lost for words, but Nicolas Namoradze’s recital almost defeated me. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing: he’s won the Honens Competition in 2018 and this gig was his reward, but winning a comp is no guarantee of greatness. Yet from the opening phrase of Scriabin’s Black Mass Sonata he had me hooked: the notes had a honeyed grace, and the rest of the work unfolded in an opalescent glow, every bar touched with beauty. I’ve never heard this puzzling work make such persuasive sense.
International Piano
Michael Church
I’m not often lost for words, but Nicolas Namoradze’s recital almost defeated me. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing: he’s won the Honens Competition in 2018 and this gig was his reward, but winning a comp is no guarantee of greatness. Yet from the opening phrase of Scriabin’s Black Mass Sonata he had me hooked: the notes had a honeyed grace, and the rest of the work unfolded in an opalescent glow, every bar touched with beauty. I’ve never heard this puzzling work make such persuasive sense.
Read the full review in International Piano’s May/June issue, available here.
Gramophone: Marc-André Hamelin's Latest Album Selected as Editor's Choice for April
Marc-André Hamelin’s Feinberg Piano Sonatas Nos 1-6 album chosen as one of the best new classical albums, Editor's Choice for April 2020.
Gramophone
David Fanning
The best new classical albums: Editor's Choice, April 2020
Feinberg Piano Sonatas Nos 1-6
Marc-André Hamelin pf (Hyperion)
Samuil Feinberg was a great Russian pianist perhaps best known for his Bach, but his compositions are less familiar. Marc-André Hamelin’s overwhelming advocacy of these sonatas comes highly recommended.
Read the Gramophone review here… “Hamelin does far more than tame these pianistic leviathans. He gives them momentum, character and individuality.”
International Piano Magazine: Marc-André Hamelin's Feinberg Album Named Album of the Month
International Piano Magazine
Bryce Morrison
Marc-André Hamelin’s latest solo album, Samuil Feinberg’s Piano Sonatas, is featured in the March issue of International Piano Magazine as Album of the Month.
"It is difficult to imagine any living pianist other than Hamelin who could confront this music - music that is stranger than strange - with such compelling mastery, eloquence and lucidity."
International Piano Magazine
Bryce Morrison
Marc-André Hamelin’s latest solo album, Samuil Feinberg’s Piano Sonatas, is featured in the March issue of International Piano Magazine as Album of the Month.
"It is difficult to imagine any living pianist other than Hamelin who could confront this music - music that is stranger than strange - with such compelling mastery, eloquence and lucidity."
To read the complete review, click here.
The Times: Mahan Esfahani – Bach Toccatas Review – Bold, Dynamic, and Stupendous
Mahan Esfahani’s goal in life, his biographical note says, is to “bring the harpsichord to the concert mainstream”. To further this, the Iranian-American musician commissions new pieces, which is certainly one way of taking the keyboard instrument that plucks its strings out of history’s cocoon and welcoming it into the modern world. The other way is to give such thunderously exciting performances of old repertoire that anyone with ears to hear will sit there with mouth agape.
The Times
Geoff Brown
Mahan Esfahani’s goal in life, his biographical note says, is to “bring the harpsichord to the concert mainstream”. To further this, the Iranian-American musician commissions new pieces, which is certainly one way of taking the keyboard instrument that plucks its strings out of history’s cocoon and welcoming it into the modern world. The other way is to give such thunderously exciting performances of old repertoire that anyone with ears to hear will sit there with mouth agape.
Read more here.
Gramophone: The Listening Room – Haochen Zhang
A terrific new recording of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto comes from 2009 Van Cliburn Competition winner Haochen Zhang - quite a feather in BIS’s cap as they’ve also this year's Tchaikovsky Competition winner Alexandre Kantorow on their books.
Gramophone
James Jolly
A terrific new recording of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto comes from 2009 Van Cliburn Competition winner Haochen Zhang - quite a feather in BIS’s cap as they’ve also this year's Tchaikovsky Competition winner Alexandre Kantorow on their books.
Read more here.
Financial Times: Mahan Esfahani – Bach: Toccatas – free and spontaneous performances
As the outstanding harpsichordist of the younger generation, Esfahani naturally plays the toccatas on a harpsichord… Esfahani’s playing feels free and spontaneous without losing the underlying pulse of the music. The toccatas display their brilliance proudly. One can imagine the young Bach showing off his prowess just like this.
Financial Times
Richard Fairman
As the outstanding harpsichordist of the younger generation, Esfahani naturally plays the toccatas on a harpsichord… Esfahani’s playing feels free and spontaneous without losing the underlying pulse of the music. The toccatas display their brilliance proudly. One can imagine the young Bach showing off his prowess just like this.
Read more here.
The Irish Times: What makes Marc-André Hamelin so special? Different class
There are any number of ways you could attempt to explain what makes Canada’s leading living pianist Marc-André Hamelin special.
The Irish Times
Michael Dervan
There are any number of ways you could attempt to explain what makes Canada’s leading living pianist Marc-André Hamelin special.
He’ll turn 57 in September and he’s been recording since he was in his 20s. So you could point to his extensive discography, which runs to over a hundred CDs. His recordings for the Hyperion label alone run to over 900 pieces.
But to look at the extent would be to miss the point. Other pianists have copious discographies. Alfred Brendel’s complete Philips recordings were issued as a set in 2015 and ran to 114 CDs, and the recordings he made earlier in his career add a further 35.
Read more here.
The Strad: Juilliard String Quartet Review
This was the first evening concert in the UK of the Juilliard String Quartet with its new first violinist, Areta Zhulla (it had given a lunchtime concert at Wigmore the previous day). Zhulla has clearly settled in nicely, and played in absolute musical empathy with her colleagues.
The Strad
Tim Homfray
WIGMORE HALL, 15 January 2019
This was the first evening concert in the UK of the Juilliard String Quartet with its new first violinist, Areta Zhulla (it had given a lunchtime concert at Wigmore the previous day). Zhulla has clearly settled in nicely, and played in absolute musical empathy with her colleagues.
Read more from The Strad’s April issue, available here.
Finnish Music Quarterly: Grappling with Sibelius in China
“Could a certain distance from Western symphonic thought have contributed to the surprising qualities of the performances I heard in China?” Andrew Mellor reviews performances of Sibelius’s Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Finnish Music Quarterly
Andrew Mellor
“Could a certain distance from Western symphonic thought have contributed to the surprising qualities of the performances I heard in China?” Andrew Mellor reviews performances of Sibelius’s Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra – 140 years old this season – presented Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 at a concert on 13 January conducted by Li Xincao. Sibelius is not a regular part of the SSO’s diet, I was told by Doug He, the orchestra’s Vice President. Sometimes the Violin Concerto crops up in a season. There might even be, as in this season, a symphony included. But there was zero Sibelius in the season before. Like the Orchestre de Paris, however, this is a flexible modern symphony orchestra with strength in all sections and high levels of discipline.
Li Xincao and the SSO’s Sibelius was exceptional, perhaps because it grasped some of the basic principles mentioned above. It appeared to take rhythm as a starting point, understanding that a focus on the rhythmic devices presented from the very start of the score will allow those devices to take on the kinetic significance they need. Intentionally or otherwise, the orchestra spoke relatively plainly but still with a sure sense of colour (the solo trumpet playing was deliciously peaty). The performance acknowledged the strain in the music, as in the final movement when building disquiet metamorphoses into natural release.
Read more here.
Strings: Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers & Guitarist Jason Vieaux Play the Green Center
Meyers floated in, 1741 “Vieuxtemps” del Gesù in hand, wearing a voluminous gown in a soft black, its overlaid geometric pattern a seeming nod to the hall’s distinctive woodwork. Vieaux, also in black, took his seat and with a quick smile between them, they jumped into the music. An arrangement of Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12, “La Folia,” with variations headed the program. Fleet fingerwork in both instruments marked the players as virtuosos, but the variations that showcased the artists at their best allowed Vieaux to indulge in a little head bobbing, as he navigated his guitar with astonishing ease, and Meyers to pull a sultry voice from her del Gesù.
Strings Magazine
Megan Westberg
Meyers floated in, 1741 “Vieuxtemps” del Gesù in hand, wearing a voluminous gown in a soft black, its overlaid geometric pattern a seeming nod to the hall’s distinctive woodwork. Vieaux, also in black, took his seat and with a quick smile between them, they jumped into the music. An arrangement of Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12, “La Folia,” with variations headed the program. Fleet fingerwork in both instruments marked the players as virtuosos, but the variations that showcased the artists at their best allowed Vieaux to indulge in a little head bobbing, as he navigated his guitar with astonishing ease, and Meyers to pull a sultry voice from her del Gesù.
Read more here.