Wigmore Hall: Richard Goode 30 Sept; Andras Schiff 5 Oct; Mitsuko Uchida 12 Oct; Stephen Kovacevich and Martha Argerich 22 Oct
Royal Festival Hall: Vikingur Olafsson 25 Sept
Queen Elizabeth Hall: Benjamin Grosvenor 24 Oct
Bechstein Hall: Martin Garcia Garcia 9 August
National Gallery: Jessica Duchen and Lara Melda 10 Oct
Watching the Spanish pianist Martin Garcia Garcia doing anything – or indeed doing nothing in particular – you’d type him as an acute case of ADHD. He once told me that when faced with a complex piece, the more many-layered the music, the more relaxed he became. For him a vertiginous Godowsky-Chopin study was less of a challenge than a simple Chopin prelude. Having watched him effortlessly win the Cleveland Competition in 2021, I decided to check him out in a programme which would have severely tested any young virtuoso: a two-hour master-class, followed immediately by a heavy-duty solo programme of Schubert, Rachmaninov, and Liszt.
In the master-class – sponsored by a Chinese classical platform named Classical-D Music – he seemed to be everywhere all at once, ceaselessly running round the auditorium while miming and demonstrating what he wanted. Yet somehow he got results: the young Chinese pianists he took in hand – Xuanxiang Wu and Yichen Yu – got demonstrably better under his torrential advice.
And his own performance was stunning. Beginning with a gracefully moving account of two of Schubert’s Moments Musicaux he went on to play Rachmaninov’s Opus 16 Moments Musicaux, and his characterisations were in every case gloriously apt. On then to Liszt’s Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, followed by the most viscerally exciting performance of the Sonata in B minor I have heard in years. Fresh as a daisy, Martin finished with two Chopin encores, and would clearly have been happy to play on into the night. I was just sorry that the audience was necessarily so small: a few doors up the street at the Wigmore, there could have been four times as many. This outstanding musician deserves an arena with more than 98 seats.
We think of Vikingur Olafsson in terms of showbiz stunts, so it was good to experience his artistry in its pristine, pre-showbiz form. With the Philharmonia Orchestra under Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s direction, Olafsson brought Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 to life in a gracefully old-fashioned way. This music reflected the composer in his confident middle period, and Olafsson simply let the first movement grow, led by his limpid and expressive sound. The Adagio unfolded in an Olympian calm, with the playfulness of the finale leading to an exquisite encore – the Sarabande from Bach’s sixth French Suite. To cap it all, Olafsson was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal. What next?
Richard Goode likes to let music reveal its mysteries at a gentle pace, and his latest foray at the Wigmore was a case in point. His first half was Beethoven, kicking off with an admirably taut Sonata Opus 90 in which the voices in the first movement – ‘head versus heart’ – led on to a tender conversation with no trace of sentimentality. Opus 101 combines a Romantic improvisatory waywardness with Baroque polyphonic textures, and Goode steered a masterly course between its moments of tentativeness and martial decision. His sound had a lovely warmth and great power when required, and the work’s mysteries remained splendidly intact. Closing a circle, the Opus 126 Bagatelles had a visceral excitement which carried over nicely to a brilliant second-half performance of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze. The encore – Chopin’s Nocturne in E Opus 62 No 2 – allowed us to see what virtuosity this perennially modest artist is capable of.
It was nice to see Andras Schiff presiding like a benign uncle over six excellent young instrumentalists in chamber works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Schumann. And it was a pleasant surprise to find Mitsuko Uchida making a rare visit to the Hall with what is now standard fare for senior pianists: Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas. The last time we heard her play this programme was two years ago at the Royal Festival Hall, but at the Wigmore it felt paradoxically grander, and at the same time a more physical conception. The delicacy of Uchida’s touch was still there, but there were times when she seemed to be planning an assault on the keyboard like a panther pouncing on its prey. She played the first sonata as though surveying the emotional landscape she planned to explore. The second sonata took her deep into that landscape, encountering everything from off-the-wall comedy to seemingly inconsolable grief, before emerging into the sunlight with the fugue; the final sonata was properly ecstatic. These works are not exercises in virtuosity: their challenge is intellectual, and what also came over this time was also a didactic quality, as though Uchida was laying down rules for future generations.
There was absolutely nothing didactic in Steven Osborne’s account of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, to which he devoted the second half of a recital after presenting an unusual garland of works by Schumann, Satie, Lili Boulanger, Lyadov, Rachmaninov, and Ravel. For what Osborne brought to the Beethoven was himself – as a living, pulsating sacrifice. I have never heard that music’s amalgam of beauty and savagery presented with such fluency and passion, or with such magisterial control; in the intense silence at the end, one could sense the whole audience pole-axed with astonishment. It would be good to have a DVD of this revelatory performance – not just a CD – because Osborne’s unconscious body-language was itself highly expressive.
The other outstanding event in the three-month period under review was Benjamin Grosvenor’s recital at the QEH, for which no praise could be too high. His virtuosity is now so flawless that he – and we – could savour all the poetry in his playing: the nobility in Chopin’s Second Sonata and its whirlwind conclusion; the aqueous transparency of Ravel’s Ondine, and the lethal velvet of his Scarbo; and the majesty of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (if we forgive its anti-Semitic taint). I’ve seldom seen a pianist so relaxed as he applied detailed little touches to his grand designs; the closing phrase of Scarbo, for example, became an exquisite passing moment. His encores – Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and Siloti’s arrangement of Bach’s B minor Prelude – set a perfect seal on the evening.
Meanwhile the clunker of the year came billed as Stephen Kovacevich’s 85th birthday bash at the Wigmore. Violinist Irène Duval was on hand for Brahms’s first Violin Sonata, but what packed the hall to bursting was the prospect of Martha Argerich’s participation in four-hand Debussy. But nothing went as it should.
It was announced at the start that Kovacevich had sustained a leg injury, but that his playing would be fine. Alas, it wasn’t, as four Brahms Intermezzi got lost in a miasma of over-pedalling. Complaining that the keyboard was ‘freezing’, the pianist limped offstage and a lady came on with a duster to give the keyboard a vigorous rub. But when playing resumed, Beethoven’s Opus 110 came over in a very sheepish version of itself. And when the four-hand couple united for Debussy’s En blanc et noir it was painfully obvious that one pair of hands was vainly trying to cover for the lack-lustre performance of the other. All this was desperately sad: was Kovacevich on heavy pain-killers?
Worse was to come. After the final bows, the musicians stayed on stage, with Kovacevich announcing that since this concert was being recorded for Radio 3, patching was needed for three of the works. But his attempts at improvement were worse, not better, than what he’d already laid down, so he finally gave up. By this time the audience was melting away, unsure why they were being treated to this chaotic little backstage drama, which was happening onstage in the public glare.
For me the most charming event of the year was Lara Melda’s recital with Jessica Duchen’s commentary, as they recreated a typical event of the lunchtime concert series which Myra Hess spear-headed at the height of the Blitz – and they delivered it in the same space Hess used. The occasion was to pay homage to this great pianist eighty years on, and to mark the publication of Duchen’s excellent new biography Myra Hess – National Treasure. Duchen’s colourful account of the way the original series evolved was a reminder that it was a cheerful antidote to London’s war-weariness in dark days. And the works in Melda’s recital were aptly chosen and beautifully delivered. A grandly resonant account of Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ sonata was followed by an exquisite performance of Schumann’s Vogel als Prophet, after which Chopin’s first Ballade emerged with all guns blazing. Things ended with sweet inevitability, in Hess’s arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, which became her signature tune wherever she went. I came away with two thoughts: first, that Melda’s glowing pianism should be heard more often in the big concert halls; and second, that it was refreshing to have a recital in this historic space, even if the acoustic was a bit wet.