Critic’s Notebook: Klaus Mäkelä, Lisa Batiashvili, and the Oslo Philharmonic in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Denkwürdiger Brutalismus im Konzerthaus

P. Tchaikovsky + Sibelius Violin Concerto(s) Lisa Batiashvili D.Barenboim, StaKap Berlin (DG, 2016) US | UK | DE

D. Shostakovich Symphony No.8 M.Jansons, Pittsburg SO (EMI/Warner, 2001) US | UK | DE

Memorable Brutalism at the Konzerthaus

Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic thrill with Shostakovich and Batiashvili

You can tell already when you enter the foyer of the Konzerthaus that something special is afoot. The atmosphere is different, busier of course – and scents of different, rarer women’s perfumes are in the air. This was noticeable, again, on Thursday evening. The mere presence of the Oslo Philharmonic would not, in itself, have caused this. Star violinist Lisa Batiashvili playing the Tchaikovsky concerto might not have either; Vienna, after all, is spoiled as far as that sort of thing is concerned. And that Shostakovich’s – admittedly imposing – Eighth Symphony should generate such anticipatory excitement may, for as much as I love the composer, also be doubted. No: the magic ingredient in this musical potion was Klaus Mäkelä, whose much-praised skills Viennese audiences are fortunate enough to inspect – and, where appropriate, enjoy – with gratifying regularity. (Again in March at the Konzerthaus, with the Orchestre de Paris.)

It was Batiashvili’s artistry, however, that first took centre stage. She played Tchaikovsky’s evergreen concerto with rock-solid assurance, without contrived wildness or treacle. And yet nothing sounds generic in her hands: the concerto doesn’t simper; it is – as a former Presse critic once famously observed – being tugged, tussled, bruised. Batiashvili brings bite to the music – and a throaty tone that recalls, if you remember, Gianna Nannini. And still, for all her volcanic playing, it is beauty of sound that prevails. Some in the audiences [cough-cough] may have wondered whether, instead of Tchaikovsky, some other concerto might not once in a while be an option – Martinů’s Second, or Othmar Schoeck’s, for instance – but judging by the rapturous applause... not many. The encore (with orchestra), “Et Sæterbesøg” (“A Visit to the Mountain Pasture”) – by the “Norwegian Paganini” Ole Bull – at least pointed in that direction.

Not every classical music lover will be immediately enamoured of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. Written in 1943, it is a bloody dark work, even by DSCH’s standards. It lacks the earworms of the Fifth and Seventh, and the long first (of five) movement can, admittedly, get a bit long in the tooth. Even Prokofiev complained that he had to struggle to stay awake. All the more impressive, then, was the way the Oslo musicians under Mäkelä built – and sustained! – tension. The vehement, gripping opening with its sonorous low strings, above all, did not suffer from false restraint. Yes, it is wise to leave oneself room for the many climaxes. But what good is that if half the audience falls asleep in the meantime? The Konzerthaus' Great Hall, meanwhile, proved ideal for this music. It seemed to positively relish in the hellishly magnificent apocalypse of the third movement, beneath those massive tuttis. That, combined with superbly sounding strings (the violas – deliciously hollow and pallid in the third movement – primi inter pares), made for a truly memorable evening.

(This was the first of two concerts, with the second one (January 23rd)) combining Sibelius' Lemminkäinen Suite with DSCH-6.)

Photo by John-Halvdan Olsen-Halvorsen, courtesy Konzerthaus.

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Notes from the 2025 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Cuarteto Casals in Shostakovich

Salzburg Festival • Chamber Music • Cuarteto Casals

Also published in Die Presse: Serenade zum Todestag von Schostakowitsch: Cuarteto Casals in Salzburg

D.Shostakovich, The String Quartets (v.1), Cuarteto Casals Harmonia Mundi D.Shostakovich, The String Quartets (v.2), Cuarteto Casals Harmonia Mundi D.Shostakovich, The String Quartets (v.3), Cuarteto Casals Harmonia Mundi

Death Becomes them: Shostakovich Quartets in Salzburg

The Cuarteto Casals scored with dark sonority rather than hard edges in their DSCH-dedicated chamber music recital

Monday evening at the Salzburg Festival brought another birthday serenade for Shostakovich’s 50^th death anniversary at the Mozarteum Hall – from the Cuarteto Casals. They promised three string quartets. Only three? After all, the Mandelring Quartet (CD reviews here, here, and here) still played all 15 quartets at the Festival back in 2011! (Reviewed on ionarts here.) But one doesn't want to be immoderate, and with Quartets 1, 8, and 15 – i.e. the first, last, and most famous – the selection was promising enough.

All the more so since there are no “early” string quartets with DSCH: When the 32-year-old Shostakovich took his first crack at the genre, with op.49, he was already an experienced composer with one suppressed and four performed symphonies plus two operas under his belt. The Lady Macbeth scandal that had brought him to the edge of the Gulag, and the ‘resurrection’ thanks to the Fifth Symphony, lay behind him. It should not surprise, then, that this first quartet is immediately a masterwork – as if it had sprung, Pallas-Athena-like, from Zeus’s head.

Right away, the Cuarteto Casals’ gloriously solid, perpetually beautiful, expressive sound – from top to bottom, first violin to cello – makes quite an impression. Cellist Arnau Tomàs (check out his Bach!!!) handled his part with resonant, bearish authority. Wonderful, the woody, round-cheeked timbre of Cristina Cordero’s viola. Fascinating the mediating work of second violinist Abel Tomàs. And fitting excellently into the picture: the dark-timbred first violin of Vera Martínez Mehner. One doesn’t miss the rougher approach that has a long tradition in these works at all, because the Spanish quartet’s lyricism, while luxurious, never seems superficial. Nor did it ever feel like the quartet was rounding the edges too much – a criticism that might be (though it doesn’t have to be) made of the Mandelrings. Small and infrequent intonation wobbles couldn’t distract amidst the astonishment over the sound.

That the Eighth Quartet is so much better known than the others does, in a way, surprise, since they all seem equally good. Or more evenly superb than the symphonies, anyway. On the other hand, it doesn’t take much to make the difference between hit and rarity, icon and footnote. (Are, for example, Mozart’s symphonies really as much better than those of Vanhal and Mysliveček as the fame gradient would have us believe?) But perhaps it’s also the dark vein of op.110 – so fitting the clichéd image of DSCH – that fascinates us, seeing that it appears to reflect the composer’s suffering and disguised resistance in Soviet terror…

And it was melancholy-gripping, what the Cuarteto Casals – currently recording all the quartets for Harmonia Mundi (see the Shostakovich String Quartet Survey) – delivered. “If his 15 symphonies are, according to the composer, ‘gravestones’”, writes Robert Reilly in Surprised by Beauty, “then the quartets are the flowers he lays on the graves.” The Cuarteto Casals’ tone – sadly beautiful and mellow – suits this poetry of suffering well.

One could title the six slow, relentless, embittered movements of op.144 with: “The Six Last Words of the Survivor”. Even more so than with Haydn, this deceleration on Shostakovich’s part is a gutsy, deliberate, and pointed imposition on the listener. The interpreters’ long lines made concentration easy, though, thanks to the unremitting inner tension amid this sustained slowness, and the pinch of Haydnesque mischief. The encore from the Third String Quartet, meanwhile, was merciless and had a symphonic earthiness about it. Fabulous, all, and very promising as far as their recordings are concerned.

Vera Martínez Mehner (Violine), Abel Tomàs (Violine), Arnau Tomàs (Violoncello), Cristina Cordero (Viola). SF / Marco Borrelli

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Critic’s Notebook: Superstar Trio on Chamber-Music Tour

Lisa Batiashvili,© Chris Singer

Also published in Die Presse: Kammermusik: Diese Kombo hat es in sich

Antonín Dvořákr Complete Piano Trios Panenka/Suk/Chuchro Supraphon US | UK | DE

Antonín Dvořákr Complete Piano Trios Beaux Arts Trio Philips/Decca US | UK | DE

Antonín Dvořákr Piano Trios Op.65 & 90 Tetzlaff2/Vogt Ondine US | UK | DE

Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier Capuçon, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet make a better-than expected Trio

It doesn’t always work: superstars doing chamber music in the grand halls of classical music. This combo, though, had something going for itself.

Chamber music in large halls is, on the one hand, a wonderful thing — a sign that this genre, hard to sell but the beating heart of classical music, can still draw a crowd. On the other hand, such music is usually less at home in places like the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus than, in it would be in its smaller, perfectly suited Mozart Hall, for example. But when soloists with the star power of Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier Capuçon and Jean-Yves Thibaudet appear together, compromises must be made.

That this one turned out not to be much of a compromise at all was remarkable — and owed to the trio’s balanced playing. No one held back, no one dominated, there were no hiearchic shenanigans, and no one got lost in precious detail. Whether in the youthful works of the first half — Debussy and Shostakovich’s early trios — or in the second, devoted entirely to Dvořák’s mature F-minor Trio Op. 65 (who was, after all, a venerable 42 when he wrote it).

The Dvořák, cleanly and spiritedly played, served as another reminder that his chamber music never really disappoints — at least not when, as here (no small feat for a team of soloists), the playing is genuinely ensemble-minded: relaxed in the Poco adagio, varied in the finale, and fleet in the Mendelssohn-like scherzo of the encore, which was played entirely in keeping with Dvořák’s spirit.

Even more intriguing were the first two pieces, however, where Batiashvili and Capuçon could truly shine: she full-bodied and rhytmically steady-as-a-rock, he slightly sentimental, bittersweet, elegant — both superbly attuned to each other. That Thibaudet sometimes drifted toward the role of accompanist rather than full creative collaborator, or that his clarity occasionally suffered from the brisk tempos, mattered little at this level of overall excellence.


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Notes from the 2025 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) A Recital with Igor Levit filling in for Evgeny Kissin

Salzburg Festival • Recitals | D-S-C-H • ex-Kissin | Igor Levit

Whispered Brahms, Affectatious Shostakovich

Substituting for Evgeny Kissin is no picnic – even for Igor Levit. But at least he tried.

The solo recital with Evgeny Kissin, part of Salzburg’s “DSCH” series of concerts, had to go ahead without its planned soloist who had fallen ill on short notice. He was going to play the same program he gave in late March at the Musikverein. Shostakovich, who died exactly fifty years ago that week, at least, remained the focus of the second half, thanks to Igor Levit, who stepped in for his colleague and left that part similar enough. In fact, on paper, the Second Sonata was still the same piece. Musically, everything was fundamentally different, though – including said sonata.

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Igor Levit Sony (2021) US | UK | DE

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Keith Jarrett ECM (1992) US | UK | DE

The surge, seriousness, and underlying humor that Kissin had drawn out were blown away. In their place came playfulness, a murmur, a small-small in stubborn mezzopiano – here and there interrupted by an occasional furious, note-snatching dash across the keyboard. Musical incidents that each stood like a monolith amid the whispering. Energy, when it was present at all, was derived from speed, not mass. This worked quite nicely for the Preludes and Fugues from Opus 87, as did Levit’s inclination to dissolve the notes into architectural elements. Quirky, in the best sense; a little as if Gyro Gearloose had taken up the piano.

The Largo of the Sonata no longer stood, as with Kissin, in spiritual proximity to Debussy; it was pushed toward twelve-tone music and Schoenberg. “Pointillist,” one might say. Or “frayed.” The ostentatious renunciation of loudness – especially effective in the broad expanse of the Grosses Festspielhaus – was not without appeal. Levit’s delicate, soiree-appropriate soft, and even touch was consistently admirable – especially in the Brahms Intermezzi Op. 117 and Four Ballades Op. 10 of the first half. Brahms benefits from this, to a point – though the approach shifts the burden of generating tension from the performer to the audience: either it sits in raptness (which, in the restless first half, could hardly be claimed) or one faces a certain risk of the audience nodding off.

The question also arose whether there might be such a thing as “over-interpretation,” so much did Levit demand of every phrase in these simply beautiful Intermezzi; so introspective every attack had to become; so brooding every pause: every tiniest note a carefully curated miniature. The Ballades, too, received this detail-minded, intelligent treatment. Like pulled pork, it seemed: so tender it fell apart if you as much as looked at it – a tightrope walk between touching and tiresome. The contrast of the thunderous leap into the B minor Ballade, as rough-hewn as Michelangeli liked to play it, came out all the sharper in this setting. Sweetening the close was another Brahms Intermezzo as encore – holding back the already-breaking-out just once more, and making the already-jubilation-primed remainder of the audience cheer all the harder.


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#ClassicalDiscoveries: The Podcast. Episode 015 - Dmitri Shostakovich - The Symphonies

Welcome to #ClassicalDiscoveries. Here is a little introduction to who we are and what we would like to achive at the first (or rather "double-zeroëth" episode). Your comments, criticism, and suggestions remain most welcome, of whatever nature they may be. Now here’s Episode 015, where we return to Dmitri Shostakoivch, but now the symphonies, not the film music. We focus on a few favorites and Joe plays plenty of music to lighten the mood. :-)

The Kitajenko-Shostakovich

DSCH The Symphonies Gürzenich-Orchester Köln D.Kitajenko Capriccio, SACDs 2005

DSCH The Symphonies Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne D.Kitayenko Capriccio, CDs 2025