Death and the Maiden

The Daily Telegraph
Eastern Daily Press

The Daily Telegraph, Ivan Hewitt
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

****

Launching a new season with a minor Mozart concerto, some obscure pieces by an Italian modernist, and a brand-new piece by a 25-year-old unknown composer might seem risky, even with Schubert’s well-known Death and the Maiden quartet to lend some ballast to the proceedings. Still, the Britten Sinfonia’s audiences relish this kind of risk-taking, and they turned out in gratifyingly large numbers for the orchestra’s opening concert in Cambridge.

They were rewarded with an evening full of charm and humour, which also offered of plenty to ponder over. Much of the charm emanated from Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud, who guest-directed the entire concert as well playing two concertos.

The first of them was Mozart’s D major concerto, written when he was 19. It’s a slight work compared to his mature concertos, but the dancing phrases of the first movement were so beautifully poised that it almost seemed a proper masterpiece.

Kraggerud has an extraordinary sweetness of tone, but it’s never cloying because his sound always dances as much as it sings.

Kraggerud’s luminous sound was an asset in Kreisler, l’entre deux guerres, an impressively dark, troubled mini-concerto for violin and chamber orchestra by the Piers Tattersall, which was receiving its world premiere.

It was inspired by the cosiness and nostalgia of the great inter-war violinist Fritz Kreisler, though it was hard to tell from Tattersall’s tangled programme note whether he wanted to celebrate that cosiness or subvert it. Fortunately the music itself made a lot more sense. The opening image of a solo violinist poised in luminous clarity over something turbid was superbly conceived, and the ensuing struggle between these two principles was played out at exactly the right length. Only occasionally did I feel the music pressing home its “message” too insistently.

That’s not a criticism that could be levelled at Luciano Berio, whose witty Violin Duos (of which we heard five) suggest so much more than they say. They were superbly played here by different pairings of the entire violin section, with Kraggerud graciously sharing the limelight.

Finally we came to Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet in Mahler’s arrangement. The performance was powerfully sculpted, and ended with a sense of overwhelming terror, as it should. But it wasn’t always ideally focused along the way. In the end, it was the apparently slight pieces by Mozart and Berio which offered the keenest pleasures.

Eastern Daily Press, Michael Drake
Norwich Theatre Royal

Innovative programming and a world first for Britten Sinfonia
REVIEW

The Britten Sinfonia are rightly praised for their innovative programming and commissioning of new works and two examples appeared in Sunday evening’s concert.

It is always difficult to be objective about premieres – in this case a world first – and it took time to attune to the young English composer Piers Tattersall’s “Kreisler, l’entre deux guerres”. The Kreisler hallmarks of “cosyness and nostalgia” were not exactly tuneful, but it had a melodic quality and more exposure will allow time to react more fully.

Soloist/director Henning Kraggerud had a busy evening and started with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4. The larger ensemble showed a delicacy in their depth behind the personable soloist who played as if on springs. The first movement’s virtuostic cadenza had great panache before a lively finale – in fact, the playing throughout had great flexibility.

New to many, the 20th century Italian Luciano Berio’s Duets for Two Violins – 8 pairs of soloists – was in turn peaceful, dancing, chanting and reflective with a final exciting sound from a dozen strings as a prelude to Mahler’s arrangement of Schubert’s string quartet Death and the Maiden. The full ensemble gave it a much larger perspective and a quite different feeling, with much darker passion but played with extraordinary tonal control and variation for a different musical experience.