Tag: Dmitri Shostakovich

Fretwork & Clare Wilkinson, Wigmore Hall, 1 February 2009

Just a couple of weekends after our previous visit, another early music outing to the Wigmore Hall.

Rather a different feel, this one, as the conceit of the concert was to mix early music with some contemporary compositions influenced by those earlier periods.

Central to the concert was Purcell, whose 350th birthday was that year and who therefore featured a lot in 2009 concert programmes.

Here is the full listing for this 1 February gig:

In truth, Janie and I got a lot more out of the early music than the contemporary stuff, although I always enjoy Arvo Pärt more than I expect and the Shostakovich was interesting too.

But Purcell was the star of the show, as was Clare Wilkinson, who specialises in singing this Renaissance and Baroque stuff; often with Fretwork.

Lovely stuff, it was, on a Sunday night.

Daniel Hope & Friends, Wigmore Hall, 16 April 2001

I think I booked this one because of the Weill/Brecht. I really like the songs from The Threepenny Opera and you don’t often see them on the Wigmore Hall listings. Janie likes a bit of Shostakovich, so we thought we’d give it a try.

The concert comprised:

  • Alfred Schnittke – Sonata No 1 for Violin and Piano
  • Dmitri Shostakovich – Sonata for Violin and Piano Op 134
  • Maurice Ravel  – Kaddish
  • William Walton – Sonata for Violin and Piano
  • Kurt Weill, Simon Mulligan & Bertolt Brecht – Songs from “The Threepenny Opera”

In truth, I think this concert convinced us that 20th century music, on the whole, is not for us.

Here’s the first movement of the Schnittke, to give you an idea:

Try the last movement of the Shostakovich

I do recall rather liking the Kaddish, which I hadn’t heard before:

Here’s the first movement of the Walton:

Finally, here is a link to a more recent recording by David Frühwirth & Henri Sigfridsson, which I think is a similar sound to that of Hope & Mulligan doing the Threepenny Opera thing, although I think Hope and Mulligan were a bit more jazzy.

Homage To Marc Chagall, Wigmore Hall, Chagall Trio & Samuel West, 25 October 1998

Sunday night at “The Wig” to see this concert by the Chagall Trio, peppered with readings from Marc Chagall’s autobiography delivered by my old schoolmate, Samuel West.

We heard:

  • Dmitri Shostakovich – Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Op 67              
  • Philip Grange – Homage to Chagall       
  • Igor Stravinsky – Rag-time for Eleven Instruments         
  • Aaron Copland – Vitebsk – Study on a Jewish Theme    

Janie is partial to a bit of Chagall, visually, and is fascinated by Chagall’s life story, so the whole idea seemed to tick a lot of boxes for us. It was indeed a super concert that pleased us.

London Philharmonic Orchestra Doing The Lenningrad Symphony And More At The Royal Festival Hall, 19 October 1997

For reasons no-one (not even herself) can explain, Janie is quite partial to Shostakovich, yet cannot abide Prokofiev.

Anyway, a client offered Janie a pair of fine seats at this concert and we said yes.

According to my log, we:

bumped into John and Angela [Kessler] there.

From memory, we encountered cousin Angela and John, rather than actually having a collision with them. I don’t think I knew, at that time, that Angela was on the Board of the LPO and I suspect that Angela and John were too polite to mention that fact.

We heard:

  • Bernd Alois Zimmerman – Trumpet Concerto “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See”
  • Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No 7 in C, Op 60 “Lenningrad”

Janie and I loved the Leningrad Symphony as performed that night by the LPO under the baton of Kurt Masur. I didn’t see the following review at the time, but Brian Hunt in The Torygraph bore out our assessment – he absolutely loved this concert:

LPO Shostakovich Hunt TelegraphLPO Shostakovich Hunt Telegraph 25 Oct 1997, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

A belated thank you to the kind donor of our brace of tickets, who I think went globetrotting or something of that kind instead. Look what you missed.