United Kingdom Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, Poulenc and Vierne: Leif Ove Andsnes (piano), Musicians from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra: Chiara Tonelli (flute), Olivier Doise (oboe), Vicente Alberola Ferrando (clarinet), Guilhaume Santana (bassoon), José Vicente Castelló (horn), Matthew Truscott (violin), May Kunstovny (violin), Joel Hunter (viola), Frank-Michael Guthmann (cello). Wigmore Hall, London. 12.3.2025. (CSa)
Stravinsky – Septet
Villa-Lobos – Quinteto em forma de chôros
Poulenc – Sextet for wind quintet and piano
Louis Vierne – Piano Quintet in C minor, Op.42
The universally acclaimed Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andnes has enjoyed a long and rich collaboration with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for almost 15 years. This creative partnership has included The Beethoven Journey in which Andsnes directed and performed all five Beethoven piano concertos from the keyboard, and Mozart Momentum 1785/1786 which concentrated on Mozart’s works from that period. His professional relationship with some of the orchestra’s individual players, drawn from all over Europe, has led to more adventurous forays into smaller scale and less familiar chamber repertoire. His latest and one of his most innovative initiatives in combination with nine stellar MCO instrumentalists, featured infrequently performed works by composers living in Paris in the 1920s and 30s which reflected on or reacted to the tragedy of the First World War and the heady optimism of the decade which followed.
In the first half of the concert, described by the MCO as ‘A Movable Feast’, Andsnes and his colleagues – in varying constellations – presented three neo-classical delights: Stravinsky’s Septet, the Quinteto em forma de chôros by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for wind quintet and piano.
Although written in 1953 when Stravinsky was living in West Hollywood, his Septet drew on his abiding interest in Baroque forms – hallmarks of his years in Paris – and its angular, playful rhythms hint at earlier works written when he was resident in the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Scored for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and piano, the opening Sonata Allegro was tautly articulated in a blaze of vivid colour. This was followed by a Bach-infused Passacaglia and a rocking Gigue whose Serialist overtones reflected the growing influence of Stravinsky’s Los Angeles based neighbour and rival Arnold Schoenberg. In a finely balanced conversation between the piano and the other instruments, these movements were articulated with bursts of cohesive energy and an almost architectural clarity of line and form.
Villa-Lobos’s one movement wind Quinteto scored for clarinet, horn, flute, oboe and bassoon came next. It was first premiered in March 1930 at the Salle Chopin in Paris. The work is a rich tapestry in which strands of Brazilian street band music, jazz, and unmistakable fragments of Stravinsky are woven together, and blaze with brilliantly uncompromising colours. In a performance as fresh and vital to the ear as it must have sounded on the day it was first performed, this tight-knit ensemble played with absolute precision, yet managed to capture the work’s freewheeling almost improvisatory quality. Invidious perhaps to single out individual players where the standard of collaborative musicianship was so high, but contributions from Olivier Doise’s plangent oboe and Chiara Tonelli’s diamond bright flute were outstanding.
No composer was better able to conjure the effervescence of Paris between-the-wars than Francois Poulenc, and his high-spirited Sextet for wind quintet and piano, with shades of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, does just that. A bustling fast-moving Allegro opening gave way to a sensual melody in which oboe and clarinet (played by Vicente Alberola Ferrando and José Vicente Castelló on horn) languorously intertwined. The second movement Divertissement was delivered with an appropriate degree of solemnity punctuated by moments of tongue-in-cheek merriment, and the high-charged Finale recounted with Gallic wit and élan.
The concert’s second half featured one work rarely heard in live recital: Louis Vierne’s Piano Quintet in C. After the cerebral rigour and sharp rhythmic drive of Stravinskian neoclassicism, Vierne’s deeply emotional late Romanticism stood squarely on the fork of the of the twentieth century’s musical road. Written towards the end of the Great War and described by the composer as ‘a votive offering’, the Vierne’s quintet responded to the loss of his seventeen-year-old son who was killed in action on the Western Front. The restrained yet poignant opening was reminiscent of Elgar at his elegiac best, although there is no evidence to suggest the two men had ever met or even heard the other’s work. Andsnes, joined by the four MCO strings gave the introductory Poco lento and Moderato a searingly powerful reading. The initial tenseness and pervasive sense of loss marbling through the first movement was carried over into the Larghetto sostenuto which began with a heartrending solo from the viola, exquisitely played by Joel Hunter. A dark and thunderous Maestoso and Allegro brought us in dramatic fashion into the heart of battle, with Andsnes and his comrades-in-arms sustaining the unfolding drama at every stage with discipline, united in a superlative and courageous performance which never ventured over the top.
Chris Sallon