Portugal Verão Clássico Festival 2025 [2] – Schubert Fest: Anna Samuil (soprano), Stephan Picard, Lena Neudauer (violins), Muriel Razavi (viola), Gary Hoffman (cello), Rui Pedro Rodrigues (double bass), Milana Chernyavska, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro (piano). Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório, Lisbon, 26.7.2025. (LV)
Schubert – Sonatina for Violin and Piano, D.385; Three Lieder – ‘Leise flehen meine Lieder’, D.957 No.4, ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’, D.877 No.4, ‘Die Forelle’, D.550; Piano Quintet in A major, D.667, ‘Trout’
Fauré – ‘Élégie’ for Cello and Piano, Op.24
On a hot, steamy Belém night, when crisply, cream-filled pastries were being shared by lovers of all ages, the Verão Clássico Festival staged a Schubert Fest inside the Pequeno Auditório of the Centro Cultural de Belém. It felt less like a polite concert and more like the Pastél de Belém itself – restless, erotic, irresistible.
The evening opened with Schubert’s Sonatina for Violin and Piano, laced with the gloomy uncertainties of a young man discovering his own powers and, perhaps, sexuality. Although it begins with a quotation from ‘Sturm und Drang’ Haydn and later echoes Beethoven’s sweet ‘Für Elise’, overall it is Schubert having decided that to be Schubert is best of all. Lena Neudauer’s violin delicately traced the sometimes tentative, sometimes insistent lines while Milana Chernyavska’s piano colored them with grace. The performance captured those increasing moments in Schubert’s music when desire first took shape – still formal, still restrained, but pulsing underneath.
Three Schubert Lieder came next, sung by Anna Samuil. The first two catch the composer’s unique fusion of beauty and sadness with painful purity, and Felipe Pinto-Ribeiro at the piano responded with the tenderness of someone afraid to bruise a lover’s skin. They both shared the delights of ‘Die Forelle’ and its brilliantly glittering scales.
Cellist Gary Hoffman gave Fauré’s ‘Élégie’ a deeply felt reading that was fragile, plaintive and almost unbearably tender, while Pinto-Ribeiro created a luminous, otherworldly atmosphere. It was a thoughtful inclusion, underlining the French master’s admiration for Schubert.
The concluding ‘Trout’ Quintet, which Tovey described as ‘the first instrumental work that shows Schubert’s peculiar power beginning to rise up against his greatest weakness of form’, rose up as four string players can when they are playing with a pianist whose greatest joy is to share. Muriel Razavi’s ravishing viola glowed with Olympian serenity, while Stephan Picard discarded old-school dignity for repeated invitations to the dance. In the variations movement, Pinto-Ribeiro’s ornaments were delightful, the kind of grace notes that reminded one why this festival exists. While others swirled around him, Hoffman showed how less can be more. In the concluding Allegro gusto, as it had been all evening (except in the Fauré), it was about Schubert joyfully sharing his own laughter and tears.
And as at Beatrice Rana’s Classiche Forme chamber music festival in Lecce the week before, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro’s Verão Clássico showed that intermission-less chamber music concerts inspired by pianists can create a wonderful context in which to appreciate the musical arts – not to mention, if you are in Lisbon, the prefect prelude to Pastéis de Belém and a walk in the park.
Laurence Vittes