There’s been a lot of music around (what a good thing) so it’ll be a whistle-stop tour through some of the other concerts we went to.
Mark Padmore has performed at the Mozartfest before, and I will soon be sharing a concert platform with him. He sang Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann (with Schubert’s Leise flehen meine Lieder as an encore). He made light work of the vocal awkwardnesses of Beethoven’s songs; I was particularly impressed by the distinctions in the verses of Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. His voice has got rather weightier since I last heard it. The Schumann (the Liederkreis op. 39 and four settings of Hans Christian Andersen) gave his distinguished accompanist Till Fellner the chance to shine. The recital wasn’t nearly as well attended as it should have been, though admittedly it had been moved from the smaller Guildhall to the Assembly Rooms. Marshfield ice cream again lurked for the cognoscenti in a freezer cabinet in a remote corner, though I thought the Christmas pudding flavour was a bit premature. Afterwards I dashed out with flyers to plug his forthcoming performance in Bristol.
Bath Chronicle review
Our final two concerts included 20th-century works; we wish there was rather more programming at the Mozartfest that did this, rather than staying in a perceived comfort zone of surrounding Mozart with works written within a century of his time.
In the recital given by the Emersons, Shostakovich Op 73 (which followed Haydn’s Joke quartet) was the most successful piece. Op. 131 hard to mess up if you can play it at all, but one of Beethoven’s little jokes was spoilt; you’re meant to hear the theme being passed along the four players, but the violinists weren’t side by side so it didn’t work.
Bath Chronicle review
Finally I heard the Vertavo Quartet (I think the first all-female professional string quartet that I’ve come across) with Paul Lewis, playing Mozart’s concerto K414 in its most scaled-down arrangement. This was followed by Bartók’s Sixth Quartet and after the interval Dvořák’s piano quintet no. 2. All of these received performances that were thoughtful rather than ebullient. The Bartók in particular repaid the effort of concentration. The Saturday morning concerts seem to attract a more committed and less ‘social’ audience then some of the others.