All passions spent: Bertrand Chamayou and the Belcea Quartet in Shostakovich and Franck

Two larger than life piano quintets made up this high voltage programme from Bertrand Chamayou and the Belcea Quartet at Wigmore Hall. Shostakovich's Piano Quintet in G minor, written at a time of extreme crisis for the composer in the late 1930s, is an odd, at times gawky work, never quite at home with its instrumentation. Nevertheless, by some alchemy, it achieves a stature of greatness by sheer force of its inspired thematic material and its direct emotionalism. 

Chamayou and the Belceas were very much in touch with the rawness of the piece, starting by finding an intense nobility in the opening Prelude. In the Fugue that follows, there was beautiful string playing from each of the quartet, but particularly the first violinist, Corina Belcea, who created a ghostly serenity which was blown away by the boisterous energy of the Scherzo. The balance with Chamayou here was very successful, his cheeky scurrying particularly pert and clear in texture. The beautiful Lento produced poised string playing with purity of tone and passion at the climax. The Allegretto finale finds the composer in searching for something more light-hearted to say after the intensity that preceded it. Like much of Shostakovich's more lively and ‘positive’ music, anxiety and fear lurks in the shadows, an ambivalence which unfolded strongly in this performance, the whimsical final bars achieving real poignancy.

César Franck was in his 50s when he wrote his Piano Quintet in F minor, often seen as his first great work. What seemed to ignite the composer was his infatuation with his pupil Augusta Holmès, a talented composer herself. The resulting passion produced one of the most openly erotic works not only of the 19th century, but of any century. At its scandalous first performance, Saint-Saëns walked off the stage in disgust after delivering the piano part to a bemused, but enthusiastic audience. However, for its purely musical inspiration and structural strength, it is now considered to be one of the greatest works in the form.

In performance, it is completely wrong to try to tidy up its explicit passions and the Belceas and Chamayou certainly didn’t fall into that trap here. From the opening F minor fortissimo chord onwards, there was urgency in their playing. The first movement's unusual sonata form structure, with increasingly intense passages like one continuous development section, left little to the imagination as to the sexual nature of the music in their hands. Chamayou was able to present a light tender touch when necessary and a driving power as the movement progressed. The string playing was full-throated and not concerned with beauty of tone when it needed to be super intense. 

After all passions had been spent in the first movement, the Lento starts out full of contentment and ease, sensuously moving through some truly remarkable modulations and rich textures, the mood captured perfectly here with ravishing playing all round. Only towards the end, when themes from the first movement return, is the ardor briefly reignited. The Finale sees a new more controlled fervour take shape. The virtuosic piano part was navigated by Chamayou with ease and the headlong rush at the end to the furious F minor conclusion was delivered all round with accuracy and controlled power. A first class performance of a unique masterpiece.