Radu Lupu produces Mozart so sublime as to delight the angels, Saraste and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra give us a lesson in poise, balance and blended sound.
Edgar Moreau and David Kadouch make the case for ressurecting the work of Rita Strohl, thrilling in transformation of Racine's Bérénice into Cello Sonata form.
Arcadi Volodos is a big man, and when he sits down to the piano, he produces a big sound. The extraordinary richness of timbre was obvious from the first notes of Brahms' 6 Klavierstücke, Op.118.
It’s not common to see a full hour of solo harp music, incorporating music of many types from late Baroque to the 21st century. It has left me far better educated as to the breadth of which this instrument is capable.
Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad opens with a programme of beautiful music and a pair of fine soloists, but a concert somewhat let down by a lack of rapport between soloists and orchestra.
Should the performer’s looks and gestures matter, or should purist listeners shut their eyes and use only their ears? In the case of today’s Gstaad chapel piano-four-hands recital by Ani and Nia Sulkhanishvili, there was no question that what you saw formed part of the show.
Watching Benjamin Grosvenor, the first thing that becomes obvious is that he is in complete control of his instrument, down to the finest detail. This was an extraordinary mature recital at Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad.
Question: what’s the connection between South Korea and 19th-century Bohemia? Answer: I have no idea, but there clearly is one, since Korean pianists Jaekyung Yoo and Yoon-Jee Kim play Smetana and Dvořák’s music as if they ingested it with their mothers’ milk.
Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad's opening concert for young musicians featured the Russian duo Getallo and Andreev who showed formidable technique but only came to life in the Rubinstein Piano Sonata.
Let's be brutally honest, concertgoers: Vivaldi's Four Seasons has been played to death - recorded by everybody who's anybody. It's been a wonderful old warhorse over the years, but it has been flogged once too often. Can it really be possible, then, to bring this animal back from the dead and rekindle our enthusiasm?
The programme for the closing concert of Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad had a familiar form: a late twentieth century concerto sandwiched between two classical pieces – a sure sign, if ever there was one, of a “difficult” work sugar-coated by material more palatable to a mainstream audience. But signs can be misleading, extremely so in this case.
One always comes to a young musicians' concert with a slight hope that this will be that special day when you hear a performer who you are absolutely sure will be a star of the future. That hope only comes to fruition on a small number of occasions: this concert was one of them. I'm willing to take bets that nineteen year old Parisian cellist Edgar Moreau is going to have a glittering career.
Question: how do you demonstrate to a sceptical audience that baroque opera seria doesn’t have to be boring? To answer this, the organisers of Sommets Musicaux and David Greilsammer, conductor of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra came up with a programme consisting of four Handel arias interspersed with orchestral passages from French baroque opera, these chosen for their variety and dance-based char
Reviewing concerts by young performers can be a tricky business, particularly when the material is highly varied and the way it is played even more so. Whenever I formed an opinion about the cello playing of Pablo Ferrández in today’s concert in Gstaad Chapel, I found myself contradicting it in the following piece.
There are some concerts where everything comes together, where the music is perfectly suited to the performers, and the hall is perfectly suited to their playing style. Last night’s concert at Saanen Church, in which Elisabeth Leonskaja joined Wojciech Rajski and his Polish Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4, was just such an occasion.
One of the more attractive features of the Sommets Musicaux festival is the series of concerts in Gstaad chapel, each given by a young musician who has been spending the week attending classes, with a mentor – in this case, Mario Brunello – and each including a world première written by the festival’s composer in residence – this year, it’s the turn of Nicolas Bacri.
The fact that Schubert’s four D.899 piano pieces are called “Impromptus” can seem incongruous: after all, they are formally structured pieces which are carefully scored with great subtlety, and performing them has little to do with spur-of-the-moment improvisation.
They made quite a contrast on stage: the diminutive figure of violinist Alexandra Soumm, resplendent in bright pink evening dress, and the imposing black-clad bulk of conductor Peter Csaba. Both, however, are bundles of energy, which was deployed at full tilt in this performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, closing the violin-laden programme of this year’s Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad.
Young violinists come in different shapes and styles, and this closing concert of the series of afternoon concerts by young performers in Gstaad Chapel was very different from yesterday’s. Where Albrecht Menzel was all about flamboyant virtuosity, this performance by 22-year old German Lukas Stepp was a far more thoughtful affair.
If you go to enough concerts, it’s bound to happen to you every now and then: the programme includes a work that you weren’t particularly looking forward to, and the performers blow you away, utterly transforming your view of the piece. In this case, the performers were Camerata Bern and the work was Bartók’s Divertimento for strings.
If this concert did what it said on the tin, the tin said something like “Young performers give energy, virtuosity and musicality beyond their years. Warning: may contain imperfections.”This year’s Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad is themed “The magic of the violin.” As well as the main concerts in Saanen and Rougemont churches, it contains a series of eight concerts in the small chapel in Gstaad itself, each pairing a very young violinist with a somewhat more experienced accompanist.
Winter in the Swiss Alps: freezing temperatures and snow outside. A modest seventeenth-century church of elegant proportions, painted plasterwork and wood panelling. A dozen crack musicians, specialists in baroque music.
Qui n'a pas rêvé d'un retour triomphal des Hagen dans le Quintette à deux violoncelles de Schubert, chasse gardée de Heinrich Schiff avant sa disparition ? C'était chose faite mercredi dernier au Gstaad Menuhin Festival.
Les musiciens du Wiener Cello Ensemble 5 + 1 ont pris au mot le thème annuel du Gstaad Menuhin Festival : “Pomp in music”. Au programme, des arrangements plein de faste, dont l’oeil profite autant que l’oreille.
On ne dira jamais assez combien les prestations live paraissent supérieures à celles qui s’élaborent dans l’intimité du studio : à preuve le renversant diptyque Brahms donné lundi soir au Gstaad Menuhin Festival au côté du pianiste Till Fellner.
Innigkeit und Autorität der Interpretation von Stimme und Klavier vereint bei einem Liederabend der ganz besonderen Art in der romanischen Kirche von Rougemont
Les Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad invitent à l’heure des contes de fée dans l’église romane de Rougemont. Bach, Mozart et Schumann sont interprétés en délicatesse par Paul Meyer, David Fray et Gérard Caussé.
C’est la deuxième soirée à l’église de Saanen, remplie d’un public curieux d’entendre la violoniste russe Viktoria Mullova se produire dans Haydn et Vivaldi avec les vingt musiciens de l’ensemble Il Giardino Armonico. La contrebasse arrivée à 19 h 28 par on ne sait quel contretemps se fait gentiment charrier par ses camarades, déjà sur scène. Chronos règne sur cette soirée.
Le coup d’envoi des Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad 2017 est donné avec éclat : un programme Beethoven alléchant et ambitieux, le Concerto pour violon et la Symphonie n° 5, exécuté par des interprètes exceptionnels, Gil Shaham et l’orchestre Les Siècles dirigé par François-Xavier Roth
Le chemin enneigé, bordé de bougies, monte à la vieille Église de Saanen de 1604. Sous son toit, le vieux bois de la balustrade, d’une chaude couleur miel, travaille, grince, gémit : l’atmosphère des concerts hivernaux à Gstaad est unique.
