Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall review - every note of Brahms’ late genius carefully weighed

★★★★ IGOR LEVIT, WIGMORE HALL All four sets of Brahms late piano pieces, but head rules heart

All four sets of late piano pieces in one concert, but head rules heart

Successful performances, conductor Robin Ticciati once suggested to me, are when “the head has a conversation with the heart”. The same goes, surely, for great music, though from personal experience one has to reach a certain age to find that true of Brahms. Last night Igor Levit seemed to favour the head, occasionally missing, for me, that very elusive something at the heart of Brahms’s late piano pieces.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martin, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff review - a host of horns in the wild woods

★★★★★ BBC NOW, MARTIN, HODDINOTT HALL, CARDIFF A host of horns in the wild woods

A fine new concerto and masterly playing

There were a lot of horns on display in the BBC NOW’s latest concert in Cardiff’s Hoddinott Hall. Brahms’s Second Symphony has four of them, and so does the Elegy for Brahms that Parry wrote on hearing of Brahms’s death in 1897. Gavin Higgins’s Horn Concerto, whose world premiere formed the programme’s centrepiece, has no less than five.

Morison, Immler, BBCSO, Bychkov, Barbican review - a Kafka journey and a mighty landmark

★★★★ MORISON, IMMLER, BBCSO, BYCHKOV, BARBICAN New songs and old forms

Multi-tasking maestro shines with new songs and old forms

The German composer Detlev Glanert, taught by Hans Werner Henze and a past collaborator with Oliver Knussen, received a Proms commission as far back as 1996. He remains, it might be fair to say, a shadowy presence here despite his prominence back home.

Kim, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the sound of brass

★★★★ KIM, BBC PHILHARMONIC, GERNON, BRIDGEWATER HALL The sound of brass

Limpid and powerful playing from an expert in Brahms piano concerto

Ben Gernon’s relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has been a richly rewarding one over the close-on seven years since his appointment as their principal guest conductor began, and indeed subsequently. 

The impression gained on his first Bridgewater Hall concert with them back in 2017 – that one of his instincts is to give an orchestra what it needs and then let the players do what they do best – was again clear in this programme of popular repertoire works which he took over from an indisposed Mark Wigglesworth.

Brahms Piano Sonatas, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - when giants meet

★★★★★ BRAHMS PIANO SONATAS, LEONSKAJA, WIGMORE HALL When giants meet

The young composer's epic-lyric genius revealed and clarified

To master even one of Brahms’s three early sonatas is a colossal task for any pianist. To play them all with towering authority in a single concert takes a phenomenon. Elisabeth Leonskaja seems just that more than ever in her late 70s; not only is there no loss of the epic stops she can pull out in the most tumultuous music, but for all her poise, she’s also still willing to embrace the craziness and iconoclasm of the 20-year-old composer as if the works were written yesterday.

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