Now that concerts all have to have a title, like novels, this one was called “Forgotten French Masterpieces” which is an interesting idea for a theme especially as it included 19th century composer Louise Ferenc and we really ought to be hearing more – much more – of her.

The title didn’t, however, really apply to the opening work: Faure’s Masques et Bergamasques which is actually pretty familiar. Good to hear it played with such commitment by this well established community orchestra, though. Once the orchestra had settled we got an elegantly courtly Menuet and some excellent flute work in the Romanze from Charlie Faux-Bowyer although some of the string work beneath her was fuzzy. There are some very strong, confident players in this orchestra, led by the ever charismatic Flo Peycelon.

The five orchestral songs by Henri Duparc which occupied the “concerto slot” were completely new to me and I have to say I found them a bit colourless. Soprano Penelope Martin-Smith did her best with them although she didn’t evince much emotion. Moreover, although she lives in France where, according to the programme, she studies French language and culture there was no clarity in her delivery of the French text. Strange too, to use a music stand and have it set so low that you have to keep looking downward. It all felt a bit understated and more like a rehearsal than a performance.

The highlight of the concert was Louise Ferenc’s third symphony which came after the interval. The adagio – lots of colourful lyricism and warmth – was splendid as was the busy, nimbly delivered Scherzo. And the final Allegro gave us lots of melodies intertwined and incisively played. I know this symphony only from recordings and it was a real treat to hear it live and played with such panache.

It was a while since I’d been in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall which is part of the Gulbenkian Arts Centre at the University of Kent. It really does have a pleasing acoustic and the layout – audience on raked seating with the orchestra on the flat space at the bottom – works effectively because it means you can see every single player and that’s rare in a concert hall.

Susan Elkin

When one goes to see an opera one hardly expects such an extravagant mix of song, acting, dance, art and music. In every sense this work demands everything it can of all its participants.

To begin at the beginning. The show begins with the orchestra, always visible at the back of the stage, delivering an overture full of jazzy brass and tweeting woodwind which immediately sets a mood of fun and games. Karen Kamensek, the conductor, sets the mood and pace.

As the orchestra moves from overture to introduction of the principal characters cartoon outlines appear against the gauze curtain, set a little way back from the front of the stage. These depict the interior of a baron’s castle. Here we meet the principal characters: Candide himself – the name means innocent, honest – like our word ‘candid’ – played by Ed Lyon, his half sister Cunegonde [Ffion Edwards] and brother Maximillian [Mark Nathan], the maid servant Paquette [Francesca Saracino] and the teacher of the three youngsters Dr Pangloss [Gillian Bevan]. These characters appear throughout the whole operetta. For though they appear to die many times, no one in this operetta really dies; they reappear in different parts of the world in different guises. They are survivors.

Bernstein dubbed Candide a comic operetta. It is more than comic, it is a fantasy brought to life – something that could have come straight from the invention of such as Monty Python, full of innuendo, acting of the broadest kind and satirical digs not just at the eighteenth century world of Voltaire but at the America of the 1950s when Bernstein conceived of the project. With the troubles that assail us all now it serves just as well in underlining what the present offers us on a global scale.

And of course, the piece, which carries us from some imagined German state to France, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, the Amazon jungle and Constantinople shows us how little the world has changed. Whatever century or country we are in there are wars, man’s inhumanity to man, racism, sexism and corruption of the ruling classes. Nothing changes except the costumes that clothe the participants. Perhaps that is why the cast often wear an extraordinary mix of garments, echoing every century from Voltaire’s time to the present day.

The cartoons are witty adjuncts used throughout the show, allowing there to be a flow as the characters are swept from country to country, which no amount of ‘real’ scenery could have managed without seriously holding up the action. These cartoons, animated by Gregoire Pont, become an integral and very popular part of the show. Each scene depicted is full of life and little extra touches – a beetle crawling from one side to another – a cat walking along a balustrade – sheep falling in slow motion down a waterfall in the Amazon, all rendered with humour and expressiveness.

The only downside of these animations, which often fill the whole gauze with detail, is the disappearance of the orchestra, still there onstage but often merely a background and sometimes barely visible. They are a fine orchestra and this was a pity, I felt – but with such a complex and busy show, I cannot think of a solution that would have worked. They would have been just as invisible below the stage in the pit.

It isn’t just the animations that cast the orchestra into the shade but the sheer numbers of characters. It is a huge cast many of whom play multiple characters as we are whizzed from place to place in the world, the one linking factor between every country being the corruption of those in power, the dreadful way that the women are treated [though, used to such treatment, all the women are stoical about the way they are used as sex objects], and the terrible toll that war and extreme religions exact. But though the facts are grim so light-hearted is the approach that it is only afterwards that we recognise the cynical exposure of truths that are the same today as in the past.

The cast attack their roles with unfailing gusto and energy. When I first attended operas, thirty or more years ago, acting wasn’t really expected. It was all about the singing. In contrast, every one of the singer/actors/dancers in Candide multi-task convincingly, clearly enjoying every excess. And the dancers were fabulous.

Particularly effective scenes include the auto-da-fe, where powerful music and singing combine with black costumes, gruesome characters hanging from crosses in the background, the burning of Dr Pangloss in a clever video of super-imposed flames, plus the whipping of Candide to create an impression of horror. In contrast to that is the scene of debauchery set in the ruler of Montevideo’s sleazy palace, where sexy scantily-clad dancers with bored expressions contrast with the plight of Cunegonde and the worldly-wise ‘Old Woman’, a past beauty who has seen it all before, and more. Always the music cleverly sets the scene and in no other opera I know of has the orchestra had to deal with such a wide variety of styles as we travel with them around the world.

Some characters deserve particular mention. Ffion Edwards as Cunegonde, the girl Candide loves throughout, has a beautiful voice with exquisite high notes and manages to be both sexy and somehow innocent and charming at the same time. It as if Candide’s own innocence rubs off on her and ultimately redeems her. The ‘Old Woman’ is humorous in her rendering – with a hilarious guttural Russian accent – of her sordid life story, [in which she has lost one of her buttocks]! Her main scene is a tour de force.

But they are all good. From the chorus, who manage their many changes of role, with aplomb, to Candide himself who retains his innocent belief in ‘the best of all possible worlds’ until what he experiences forces him to face up to its seamier underside.
For that is the message we are left with, which Candide and his lady love embrace: that there is no best of all possible worlds. Dr Pangloss who, at the beginning taught this to his young pupils, is wrong. Life is hardship and hard work but, tackle it with Candide’s boundless optimism, and there is hope for the future after all.

I’ve enjoyed watching [and reviewing] the Welsh National Opera over a number of years and many contrasting shows. This operetta tests the versatility of the musicians as much as it does the whole creative and performing team. And team it certainly is. The whole show pulls together to create a sprawling and inventive riot of fun which looks as if everyone is as enjoying it as much as the audience.

Welsh National Opera have taken on an extraordinarily difficult task but, like Candide himself, they have prevailed and carried us through its many moods and vagaries. I thoroughly recommend it.

Jeni Whittaker

A 28 piece orchestra including harp and lots of percussion is tuning up. Yes, we’re in the lush world of 19th century opera of which Englebert Humperdinck’s rich and melodious score is a fine example.

The opening of the overture to Hansel and Gretel, however, s not usually comic with chuckles coming from all corners of the audience. Opera Holland Park is open at the sides and very close to the paths through the park. On this occasion no sooner than had the horns and trombones begun their familiar entry bars than a dog began barking loudly nearby. Either he wanted to join in or he hated the sound and was trying to raise the alarm. It would have ceased to be a joke and become an irritant had it lasted long. Fortunately it didn’t. During the rest of the overture director Neil Irish gives us the cast in a sort of dance drama which neatly reflects the mood changes in the music.

It’s a piece with a lot of charm and this production reflects that in spades. Charlotte Badham as Hansel and Laura Lolita Peresivana as Gretel work seamlessly together with child like gestures and affection. Their duet work is a delight and, although I grew up with the Kathleen Ferrier and Isabel Bailey version against which I can’t help measuring all others, I must say these two sing the famous prayer with real delicacy and beauty.

The musical balance in this production is splendid. When the children hear the cuckoo in the wood it comes initially from one of the percussionists. It is then picked up by the singers. Gradually it develops through the orchestra until the whole texture is full of descending major thirds or variations of them and conductor Karin Hendrickson makes sure that we hear every detail and really notice what is happening.

Paul Carey Jones brings bass gravitas to Peter, the children’s father and Meeta Ravel is warm voiced as their mother. In this version of the story they are, of course, not cruel parents who abandon their children. Eleanor Dennis does well as the witch too although I’m puzzled about why she sheds her glitzy frock to reveal a quasi military outfit with epaulettes and medals.

Opera Holland Park is configured, as last year, with a narrow, sloped stage extension in front of the orchestra so that the musicians are in the centre of the action. And Hansel and Gretel sits well on it. When the children fall asleep in the wood and sing the prayer, for example, they are right at the front a few feet from the audience. The cottage which reverses to become the witch’s gingerbread house is at the back. It’s an imaginative and effective use of the space.

Susan Elkin

An esteemed music critic once said to me: “Well we can’t just go on listening to the same old pieces all the time”. Well I can, happily – especially when they’re brought off as sparkily as Santtu-Matias Rouvali did in this concert.

He had me on the edge of my seat from the dramatic opening chords of Egmont (1810) which arrived with more incisive bite than I’ve heard in a long time. There was real excitement after the general pause too as Santtu drove the orchestra down the final page with all those wonderful brass arpeggios and piccolo glissandi. It was an arresting start to an all-19th century concert.

The filling in the Beethoven sandwich was Bruch’s first violin concerto (1869) played by Eldbjorg Hemsing who tall, blonde and wearing a beautiful emabossed silk gown in taupe looked as striking as she sounded. I loved the quiet drama she brought to the arrival at the glorious, Classic-FM favourite, adagio. It never palls and she made it sound exquisitely melodious, forcing one to listen as if one had never heard it before. Then came the gentle segue into finale in which her virtuosic double stopping (energico indeed) was nicely counterpointed with the languid grandiloquence of the orchestra’s main theme. It’s good to be able to see and hear, in live performance, the fine timpani work (Antoine Sigure) required in this piece because it is often almost lost in recordings. It’s also a treat to watch a soloist who is such an integrated part of the music that she can’t help quasi-conducting – dancing almost – during the orchestral sections.

The final work was Beethoven’s second symphony (1803). Santtu chose to take the opening movement at a tempo nippy enough to sound crisp but measured enough to allow the detail to cut through. And the balance between winds and strings was sensitively managed. I have never before, incidentally, seen a conductor try to stop the applause at the end of a movement. It’s fashionable not to mind it. But Santtu clearly does and I’m unfashionably in his camp.

The tenderly elegant larghetto felt like chamber music with lots of leaning and looking between front desks and Santtu’s take on the scherzo was an appealingly delicate contrast.

The whole symphony is smiley music, written in the year in which Beethoven, devastatingly, had to accept that his hearing really was going. How on earth did he find the strength to write this cheerful symphony? I beamed throughout but particularly in the concluding Allegro Molto: Beethoven as his most insouciant and full of joie de vivre. Santtu gave us a cheeky account of it – clearly enjoying the jokey exuberant fun with, for example, exaggerated dynamic contrasts. It wouldn’t, perhaps, be everyone’s cup of tea but I felt I was watching a man communicating directly with the composer and at one with every player in his orchestra.

Susan Elkin

Regents Opera

When Keel Watson’s Wotan sang of “der Gottheit nichtigen Glanz” (“the empty splendour of the Gods”) at Freemason’s Hall on Sunday it seemed like a wry comment on the venue. With every surface overlaid with marble, gold leaf or mosaic, the Grand Temple outdoes even the most lavish opera house and seems to compete with Valhalla itself. Did Regents Opera have this in mind when choosing it as the location for their shoestring Ring cycle, now on its second instalment with Die Walküre?

Director Caroline Staunton’s programme note concentrated on the personal aspects of the story, the consequences for the characters of decisions already made and the tensions between their own needs and desires and the world’s demands. Her production worked best when it concentrated on those relationships rather than abstruse visual symbolism. The art-gallery conceit of last November’s Rheingold re-appeared in the final act, which, seeking to evoke the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art”, presented us with a rather bohemian set of Valkyries rescuing paintings (not particularly degenerate ones) rather than fallen heroes. The paintings were later smashed by a masked female figure credited in the programme as “Wotan’s Will”, who proceeded to wrap the condemned Brünnhilde in masking tape marked “Entartet”. They finally provided fuel for the magic fire with which Wotan encircles his daughter, recalling the burning of 5,000 artworks in Berlin in March 1939. It may all make sense by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, but for the moment it seemed shoe-horned in to the narrative.

As the wanderer Siegmund, Brian Smith Walters presented a convincingly weatherbeaten figure, toughened as well as beaten down by suffering. But his diction was muddy and there seemed little passion between him and his sister-bride Sieglinde, limpidly sung as she was by Justine Viani. Gerrit Paul Groen‘s Hunding introduced a swaggering figure of menace and mostly implied violence, despite an incongruous brown check suit. The arrival of Catharine Woodward‘s Brünnhilde, a day early for World Goth Day in black leather and eyeliner, raised the dramatic and musical temperature for Act II. Launching her initial war-cries with athletic precision, she brought vulnerability as well as volume to the role, and the father-daughter relationship with Keel Watson’s Wotan was affectingly realised. Watson was in every respect a worthy war-father for such a daughter, by imposing, fearsome and finally broken. The trinity of gods was completed by Ingeborg Novrup Børch as Fricka, an authoritative and powerful presence in her pivotal scene with Watson.

Some musical compromise is inevitable when Wagner is performed in the round with only 22 instrumentalists, and I couldn’t help missing the extra firepower of the full Wagnerian orchestra during the “Ride of the Valkyries”. But the band under Ben Woodward played superbly, sounding more bedded-in than they did in Rheingold, and Woodward’s arrangement showed astonishing ingenuity in reproducing Wagner’s orchestral colours on a smaller scale. As before, there was judicious use of Paul Plummer at the Freemason’s Willis organ, adding sonority to bass lines and providing an unearthly background for Brünnhilde’s message to Siegmund. With the postponement of ENO’s Siegfried Regents’ is now the only Ring in town – Wagnerites should not hesitate to join this Rhine journey.

At Freemasons Hall, London, Saturday 27th May, 5:30 pm https://regentsopera.com/

William Hale

During Covid when the only live music I had access to was the stuff I played myself – if I was very lucky in duet with my “bubbled” son – I yearned and yearned to hear a big orchestra with five percussionists, a harp and lots of brass. I was like a starving person fantasising about food. And I thought of that, gleefully, at this concert as it launched into the opening Roman Carnival which, almost literally, has all the bells and whistles. Brian Wright took the big melody much more slowly than I’m accustomed to and the fugal string passage wasn’t quite together but the tambourine work was delightful and the mood vibrantly joyful. Yes, this is the sort of thing I dreamed of when we weren’t allowed to have it.

Talented Mayumi Kanagawa is an unshowy performer. The music, her fingers and the violin –a 1725 “Wilhelmj” Stradivarius on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation– make all the statements. She delivered the lyrical passages in the outer movements of Prokofiev’s first concerto (1923) with sumptuous, decisive precision. The middle movement is a virtuosic show piece in which Kanagawa rose to every challenge including some arresting left hand pizzicato and accurately dramatic, double stopped glissandi. It was an outstanding performance. And the choice of the familiar Rondo from Bach’s Partitia in E major was such a well chosen contrast that it felt like sucking a mouth-cleansing orange segment.

The grand finale both for this concert and for the 2022/3 MSO season was Tchaikovsky’s grandiloquent, sometimes anguished fourth symphony. And it was a fitting choice which certainly fed my ongoing longing for the big orchestra sound. With five desks of first violins we got a rich string sound to complement the brass. Over the years, Brian Wright really has perfected a strategy for getting the balance right with this orchestra in this rather unlikely venue whose day job is a sports hall. The second movement really leaned on the tortured melodies, written only a year after the composer’s disastrous marriage. The exquisite bassoon solo over pizzicato strings at the end was a high spot.

The famous long, finger-aching pizzicato passages in the fourth movement are notoriously difficult and a pretty adventurous idea for 1878. Here it was generally cohesive and full of all the right narrative tension. Then, to cap it all, we got the fourth movement at a really exciting speed, exploding with all the fuoco the composer wanted. And I suppose the drama of those terrific cymbal clashes at the end will have to last me until the next MSO concert when the new season opens on 14 October.

Susan Elkin

What would Anton Bruckner think of the Mass in Blue? This question occurred to me during the Hertfordshire Chorus’s concert on Sunday afternoon, when Will Todd’s work received its twentieth anniversary performance in the Cadogan Hall, paired with Bruckner’s Mass in E minor. It may seem an odd pairing, though both set the same text and are accompanied largely by wind ensembles. Bruckner would probably be baffled if not appalled by the Mass in Blue’s jazz idiom, but it’s anything but a frivolous work, engaging with the text as fully as Bruckner does, and obviously the product of a faith as real, if less conventional, that that of the Austrian master.

We began with the older work, written to be performed in the cathedral square in Vienna, and perhaps not entirely at home in the comfortable surroundings of the Cadogan Hall. With his eyes set firmly on God, Bruckner makes no allowance for human frailty, routinely sending all four (sometimes eight) voices to the extremes of their range in the Mass and demanding great feats of sustaining power. The wind band functions almost as a separate choir, providing minimal support to the singers and frequently leaving them on their own for extended passages. This and the chromatic choral writing would leave any choir with intonation problems horribly exposed, but the Hertfordshire Chorus is not such a choir, and apart from one slightly eyebrow-raising moment near the beginning, singers and instruments remained in concord. The choir’s transparent sound, mercifully free of “wobble” in all parts, made for clarity, though a little more resonance might have given extra edge to Bruckner’s often dissonant writing. They were otherwise fully equal to the composer’s demands, negotiating the tricky counterpoint in the Amen of the Gloria with practised ease.

The Chorus under their enterprising conductor David Temple gave the first performance of the Mass in Blue in Cambridge in 2003, and (rather to its composer’s surprise) it has since become one of the most frequently performed of modern choral works. Sunday’s rendition benefited not only from the original chorus and conductor, but also the Will Todd Ensemble, who must know the work inside out by now, and the composer himself on piano. Soprano Hilary Cronin has won prizes for her Handel singing (what would Handel think of the Mass in Blue? – now there’s a thought) but demonstrated that if the early music work dries up she should be able to make a very good living as a nightclub or gospel singer. Again I wished for more presence from the choir, who couldn’t always hold their own with the band, and found myself wondering if some discreet amplification, surely not out of the question in a work of this kind, might have helped. Nonetheless the singers’ rhythmic responsiveness and natural tone was a great asset and they brought all the warmth and precision which the music required. The ending had a real sense of elation and the warm reception from a sadly less-than-capacity audience suggested that the Mass in Blue will be with us for at least another twenty years.

William Hale

Eight talented musicians gave us a varied programme starting with a brand new composition from Paul Saggers, moving on to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and finishing with Mendelssohn’s String Octet.

The world premiere, Saggers’ Dear Nan is a musical depiction of the composer’s beloved grandmother’s journey through the different stages of dementia. The piece begins with galloping rhythms threaded through with broad optimistic passages that together give an impression of the joyfulness of Nan’s personality. Even this has a few sinister moments from repeated notes in the lower strings which suggests the disease lurking in the background. Soon the music contrasts with alternate quicker and slower passages which show the essential joyfulness of Nan pierced by moments of anxiety, as if her normal cheerful character is breaking down. The third theme is a beautiful melody representing the slowing down of that busy brain.

Throughout, the clarinet, played by Fiona Cross, acts as a solo voice, representing the questioning mind or soul of Nan herself as she wonders what is happening to her. The slowing down of her brain is emphasised in the final stages by long sustained notes which finally arrive at a full stop.

Having not so long ago lost my mother to dementia, I found this piece very moving and as accurate a musical picture of the terrible dissolution of human personality caused by Alzheimers as can be shown through the medium of music. It was interesting to read in the programmme that work with dementia patients is a large part of the community work that this musical group undertake in Manchester.

Paul Saggers introduced his piece to the audience as he was born and brought up here in Cornwall, cutting his musical teeth in the local brassbands as a cornet player, which is why the world premiere occurred here. I look forward to hearing more of his music.

The second piece on the programme was Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K.581, a piece of music so familiar that one finds oneself humming the tunes in the head along with the players. Of course hearing something live brings a new sparkle of life to even the most familiar music and so it was here.

The piece was a late work from Mozart, written just before the similarly famous Clarinet Concerto. The clarinet as an instrument was discovered late by the composer, who fell in love with it when he heard the playing of Anton Stadler, the virtuoso of his day. Originally it was written for the older basset version of the clarinet but nowadays both these famous works are performed on more modern versions.

This gorgeous piece was played with an obvious enjoyment by the quintet as they brought it to life afresh for the audience, swaying like birch trees in a variable wind, as if the music itself resided deep in their bodies, while the eyes flickered, always alert to their fellow players. The leader, first violin player Caroline Pether’s whole face reflected her love of the music and all were similarly engaged as their bodies and minds became one with the instruments, the themes and the rhythms. In chamber music particularly no one instrument is more important, not even the soloist. The ensemble is all.

The flowing first movement with its repeated themes gives way to the second, where the clarinet more clearly has the melody line, the others acting mainly as a background except when the first violin takes the tune, which at times becomes a kind of conversation between violin and clarinet.

The third movement opens emphatically with first violin and viola and then passes to a conversation between second violin and cello before the clarinet enters with panache. Enjoyment and humour is evident throughout this minuet and the accompanying two trios, the first violin player even bouncing in her seat, while below, adding depth to the music, the cello growls.

The fourth movement is marked allegro con variazioni. The musicians take it at a cracking pace building up through a variety of playful variations contrasted by more thoughtful ones until it finally soars into a repetition of the first theme, faster and more jaunty than ever. Wonderful!
After the interval we were treated to Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat major, Opus 20, an innovative work composed when Mendelssohn was only sixteen. Not only is it amazing that he should write such a piece at such a tender age but he also dared to experiment with a doubling up of instruments – eight instead of four – which is still only rare in chamber music, the norm being quartets or quintets.

After the classical treat of Mozart it was a lovely contrast to be carried along by the lusher romanticism of the young Mendelssohn. The first movement is scampering, joyful and youthful as if it were a grand adventure, exploring all the wonders of the world. The initial melody is returned to again and again with different combinations of instruments. The centre of this first movement leads into a slower more mournful section, as if a running youth has experienced something more thought-provoking before the instruments in staccato unison climb upwards and suddenly we’re off again on a new exciting adventure.

After a slower, thoughtful second movement the adventure continues in the last two movements which follow each other without a break. It starts once more as a scamper where each instrument passes the buck to the next as if in tumbling relay. The voices of the instruments suggest the kind of animals a youngster might notice when running through a wood: birds twitter, amphibians hop, small creatures rustle in the undergrowth and at one point a heavier animal stamps through the undergrowth. The whole of this second half is humorous and light. At the end the first violin leads the rest in a helter-skelter of sound which gathers enormous speed until it reaches a breathless full stop. Wow!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and I congratulate the whole of Manchester Camerata and Fiona Cross for the sensitivity of her clarinet playing for treating the audience to such a joyful and spring-like experience. Even the sadness of Saggers’ opening composition was not out of place, for his depiction of his grandmother when healthy was also joyful to hear.

Jeni Whittaker

An all-Schubert recital is an unusual treat and Paul Lewis is, of course, an outstanding pianist who interprets the material with unshowy sensitivity.

We’ll never know why Schubert (as he did the famous symphony) left his D840 sonata apparently unfinished in 1825. Lewis opened the concert by playing the first movement of Relique with gentle gravitas, especially in the octave passages. Then he brought enough careful insouciance to the andante to ensure that we enjoyed the themed melody in all its forms and variations.

The familiar first movement of D664 is often played on its own but Lewis made it sound fresh before moving without a break into the lilting andante. Then I admired the expressive left hand work under the semi-quavers in the concluding allegro.

After the interval came the substantial four movement D845. There was attractive fluidity in the opening movement which marries two quite disparate themes: one a plaintive melody and the other a military march. And I loved the way Lewis delivered the drama at the end. Then it was into C major for an attractive take on the andante which certainly walked at a steady 4mph rather than the 2mph trudge it could so easily become. Lewis, moreover, scrupulously does all five variations with so much attention to detail that the individual mood of each is very clear. The scherzo was measured and elegant rather than rushed and Lewis made the finale sound as effortless as it is busy.

Some would argue that a full size concert grand with the lid fully open is inappropriate for music of the 1820s. But I reckon that, had Schubert, had the chance to hear his music played on an instrument of this quality he’d have applauded as enthusiastically as the audience did at this enjoyable concert.

Susan Elkin