Inaugural Musica Viva events at Levinsky Hall

Henry Purcell
Fantasia No.1 Z. 732 (1680)
Fantasia No.3 Z. 734 (1680)
Trio Kurtag

Gideon Klein
String Trio (1944)
      Allegro
      Lento – theme and variations
      Vivace
Trio Kurtag

David Bessell
Micro Variations on an Emerging Theme (2023)
Electronic realisation for physical modelled instruments
Commissioned by Music Viva, The Arts Institute
Performed by the composer

Jean Françaix
String Trio (1933)
      Allegretto vivo
      Scherzo
      Andante
      Rondo. Vivo
Trio Kurtag

George Enescu
Aubade for String Trio (1899)
Trio Kurtag

Southbank Sinfonia
Mark Forkgen, conductor
Dr Robert Taub, pianist

Each year, Southbank Sinfonia welcomes thirty-three of the world’s most promising graduate musicians to come together to create a unique orchestra. These wonderful musicians who complete the Southbank Sinfonia fellowship often go on to occupy prominent seats in leading orchestras worldwide, from the Philharmonia to the Hong Kong Philharmonic. This concert was a thrilling opportunity to hear some of the most loved Beethoven masterpieces performed by some of the best young musicians in the UK, at the start of very promising careers.

Southbank Sinfonia came to us from London, where they have developed a renowned series of concerts at their artistic home, St John’s Smith Square. The concert here featured two deeply expressive and uplifting works of Beethoven: Symphony no.7 and Piano Concerto no.4, as well as the premiere of a new Plymouth-centric overture ‘Breakwater’ by the highly imaginative young composer Christopher Churcher, winner of our recent Composition Competition.

The violin – carefully and artistically sculpted from thin wood and with only four slender strings, held aloft and gleaming in the spotlights – is a modest, unassuming instrument. But then the brilliant young London-born violinist Mathilde Milwidsky draws her bow across the strings and brings them to life, creating dynamic, vibrant waves of sound. Hear the magic!

Fresh from a summer of concert performances throughout the UK and abroad, Mathilde continued our inaugural Musica Viva season in Levinsky Hall with an imaginative programme of exciting violin works – both solo and collaborative.

Mathilde performed with pianist and composer Huw Watkins in expressive, stirring and demanding works of Ravel, Bartok, Walton, and Watkins himself. And ever an adventurous virtuoso, she is also played two solo violin works: Paganini’s 24th Caprice, a violin showstopper – so extraordinary was Paganini’s own playing that he was reputed to be in league with the Devil! – and Huw’s dramatic 2006 composition Partita for solo violin, commissioned by the BBC.

An unusual, exhilarating concert!

The grand piano stands alone – lid open, the keyboard a gleaming row of sharks’ teeth. Slowly, deliberately, the pianist approaches, sits down and focuses concentration. Then with fingers flying, sonorous strings are brought to life, sounds swirling through the air… we enter the vivid, imaginative, even visionary, sometimes haunted realm of passionate piano music.

Romantic Piano brought together expressive, intimate, passionate and exciting music. In this special programme of works by three composer/pianists, Dr Robert Taub started with the stormy Pathétique Sonata of Beethoven, a proto-Romantic work that was an immediate hit: it sold out of its first printing almost immediately. Next was a set of highly personalised musical characterisations of an imaginary society by Schumann, his Davidsbündlertänze, with vivid musical symbolism of his yearning for his beloved Clara. The concert concluded with the thundering sonorities of Chopin’s mighty Sonata in B minor, the final of his three sonatas, composed five years before he died at age 39. Each work on this programme was deeply involving and expressive; the programme as a whole was a journey into the gripping soul of Romanticism. 

This inaugural Musica Viva concert in Levinsky Hall promised an uplifting evening for all!