Guest review by Anthony Hardwicke

Rosendal chamber music festival – Day 4

Context is always welcome in a festival devoted to a specific composer and the penultimate Rosendal concert highlighted how actively Brahms subverted the expectations of his late 19th century audience. We heard Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio yesterday and this morning (Sunday) we were treated to some very unfamiliar but also very wonderful chamber music by Brahms’ contemporaries. Sharon Kam (clarinet) and Bertrand Chamayou (piano) played Marie Elisabeth von Sachsen-Meiningen’s elegant and tuneful Romance and then Andsnes made a strong case for Robert Fuchs’ second Piano Quartet in B minor Op.75 supported by James Ehnes, Tabea Zimmerman and Sheku Kanneh-Mason. This was a well-rehearsed and musically satisfying performance, with Kanneh-Mason playing the Thema from the second movement with angelic sweetness and plenty of tasteful flexibility in the tempo of the third movement. If you would like get to know this piece, I was going to suggest you start by listening to the beautiful chord progression in the last minute or two of the opening movement, however it’s such an obscure piece, I couldn’t even find a version of the whole quartet on YouTube! Hopefully Andsnes will do a recording soon.

Back to Brahms in the second half with sparkling rendition of the Op.40 Horn Trio. David Guerrier is a superb horn player with very clean sound and he blended beautifully with the middle register of the piano. Although Guerrier sounded fantastic, I wanted more communication from him. Do you need to sit very still to control the horn? You probably do, but I was concerned that he didn’t seem to be returning the energy and intensity from Bertrand Chamayou (piano) as much as James Ehnes (violin) was. At the heart of this performance was a passionate reading of the slow movement – a magnificent, spacious, evocative nocturne. I’m sure the players were inspired by the moonlight on the fjords with the mountains covered with pine trees that they have seen in Rosendal throughout this week.

David Guerrier

Betrand Chamayou

James Ehnes

A superstar baritone singing a hefty Brahms song cycle accompanied by the festival’s artistic director, Leif Ove Andsnes, would have been a very fitting end to the 2023 Rosendal festival. But disappointingly, Matthias Goerne cancelled at short notice. With tickets already sold, Andsnes had the unenviable task of cobbling together a completely new programme. Not ideal. Everyone is a loser when artists cancel at short notice. I was sitting behind a lady who had travelled all the way from San Francisco to hear Goerne.

The composer-theme for the 2024 Rosendal Chamber Music Festival hasn’t been unveiled yet, but the tickets should go on sale in the new year. I enjoyed the 2023 festival immensely and would certainly love to return in 2024.

Find out more about Rosendal Chamber Music Festival here