Saturday 21 March 2026

Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)

Le Songe de Tartini (Louis Léopold Boilly 1824

“I had a dream” is always a good opening line for a tale, and it was the dream of Giuseppe Tartini over 300 years ago that lead to a tale that has been retold and probably embellished ever since. In that dream he made a pact with the devil that saw Beelzebub play the violin in an extraordinary, unearthly manner, and Tartini being a composer and violinist himself felt obliged to write it down upon waking. His ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata forms the centrepiece of this concert from the ACO under the direction of renown violin virtuoso, Ilya Gringolts. This is Gringolts’ 3rd outing with the ACO, and true to the orchestra’s tradition he combined the old with the very new in an exciting and rewarding program, replete with virtuosity and dexterity befitting a supernatural being.

The concert opened with a fragment from Westhoff’s Violin Sonata No.3, which was echoed in the subsequent Vivaldi Concerto in D minor. This selection hinted at the common practice in the Baroque era of composers freely borrowing material from each other (or even their own compositions) and, as we will see later in the program, this practice goes on till this very day. Musicology details aside, what struck our ears was Gringolts’ mastery of his instrument, the clarity and projection of his tone and the subtlety and genius of his interpretation. It may have been subtle, but his approach to the written grace notes was unique, stretching the timing and accenting the ‘other’ notes. As were his final cadences in some movements, where the orchestra was encouraged to improvise their resolutions, sometimes only resolving to the tonic in almost silence.

Sofia Gubaidulina is a unique musical voice from Soviet Russia, having endured in her 94 years, political censorship and oppression, only to prevail like her compatriot and admirer, Dmitri Shostakovich. Her String Quartet No.2 no doubt would have raised some eyebrows in the politburo in 1987 as it pushes the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ music. In this arrangement for strings, the instruments are pushed to their extremes to create new sounds and textures. At times the soundscape resembled a swarm of aggressive insects, but with the ACO (just like insects) there was no chaos only a single organism with a unified purpose. The arthropods were calmed in the final section, Affirmation in long held notes and harmonics at the upper and lower registers of the ensemble, expertly controlled by Gringolts.

And then to the Devil’s Trill. Widely acknowledged as a fiendishly difficult piece to perform, in Gringolts’ hands it looked like a beginner’s technical exercise. I was waiting for the difficult finale I had heard in recordings, and suddenly realised the piece was over. And the unassuming way he took the rapturous applause only endeared him to the audience all the more.

After the break a brief “palette cleanser” from Mieczysław Weinberg (listen to the Ilya Gringolts interview below) with his Aria Op.9. This segued into Vivaldi’s Concerto for 2 Violins, for me a highlight of the program. In many ways a typical Vivaldi concerto (he wrote over 500), but it was the interplay between the two solists, Gringolts and Satu Vänskä, that captured our imaginations. Trading phrases in echo and imitation, it was the equality in their virtuosity but the difference in their expression that were on show. In the final movement they alternated in improvised cadenzas, seemingly trying to outdo each other, but the rivalry was so amicable and collegial. At one point Satu decided she could no longer ‘compete’, and for her cadenza she simply plucked a few strings and sang some accompanying notes. Just like the audience, Gringolts could not contain his joy.

I’ve said many times before, La Folia is one of those chord progressions that is as much fun to jam on for classical musicians as 12 bar blues is for rock musicians. Paul Stanhope must agree as his commission was to write a companion piece to accompany Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso ‘Folia’. In his brand new work Giving Ground, he took the ground bass from La Folia to new and brave heights, extending the tonal range and melodic basis to the surprisingly unexpected, incorporating extreme techniques that echoed the string writing of Gubaidulina. But the brilliance of his reinterpretations was that when it segued into the Geminiani work it took quite a few bars before we realised we had just jumped 3 centuries.

The starting point of this concert may have been the devil, but where we ended up was musical heaven. Congratulations to Ilya Gringolts and the ACO.