CityLife

Pianist Kempf leading season of crowd-pullers

Natalie Clein

The next season of classical music in Manchester contains some top-notch solo artists and small groups in concert, and this third part of my look ahead focuses on these.

The Bridgewater Hall leads the way for crowd-pulling soloists, and the name that stands out for me in their schedule is pianist Freddy Kempf – a player whose approach I find is always brilliantly subtle and imaginative.

His recital on November 30 includes Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata and Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and finishes with two of Liszt’s spectacular adaptations of opera tunes – the Miserere from Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Reminiscences De Norma (based on Bellini).

Another great piano soloist is John Lill, and his recital on February 8 ends with Beethoven – the Moonlight and Appassionata sonatas – while taking in Mozart, Schumann and Prokoviev’s demanding Toccata along the way.

For favourite organ pieces you could hardly ask more than the selection in Wayne Marshall’s 50th birthday concert programme on Tuesday, October 4.

There’s Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Widor’s Toccata, and (my personal no 1 of all organ toccatas) the last movement of Vierne’s Organ Symphony no 1.

Craig Ogden has a recital of guitar classics on October 26, teaming with blues and slide player Tom Doughty for a Celtic finale, and Dame Emma Kirkby leads a small team of early music specialists in compositions favoured by Queen Cristina of Sweden in the mid-17th century, on November 7.

There’s more virtuoso organ music, this time from Jonathan Scott, on January 11, and Natalie Clein fills an evening with solo cello music on February 21, culminating in Kodály’s mighty sonata.

Anne-Sophie Mutter visits, with pianist Lambert Orkis, on March 20, and from April to June the imaginative and wide-ranging celebration of Debussy – put on for his 150th anniversary by the BBC Philharmonic and Bridgewater Hall – dominates the schedule, as pianist Noriko Ogawa takes the lead in a series of solo and chamber music concerts.

She plays the complete Préludes on April 15; there’s a Saturday morning with Noriko joined by Clein, violinist Kyoko Takezawa, flautist Emily Beynon, violist Nobuko Imai and harpist Catherine Beynon on April 28; Noriko is joined by Martin Roscoe and Jonathan Scott for keyboard music (including a world premiere) on May 25; and Noriko plays a solo programme on June 9.

Woven into those days you have the chance to witness traditional Japanese flower and tea ceremonies, a Children’s Corner concert for five to 11-year-olds in the afternoon of April 28 (with origami and toy-making), and several re-creations of Debussy’s nightclub haunt Le Chat Noir.

Chamber music outside the Bridgewater Hall is dominated by the programmes of Manchester Concerts Society at the Royal Northern College of Music. This season they begin with a trio of oboe, bassoon and piano (Francois Leleux, Jean-François Duquesnoy and Emmanuel Strosser), follow it with violinist Henning Kraggerud and pianist Christian Ihle Hadland (October 10), and present the Leipzig String Quartet on November 14.

More quartets follow – the rapidly-rising stars Quatuor Ebène (with Nicholas Altstaedt joining them for the finale) on December 5, the Arcanto Quartet on January 23, and the Doric Quartet (with Jennifer Pike and Kathryn Stott joining them for a grand finale to the season) on March 19.

And the RNCM itself promotes a steady flow of solo pianists and chamber musicians: among them Marc-André Hamelin on November 22 and Lars Vogt on December 12, while the Fauré Quartett, London Handel Players and Elias Quartet each contribute individual programmes on October 20, November 17 and 24 respectively.