The Glasshouse

Don Juan – tone poem after Nikolaus Lenau, Op. 20

What kind of 24-year old composer has the nerve to portray the great seducer Don Juan in music? A rocketing flurry, a cocksure fanfare: you can tell right away that this is going to be a swashbuckler. Don Juan was premiered on 11th November 1889 by the Weimar court orchestra, and someone asked Strauss whether he was a Wagnerian or a Brahmsian. “Neither” he replied “I’m a selfian”.

Strauss took his version of Don Juan from a drama by the poet Nikolaus Lenau. A solo violin introduces Juan’s first conquest but the swooning love music soon yields to the next call to action; and the adventures continue until he’s stopped in his tracks by his one true love – a poignant melody for solo oboe. Juan hesitates, then rises to the challenge with a ringing, virile call for all four horns. This is young man’s music, after all (Strauss told his orchestra, “those of you who are married, play it as if you’ve just got engaged”). But even as a young man, the artist in Strauss saw further. Overwhelmed by melancholy, Lenau’s hero discards his sword at the height of a duel. Strauss’s final bars – a sudden, chilling, fade to black – are the work of a realist, not an escapist.

Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), Op. 36

Theme: Enigma – I (C.A.E.) – II (H.D.S-P.) – III (R.B.T.) – IV   (W.M.B.) – V (R.P.A.) – VI (Ysobel) – VII (Troyte.) – VIII (W.N.) – IX (Nimrod) – X Intermezzo (Dorabella) – XI (G.R.S) – XII (B.G.N) – XIII Romanza (* * *) – XIV Finale ( E.D.U.)

After a day of violin teaching in October 1898, Edward Elgar lit a cigar and sat down at his piano. “I began to play, and suddenly my wife interrupted by saying ‘Edward, that’s a good tune…play it again’”. He tried the tune differently: “Whom does that remind you of?” “That’s Billy Baker going out of the room” she replied. Out of that parlour-game grew the greatest orchestral work yet written by a British composer. The Enigma Variations were premiered in London on 19th June 1899.

The theme and its fourteen variations are structured like a miniature symphony, with a first movement (I-VII), a slow movement (VIII-XIII) broken by a delicate intermezzo (Dorabella), and a grand finale (XIV). Yet just as much, they’re a set of 15 perfect, self-contained musical portraits of Elgar’s friends. You don’t have to be a musicologist to enjoy the pictures of distant liners (***) and George Sinclair’s bulldog Dan splashing in the Wye (G.R.S.) – or to respond to Nimrod: inspired (so Elgar said) by a conversation about Beethoven with his German-born publisher Augustus Jaeger.

And the “Enigma”? Elgar loved cryptic puzzles. Is it the counterpoint to another famous tune, or an abstract theme like friendship? Elgar’s only response was “No – nothing like it.” We’re left with the music, and Elgar’s dedication: “To my friends pictured within”.

In 2019, aged 22, Alexandre Kantorow became the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, along with the rarely awarded Grand Prix, granted only three times in the competition’s history. In 2024, he was recognised once again when he received the esteemed Gilmore Artist Award, solidifying his place as one the world’s leading pianists. Gramophone magazine has described him as “the real deal, a fire-breathing virtuoso with a poetic charm and innate stylistic mastery”. He is in demand at the highest level across the globe, performing in the world’s finest halls both in recital and with the most renowned orchestras and conductors.

Highlights of Kantorow’s 25/26 season include a tour of Japan with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mäkelä, European tours with the Filarmonica della Scala and Chailly and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Paavo Järvi, a tour of Asia with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and van Zweden, and a tour to the US with the Philharmonia and Alsop which includes a performance at Carnegie Hall. He will also embark on a major recital tour of North America, make his debut with the San Francisco Symphony and return to the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony orchestras.

Kantorow performs in recital regularly across the globe, in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vienna Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Tokyo Suntory Hall, and at festivals such as Edinburgh, Salzburg, La Roque d’Anthéron, Piano aux Jacobins, Verbier, Rheingau and Klavierfest Ruhr. Chamber music is one of his great pleasures and he performs regularly with artists such as Janine Jansen, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon and Matthias Goerne. With Liya Petrova and Aurélien Pascal he is co-artistic director of the Musikfest and “Rencontres Musicales de Nîmes” and the Pianopolis festival in Angers.

In recent seasons, Kantorow has performed with many of the world’s finest orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic and Budapest Festival orchestras and with conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Manfred Honeck, Ivan Fischer, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Sir Antonio Pappano.

Alexandre Kantorow records exclusively for BIS. His recordings have received the highest critical acclaim worldwide, and most recently he was awarded the Gramophone Award in the Piano category for his Brahms and Schubert recording. In 2024, he was awarded the title of Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by the French President of the Republic, having previously been made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Minister of Culture. In July 2024, Kantorow performed Ravel’s Jeux d’eau at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games. Alexandre Kantorow studied with Pierre-Alain Volondat, Igor Lazko, Frank Braley, and Rena Shereshevskaya.