Classical Review: Evgeni Bushkov, Maxim Vengerov

Evgeni Bushkov

The Wallace Collection

Maxim Vengerov

Royal Festival Hall

The series of Sunday morning debut recitals at the Wallace Collection came to a close at the weekend with the Russian violinist and American pianist Stephen Prutsman. Their performance of Richard Strauss's early Sonata made you wonder why it is not played more often, and part of the answer may be its difficulty. The music has all the exuberance and swagger of Don Juan and the rhythmic trickiness of the finale had Bushkov visibly on his guard and audibly unscathed. Discretion was the better part of valour here, but when played with such considerate affection the listener's imagination could supply the ultimate touch of Straussian flamboyance.

In the second and third pieces from Tchaikovsky's Souvenir d'un Lieu Cher, Bushkov confirmed his sense of taste and restraint, with a warm and cushioned tone in the "Melodie" that never gushed and immaculate control in the "Scherzo". He and Prutsman have just recorded a CD of Prokofiev's two sonatas, and after playing the darker first Sonata, they added the scherzo from the second as a brilliant encore.

Maxim Vengerov's alchemy is such that he would make the tritest tune transcendental. At the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday evening he played a solid Classical programme - Mozart's E minor Sonata, K304, Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata, Brahms's D minor Sonata and three of his Hungarian Dances - with a silky, seamless tone and passionate abandon that had his listeners transfixed.

Yet he played well within his capacity, too, so that you found yourself transported without the slightest fear that something might not work. An isolated, tricky harmonic, tossed off, drew a burst of applause in the middle of the second Hungarian Dance. Vengerov also had a marvellous partner in the pianist Igor Uryash. Together, they radiated confidence and joy, leaving us to unwind from an exhilarating evening with the "Meditation" from Massenet's Thais.