Two rising stars bring Musica Viva’s season to spellbinding end

Wildschut & Brauss sounds like a European law firm, but make no mistake these are two young women who can weave a potent musical spell.

Noa Wildschut made her Australian debut with Elisabeth Brauss for Musica Viva’s season closer. Picture: Alfonso Salgueiro

It used to be a tradition that arts organisations would put on their major drawcard acts to round off a season, but few of Musica Viva’s subscribers would have heard of Wildschut & Brauss.

The name sounds like a European law firm, but make no mistake these are two young women who can weave a potent musical spell, as they proved in the first of two Sydney concerts to a rather modest-sized audience on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut has been winning awards since the age of 10 and was mentored by the world’s most famous living virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter, joining the Mutter Virtuosi string ensemble at just 13 as its youngest ever member.

Now still only 22, and armed with a 1750 Guadagnini instrument, she has been taking the music world by storm, both as a soloist and chamber musician, in Europe and the American continent.

And German born pianist Elisabeth Brauss, at 28, has an equally impressive pedigree. She is a member of the BBC New Generation Artist scheme and has appeared in the Prom Concerts as well as giving regular recitals at Wigmore Hall in London.

Although both musicians have made solo recordings, so far they haven’t been in a studio together, which is a shame as they are a supremely talented duo with a rare combination of energy and artistry. They also have great chemistry and an almost telepathic musical understanding of each other.

They started off their Australian debut tour with Robert Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor which was written when the composer was suffering from the mental health issues that would eventually have him confined to an asylum. Passionate, insistent and lively in its outer movements, and irresistibly lilting in its slow middle, it was the ideal introduction to this exciting double act.

Elisabeth Brauss. Photo: Monika Lawren

From the opening bars it was evident that this concert was going to be something special. It was easy to see why Musica Viva’s artistic director Paul Kildea was so mesmerised by the duo’s online performance of Cesar Franck’s sonata that he had to book them. Not only that but he got them a commission for a brand new Australian work, May Lyon’s Forces of Nature, which is receiving its world premiere on the tour.

After the Romantic passion of the Schumann there was a total contrast in the second work, Olivier Messiaen’s spacious and light-filled Theme et Variations in which, after Wildschut’s long-held high notes, you hear the tolling of church bells in the piano.

Claude Debussy’s last work, the Sonata for Violin and Piano written in 1917 during wartime and when he was bedridden with cancer, closed the first half of the program. Wildschut told the audience that it was written when there was enormous pain and violence in the world, just like today, and that it was good to “put all our emotion” into playing it.

This was a profoundly moving performance.

Lyon’s powerful work evoked the polar opposites of the summer melt of ice sheets and an erupting volcano. In two parts, both started with solo violin, the first with icy harmonics then slides up and down the finger board and a double-stopped chord where Brauss’s piano joined. Ominous bass chords gave way to the rumble of subterranean seismic shifts and bubbling bursting lava plumes, building to a passionate exchange between the two players.

A spellbinding reading of the Franck sonata that had so impressed Kildea brought the concert to a close. Wildschut’s total control of her instrument – a sweet tone, nuanced grasp of structure and dynamic presence – and Brauss’s care and attention to detail swept the audience along for 27 minutes of rhapsodic delight

The work must be one of the beautiful wedding gifts of all, its score presented to the great Belgian virtuoso Eugene Ysaye when he married his first wife, Louise Bourdau, in 1886.

Wildschut & Brauss will perform the same program with George Enescu’s Violin Sonata No. 3 instead of the Franck at City Recital Hall on Monday, November 20, at 7pm. If you get a chance book a ticket.

DETAILS

CONCERT Musica Viva: Wildschut & Brauss

WHERE City Recital Hall

WHEN Saturday, November 18, 2023