First review: Perahia’s return

The Wigmore Hall has seen many epic nights of music over the past 123 years but few times has a packed house erupted so powerfully with gratitude and affection as it did last night.

The occasion was doubly historic.

It marked the birth centenary of the conductor Neville Marriner and the return, after a six-year health hiatus, of the much-loved pianist Murray Perahia.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields chamber ensemble opened with a Partita commissioned from Sally Beamish who, along with her mother, once played viola in Marriner’s orchestra. The Beamish Partita was wound around themes of Mendelssohn, Bach and Handel, whose Messiah chorus ‘And he shall reign’ flitted between plangent textures.

Perahia, who is 77 this week, made his return in Schumann’s piano quintet, working with four ASMF strings led with great sensitivity by Tomo Keller. Half-hidden behind a Steinway at the back of the stage, it took a while for the old Murray magic to overcome the occasion, the environment and his own prolonged absence. But by the time they reached Schumann’s wonderfully interwoven slow movement, those feathery fingers came to the fore once more and we were minded of many past glories.

Joshua Bell, the ASMF music director, led from the front in the Mendelssohn octet, driving a muscular reading with whispery episodes, an Olympic athlete on top form in a world-class relay team. The players could scarcely disguise their pleasure in the music and when Handel’s ‘And he shall reign’ theme popped up it was all the full house could do not to hum along. The concluding ovation did not quite stop traffic in the West End – the congestion was caused by a nasty accident – but I can attest that it was many-layered. Top of all minds was Neville himself, creator of the Academy and provider of more work for London musicians than any man since Henry Wood, a master of music steeped in the Anglo-German traditions of Handel and Mendelssohn yet always willing to push ahead into new music and friends.

It was a night of thanksgiving.