Music-making siblings – of course, Nannerl and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy come to mind first. And from the current concert business Carolin and Jörg Widmann as well as a lot of piano duos, the Jussen brothers, the Labèque, the Önder and the Dörken sisters. In the Kanneh-Mason family, all seven children play music. So you can play house music in the spirit of the 19th century – or wow the whole island on the TV show “Britain’s got talent”.
The two most talented Kanneh-Masons, Sheku, who touched millions with his cello playing at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, and the pianist Isata have just completed a US-Canada tour and are now on the road in Germany. Their performance in the Berlin Chamber Music Hall brings together an exceptionally diverse audience of 1,000 on Saturday.
Sheku’s cello tone is not beautiful in the conventional sense, it lacks anything lush, voluptuous, tonally speaking – in theater jargon – it would be more of a character actor than a young lover. It doesn’t go so well with Beethoven’s fourth cello sonata, especially since there are also problems with the acoustic balance between the siblings, with the grand piano dominating throughout. With Shostakovich, however, his playing immediately creates an emotional urgency: suffering and jest, bitterness, only occasional islands of melodic bliss – it is a biographical interpretation, for the composer suffered terribly under the Soviet regime.
At the same time, it also becomes clear that the brother and sister are artistically very different personalities: He works passionately, often has to wipe the sweat from his forehead, Isata, on the other hand, even in the most virtuoso passages, you never notice that art can be hard work. Her game always remains clear and elegant, but also a little neutral, impartial.
