Tag: British Music Society

Posted on

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on British Music Society, Amabile, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, October 31

Amabile clarinettist Lesley Schatzberger

TOO rarely do we get the chance to hear and acknowledge the professional musicians living in our midst.

The clarinettist Lesley Schatzberger has played internationally with several distinguished orchestras and ensembles, but makes her home in York. She also spearheads Amabile, whose other members are pianist Paul Nicholson – like her, a University of York graduate – and cellist Nicola Tait Baxter. All three have enjoyed successful solo careers.

Not all soloists coalesce easily into chamber music. This British Music Society concert proved otherwise, with works by Shostakovich and York composer Steve Crowther framed by trios from Clara Schumann and Brahms.

Clara’s Piano Trio in G minor, her first chamber piece, is widely regarded as her finest achievement. Its violin part converts easily for the clarinet. Immediately there was lovely shading, as the voices ducked in and out of the texture.

The skittish scherzo has an attractive cello melody in its trio section which Tait Baxter relished. The centre of the Andante was aptly nervy and the spicy fugue shone out of the finale. Best of all, the players did not attempt to press Clara’s cause; they allowed the score to unfold naturally.

The mellow music of Brahms’s last decade regularly relies on the clarinet and Schatzberger’s smoothly fluent tone brought a perfect touch of velvet to his Clarinet Trio in A minor. The ebb and flow in the broad sweeps of the opening typified Romantic yearning.

Eloquent cello led the way in the slow movement. In the lilting scherzo-substitute that follows, Nicholson’s piano backing was a model of restraint. Yet in the finale, after the pause, he re-electrified the momentum for a dramatic finish.

Steve Crowther’s Morris Dances (2012) are a theme and 11 variations, originally for piano solo, dedicated to Philip Morris. In the last two years he has orchestrated six of them for clarinet trio.

They remain delightful cameos of friends and family but have here gained in colour. They always had a tendency to minimalism, but their emotional range is wide, from nervous energy and angry argument to hesitancy and nostalgia. The trio seemed to enjoy them as much as the audience.

Tait Baxter had tackled Shostakovich’s only cello sonata with a laser focus. Thrown straight into the fray by the frenetic opening, she yet found a proper moodiness for its second theme. There was wry humour to follow, another allegro that is essentially a literal ‘scherzo’ (joke). One had to marvel at the sotto voce ending to the slow movement.

She and Nicholson were alive, too, to the martial connotations of the finale’s scatty melody. Indeed he was a tower of strength throughout, never pushy, but always urging.

Amabile is a trio of experts brilliantly submerging their solo instincts to make much more than the sum of their parts.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Posted on

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Maxwell String Quartet, BMS, York, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, March 7

Maxwell String Quartet

British Music Society of York presents Maxwell String Quartet, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, 7/3/2025

WHENEVER you programme a work as colossal as Beethoven’s Op 132, which lies at the very heart of his late string quartets, the problem is what to put with it.

The Maxwells opened with an eclectic mix of the old, the traditional and the contemporary, spotlighting the Beethoven after the interval.

In a nod to their Scottish roots, the players offered arrangements of two sets of traditional Gaelic psalms, as found in the Presbyterian churches of the Western Isles. These were intriguing in their closeness to Scottish dance, evoking the exciting rhythms of the ceilidh. One set would probably have been enough, however, given the similarities between the two.

Additionally, there is always the danger, when transcribing vocal music for instruments of dehumanising it, since words and melody need to speak together. This was particularly evident in the transcription of Byrd’s profound motet Ave Verum Corpus, where the nuances the composer attaches to the words were simply not present, making it literally disembodied.

The choice of motet was strange, in that the contemporary work here, the First String Quartet (Aloysius) by Edmund Finnis, dating from 2018, has five movements avowedly centred around Byrd’s setting of the prayer Christe, Qui Lux Es. It would have seemed logical to play this rather than Ave Verum by way of introduction.

The programme note told us of Finnis’s “versatile compositional voice”, a claim not borne out by this work. It is perfectly pleasing in an intimate way, largely slow-moving and ruminative, as if Finnis is searching out a way forward. It opens lyrically and then becomes wispy, if still transparent. The third movement, although pianissimo, is a little quicker, but like its predecessors was played virtually without vibrato.

Byrd’s hymn is treated like a chorale, its melody largely on the leader’s lowest string, before a finale that finally features some genuine counterpoint. Although largely restrained, its acceleration into the abrupt final cadence hints at what might have been. The Maxwells approached it respectfully, if ultimately without much obvious affection.

They brought admirable clarity to the Beethoven, unveiling its dramatic power by ramping up the tension in the highly chromatic first movement. The relative violence of the scherzo was tempered by a gentler trio in which the viola’s solo was notable.

In the Molto Adagio, which is arguably Beethoven’s most personal statement in any of his quartets, each solemn phrase of the chorale was tenderly introduced; although extremely extended, it seemed not a moment too long, so riveting was the detail.

The succeeding march came as sweet relief, before a searing first violin cadenza into the finale. Here the Maxwells threw caution to the winds, with accents stronger than ever and acceleration into the coda that took the breath away. This was theatre on a Shakespearean level.

Review by Martin Dreyer