DEMENTIA Friendly Tea Concerts re-start at St Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, York, on Thursday afternoon after a two-year hiatus.
Alison Gammon, clarinet, and Robert Gammon, piano, will be giving the concert programme first planned for March 2020 but ruled out by the first Covid-19 lockdown.
“We are excited to be doing the Saint-Saëns clarinet sonata and the lovely Fantasy Pieces by the Danish composer Niels Gade,” says Alison. “As March 17 is St Patrick’s Day, we felt that an Irish composer should be represented too, so Robert will play two Nocturnes by John Field that will make a serene interlude.”
The 2.30pm event resumes the established format of 45 minutes of classical music, followed by tea, coffee and homemade cakes. “This relaxed concert is ideal for people who may not feel comfortable at a formal classical concert, so we don’t mind if the audience wants to talk or move about,” says Alison.
“Seating is unreserved and there’s no charge, although donations are welcome. We give the hire cost to the church and the rest goes to Alzheimer’s charities.”
In addition to a small car park at the church, street parking is available along Campleshon Road. Wheelchair access to St Chad’s is via the church hall.
Steven Isserlis: “Infinitely elegiac encore that seemed to crystallize these sad times”
THE floodgates are beginning to open and performers of stature are returning to our concert halls – those that remain open, that is.
Steven Isserlis brought his cello and his regular pianist, Canadian-born Connie Shih, to become the latest in LeedsTown Hall’s Artists’ Choice chamber music series. Their programme was French or French-inspired, the thrilling exception being Adès’s Lieux retrouvés (Rediscovered Places) of 2009.
The original last movement of Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Sonata of 1872 is not the one normally heard today. He replaced it at the instigation of his mother, who possibly found its themes hard to discern. It still made an energetic opener. A page-turning error near the end (by Isserlis) brought it to a brief halt, but he resumed with redoubled fury. No-one could have minded.
The four Adès sketches contrast aspects of nature – water, mountain, fields – in the first three, with a frantic cityscape at the close. The smoothly flowing waters gradually took on more challenging currents, with heightened cross-rhythms. The mountain proved an arduous ascent to an oxygen-free summit, followed by what sounded like a sudden, disastrous return to base (denied by the composer).
The sweet repose and gently leaping lyricism evoking open fields disappeared into the stratosphere. It was only in the finale – described by the composer as a “cancan macabre” – that we had a moto perpetuo of energetic turbulence, taking both players to their limits. These paintings are not pastels, but brilliantly vivid in their detail. The duo took up the challenge with riveting conviction.
Lullabies by Chaminade and Fauré provided a welcome antidote; they were tenderly delivered. Fireworks returned with Franck’s sonata, originally written (1886) for the violin but here in an authorised transcription by cellist Jules Delsart, published two years later.
Since the piano part remains unchanged, it needs to be handled with care since the lower-voiced cello can easily be swamped. Shih pushed Isserlis hard in the finale, where he tossed his tousled mane without great effect on the balance between the two.
No matter: there was plenty to savour elsewhere, notably in his rich, yearning tone in the second movement and the rambling Fantasia that followed.
Duparc’s only foray into chamber music was a cello sonata, written at the age of 19. Its Lento movement made an infinitely elegiac encore that seemed to crystallize these sad times.
