TWO-PIANO recitals are rare enough in themselves, but this one was doubly welcome, not least because one of this pair is a frequent visitor to this neck of the woods.
Katya Apekisheva makes regular solo and chamber appearances at the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival – well worth checking out if you don’t know it – where Charles Owen has also looked in occasionally.
They revealed tireless enthusiasm in this full programme for the British Music Society of York, aligning Mozart and Brahms with three pieces from the last 80-odd years, none of them unduly challenging to the listener but requiring serious virtuosity from the duo.
Mozart wrote his only sonata for two keyboards, K.448 in D, in 1781 to play with a student. Some student! Its demands held no fear for our duo, who launched into it with brio, crisp and bright at the top, if a little light in the bass.
Its slow movement was given a lovely line, with a seductive rallentando back into the main melody on its return. The closing rondo bubbled over with wit.
This enthusiasm continued into Jonathan Dove’s memorial piece Between Friends for Graeme Mitchison, a polymathic scientist who was also a first-class pianist. It was commissioned in 2019 by this duo, whose recording will appear on the Hyperion label on March.
A gently moving intro boils up into the second of four “conversations”, staccato, nervy and energetic, doubtless reflective of Mitchison’s restless mind. The duo dealt with its rapid cross-rhythms spectacularly well.
The elegiac third conversation grew ever more intense, generating the sense of a funeral march. Jack-in-the-box snippets opened and closed the final chat, enclosing brief whirlwind passages and a multitude of offbeat accents, all over a thrumming underlay. It was undeniably exciting, brilliantly played, making one wish to have known Mitchison himself.
Nothing after the interval quite matched this for exuberance. It was good to hear Brahms’s own two-piano version of his Variations on a theme by Haydn, so often heard in its orchestral guise, although they are not exact copies of one another.
The duo managed to maintain their clarity despite challenging tempos, which allowed the composer’s facility for complex counterpoint to shine, notably in the fourth variation. The finale’s ground bass built into immensely satisfying grandeur as the ‘St Antoni’ chorale theme returned.
Depending on your view of minimalism, John Adams’s portrait of a truck stop on the Nevada/California border, Hallelujah Junction, is either wonderfully teasing or irritatingly repetitive – or somewhere in between.
While I could admire the duo’s unflagging concentration through its dense thickets of vicious accents, I found its relentless ‘surprises’ ultimately unsurprising. But the duo brought the jazz-inspired rhythms of its finale to renewed life.
Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations, built on the same theme as Brahms and Rachmaninov had done before him, proved as capricious as the original and just as busy. Like so much of the rest of the evening, there was plenty to dazzle but precious little to dream upon.
THE recital opened with Eugène Bozza’s En Forêt. This was written as an examination piece for the Paris Conservatory in 1941, and it showed.
The demands in this virtuosic work are considerable, and Zoë Tweed treated us to a masterclass in horn technique covering: agility, range, lip trills, hand stopping, fast tonguing, control of extreme registers and glissandi.
I thought it took a moment or two for Ms Tweed to get into the groove, but maybe it was my ear getting acclimatised to the natural harmonics. But the performance showed that En Forêt works perfectly fine as a duet. It was atmospheric and full of life and the piano accompaniment was quite impressionistic. The obligatory call and response hunting calls or tropes added a sense of fun, for me anyway.
In complete contrast to En Forêt, Jean-Michel Damase’s Berceuse is a short, relaxed affair. I thought the performance was enjoyable, but the piece itself didn’t really contribute much to the programme. And to be honest, the same could be said of Charles Koechlin’ s 1925 Sonata for Horn and Piano (1st Movement). The performance did deliver a simple, even quite serene Moderato (sounding more like a traditional Andante).
Sat in between the two was the more interesting Tre Poemi: Lamento D’Orfeo by Volker David Kirchener. The piece is Romantic, well, in its character anyway, but embraced a modernistic style regarding both horn colour and technique. This was evident right at the opening, Ms Tweed pointing the bell of the horn at, or into the open piano lid, with the effect of using the piano’s soundboard and sustaining pedal to lengthen the horn notes.
The duo closed the first half with a fabulous performance of Paul Dukas’s Villanelle. This too was written as an exam piece, but the technical challenges – stopped notes, fast scales, playing without valves using natural horn techniques – were secondary to the piece of music itself.
I absolutely loved the delightful sharing of the musical spoils, warm and sunny with ripples of brilliance. This was easily the most rewarding horn and piano work in the programme.
Astor Piazzolla’s Ave Maria proved to be a cosy introduction to the second half with fine playing from both performers. Wolfgang Plagge’s Monoceros is a piece for solo horn about the legendary unicorn, an animal everybody has heard about but mercifully never seen.
Zoë Tweed delivered an evocative, technically flawless performance; the cute ending depicting the unicorn disappearing into the legendary mists was just lovely. However, I found the piece itself pretty underwhelming; each to our own, I know.
The programme closed with York Bowen’s Horn Sonata, Op. 101. This is a seriously well-crafted work, which in itself is rewarding. Of the three movements, it was the energetic Allegro con Spirito finale that really impressed.
The players were clearly relishing the challenges; wide interval leaps with an evenness of tone (horn) and dazzling ‘orchestral’ textures (piano). What stayed with me was the distinctive timbre of the horn’s low register.
There was a touching mother (Karen Street) and daughter (Zoë Tweed) signing-off, Epilogue. The work was a composed as a tribute to the Prologue in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
This concert clearly demonstrated what an exceptional performer Zoë Tweed is. But without doubt the best and most satisfying contribution came from pianist Mark Rogers’ playing of the two Schumann selections from Kinderszenen, Op.15 and Waldszenen, Op. 82. Well, it is Schumann after all, and Mr Rogers played them beautifully.
Quatuor Diotima: String quartet programme that took no prisoners. Picture: Michel Nguyen
A STRING quartet programme of Janáček and late Beethoven that takes no prisoners is both a compliment to the audience and a mouth-watering prospect. It did not disappoint, and for starters it added an unexpected bon-bon.
Schoenberg’s early Presto in C, written in the mid-1890s before he went off-piste, proved a delightful Haydnesque romp in rondo style. Delivered with panache, it was made to sound much easier than it is.
The second of Janáček’s two quartets, Intimate Letters, which was the last of his chamber works, was completed in 1928 a few months before his death. Astonishingly volatile for a man in his seventies, its emotions represent the culmination of his ten-year infatuation with a young woman less than half his age, Kamila Stösslová, as seen in his 700 or so letters to her.
Many of its most telling interjections occur in the second violin, and Léo Marillier certainly milked them for all they were worth, notably in the second of its four movements. The ensemble retained a decisive edge, bordering on the acidic, by minimising its vibrato – until the finale, where leader Yun-Peng Zhao brought a warmer tone to his high-lying melody.
But generally biting accents allied to ultra-smooth but sudden tempo-changes made this relationship an exciting, rollercoaster affair.
It was a treat to hear Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 130 in B flat with its original finale, the Grosse Fugue (often referred to as Op 133 and played as a separate piece). Some of the audience at its premiere in 1826 were nonplussed by this giant ending, which followed the fifth-movement Cavatina without a break (Beethoven obliged with a new finale a year later, only slightly shorter).
Stravinsky called it “more subtle than any music of my own century”. Either way, it’s a big listen. But this group made it as easy as it can be: the fugue subjects emerged with miraculous clarity, which was achieved mainly through extremely tight rhythms.
The Diotimas are unusual in that their leader appears to make no eye contact with his colleagues, but they listen to each other intently and their voices ebbed and flowed in and out of the texture. With tension almost at breaking point towards the end, the two principal themes made a triumphal final appearance, now fully reconciled to one another. Everest had been climbed, a very special moment.
At the opening of the work, there had been seamless alternations of fast and slow, revealing Beethoven in two minds. Both here and later, it was the Diotomas’ fearless, unapologetic stance that shone through. Some of the humour of the Andante might have been less forceful, but the two German dances were properly balletic and came as a welcome relief.
The Cavatina, a unique title in chamber music since it is normally a short song, was sublime, reminiscent of the variations at the end of the ‘Harp’ quartet, Op 74 which are also in the warm key of E flat. But it was the Grosse Fuge that took the breath away.
THE 24 has grown. When first taken over by Robert Hollingworth, it was largely a choir of graduate students. It has since been amalgamated with the university’s chamber choir and grown to its present 33 members, a size that arguably takes it beyond the usual ‘chamber’ dimensions.
It appeared here with strong support from Ampleforth College Chamber Choir and Huntington School Secret Choir. The menu, served to a full house, was a nourishing pot-pourri ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, all a cappella.
Johann Christoph Bach belonged to the generation before JSB and is widely considered to be the great man’s most talented forebear. The double choir motet Lieber Herr Gott, dating from 1672, has a continuo part but was given here unaccompanied.
Its opening phrase says “wecken uns auf” (wake us up), an apt injunction given that the start was something of a scramble. But it settled into a comfortable stride after its central tempo-change.
In contrast, Alonso Lobo’s penitent motet Versa In Luctum (Turned To Mourning) was much more shapely. For Alma Redemptoris Mater, by his Spanish compatriot and almost exact contemporary Victoria, the school choirs joined the fray, bringing the total to more than 70 voices. Yet the blend was excellent and Hollingworth had the singers in the palm of his hand.
In two madrigals by Thomas Tomkins, we heard the 11 members of the UK’s only MA course in solo-voice ensemble singing, a vivid sextet in Oft Did I Marle (marvel) and a gorgeously mournful quintet in Too Much I Once Lamented.
Either side of the interval, The 24 was back at full strength. It revelled in the lush harmonies of three of Schumann’s double-choir songs, Op 141. The last two had elements of prayer, both ending with ‘Amen’ cadences, but the last – a setting of Goethe’s Talismane – was much the most effective, delivered crisply but with a tender final plea.
There was exciting propulsion in Gibbons’s O Clap Your Hands and transparency in Tavener’s Hymn To The Mother Of God. Less telling were motets by Kenneth Leighton and Joanna Marsh, although the latter – a setting of Julian of Norwich’s All Shall Be Well – had a welcome sense of triumphal love at its close.
In this exalted company it came as a surprise to hear the calmly confident account of Stanford’s Justorum Animae (The Souls Of The Righteous) delivered by the Ampleforth choir under Roger Muttitt, with ‘non tanget illos’ – the torment of death ‘shall not touch them’ – given special emphasis and the peaceful ending beautifully floated.
With the combined forces reassembled, Elgar’s orchestral Go, Song Of Mine was never going to emerge with much clarity, although its ending was forceful enough. Will(iam) Campbell’s take on Vaughan Williams’s much-loved hymn-tune to Come Down, O Love Divine, however, was lovingly handled, starting out in left field and gradually moving towards more traditional harmonies, as the tune gained shape: a variation in reverse. It made an amusing end to a thoroughly invigorating evening.
THIS excellent York Concerts series continued with a really attractive programme of Mendelssohn, Busoni and Richard Strauss.
It opened with Mel Bonis’s Le Songe de Cléopâtre, op. 180. To be honest, the only thing I knew about the composer was that her actual name was Mélanie, publishing her works under the gender-neutral name of Mel Bonis in an attempt to avoid the inevitable prejudice against women composers.
But the performance of this wonderful crafted miniature clearly revealed a composer of real stature and individuality. As the title implies, the work is inspired by the influential Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. And there did seem to be a programmatic element, a response to the strong, seductive qualities associated with this historic femme fatale.
I could clearly hear the impressionistic influence of Debussy, although the rich orchestral swells suggested the music of Wagner. Maybe. The string tuning was not always on the money (the auditorium was pretty warm), but lovely flute and clarinet playing stood out and the overall performance convinced.
Taking centre stage for Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in G minor, op. 25 was third-year university music student Alexa MacLaren. Not surprisingly, there were some early signs of nerves but the introduction was nevertheless simply exhilarating.
I loved the overall charm of the playing, the sparkling passagework dispensing with the unnecessary dramatic showmanship. Attention to detail was ever present. The playful nature of the Presto finale was instinctively captured by Ms MacLaren, as in the rhythmically crisp articulation – far from easy at this very lively tempo and sparkling scale passages.
But it was the lyrical passages, the singing melodies, particularly in the tonally radiant E major Andante, which stayed with me. The phrasing, expression and avoidance of sentimentality worked beautifully. The rapturous response from the capacity audience was genuinely touching.
Ferruccio Busoni is a towering figure in ‘modern’ music. His music breathes the contrapuntal sound world of J S Bach – the great Fantasia Contrappuntistica on an unfinished fugue by Bach is a remarkable homage to the great man, just as much as it breathes the “air from another planet”.
Busoni was a friend of Arnold Schoenberg. He also had a close relationship, both personally and professionally, with Gustav Mahler. And it was Mahler and the New York Philharmonic who gave the first performance of Busoni’s short Berceuse élégiaque for orchestra, op.42 in 1911.
The Berceuse is an atmospheric, contemplative work and John Stringer’s insightful reading allowed it the space to gradually unfold. I was struck by the subtlety of the instrumental timbres and gently jarring (major and minor) tonalities and harmonic patterns.
The performance created a dream-like world, drifting through a quite unique musical landscape. The dark, elegiac intimacy surely was a response to the death of his mother. Indeed, the score itself is headed by the enigmatic words “A man’s cradle-song at his mother’s bier”. A bier is the stand on which a corpse or coffin is placed (I had to look this one up).
A slight whinge before turning to the Strauss: the slightly surreal amplified call to refrain from taking photos is a good thing, but then having a photographer taking shots from the rear of the auditorium with a camera the size of a mini Hubble telescope ain’t – it’s distracting.
So, from one master of atmospheric orchestration and colour to another, Richard Strauss’s tone poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). The musical narrative depicts the death of an artist.
As the man lies on his death bed, thoughts of his life pass through his head: his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood, the attainment of his earthly goals and finally the mother of all transfigurations “from the infinite reaches of heaven”. A bit like Elgar’s Dream Of Gerontius composed 11 years later – both 19th-century Europeans and Victorians were obsessed with death and mysticism.
The work opens with quiet pulsing strings and timpani suggesting life, the living, but its irregularity of beat suggests a slowly failing heartbeat and the imminence of death. John Stringer’s orchestral instincts were well served here, generating a quiet, unsettling musical moment of unwanted familiarity. There were telling flute, oboe and string contributions.
The second movement was absorbing, with the heartbeat theme threading the musical narrative together, culminating in a brilliant full orchestral manifestation with the brass (trumpets and trombones) articulating a new idea. The ending was quiet and bleak.
I found the third movement really engaging as the dying man’s life is played out: aims, aspirations and failure to achieve them. The performance became appropriately agitated, tormented and explosive.
The moment of death and transfiguration was effectively evoked; a climax of dramatic glissando strings followed to an eerie, unearthly quiet gong calls and a low sustained C in the bowels of the orchestra itself.
The transfiguration begins with the whole orchestra pianissimo, fine horn and (celestial, what else?) harp playing leading to the “true and ultimate heavenly paradise”.
Another really fine outing for the University Symphony Orchestra, admirably directed once again by John Stringer. On a personal note, I hope to see the day when Mr Stringer decides to include some of his own impressive compositions into these programmes.
But the final word belongs with final-year student Alexa MacLaren; an exceptional young pianist at the start of a clearly promising career. We wish her well.
BaritoneRoderick Williams: Revelled in the full house at the Lyons
IT IS rare for a song recital to contain only songs in English, still rarer for all the composers involved to hail from the British Isles. But then a recital by baritone Roderick Williams is never going to be run-of-the-mill, still less when a pianist of Christopher Glynn’s talents is at his side.
The occasion was enhanced by the presence of the highly promising young soprano Caroline Blair, who took part in six numbers.
From the moment he appears, Williams gives the impression that there is nowhere else in the entire universe he would rather be, such is his charisma. Before he has even opened his mouth, the audience is at ease and eager. Needless to say, he faced a full house at the Lyons and clearly revelled in that fact.
Six John Ireland songs formed his opening set and included two of the composer’s three settings of Masefield, the incomparable Sea Fever and the vernacular Vagabond (it has no definite article). The former was truly noble, delivered almost as recitative, with deliberately uneven pacing but never losing momentum.
Soprano Caroline Blair: Took part in six numbers
Glynn, as so often elsewhere, seemed to follow him instinctively: they were a tight duo. Vagabond might have been a touch more carefree, in the manner of Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel, which appeared later here.
But the finest song of the Ireland set was Youth’s Spring Tribute, the barely suppressed ecstasy of its opening blossoming into a huge climax with April’s sun, before petering into a serene conclusion. It was a good counterbalance to Housman’s sombre, autumnal We’ll To The Woods No More, heard earlier.
Masefield was also the creator of The Seal Man, which brought forth arguably the finest ofRebecca Clarke’s many songs, now thankfully enjoying something of a revival. Williams treated it as an operatic scena, generating terrifying resonance at its climax, before the tragic drowning of the young girl. It was powerful indeed.
Blair had opened her account with Clarke’s setting of Yeats’s The Cloths Of Heaven, giving it firm, intelligent focus.
Two songs each from Ina Boyle and Joan Trimble contributed an Irish flavour, with folksong never too far from the surface, even in Boyle’s Straussian setting of George Russell’s The Joy Of Earth. Another Ulsterman, Charles Wood, known almost exclusively for his church music, in fact wrote many settings of Irish Folksongs, here well represented by I’d Roam The World Over With You, a strophic song with attractively varied accompaniments in each verse.
Pianist Christopher Glynn: Delivered handsomely. Picture: Gerard Collett
Both the Irish ladies had also shown a flair for piano writing, which Glynn delivered handsomely. Our duo’s bold, exciting approach to Tewkesbury Road gave the lie to Michael Head’s reputation as a composer of delicate miniatures.
Williams’s superb ability to deliver a smooth legato underlined Vaughan Williams’s talent as a melodist in his Songs of Travel, never more so than in Whither Must I Wander?. The vagabond emerged as a character in his own right, if perhaps not quite as overawed by the “infinite shining heavens” as he might have been. But the contrast between the two verses of Bright Is The Ring Of Words was truly intense, the one strong and confident, the other gently wistful.
The evening ended with four songs by Williams himself. The first, the duet Prima Materia, uses single Latin words “derived by Catherine Wilson from the Jungian concept of alchemical diagnosis”. Here the patient (Blair) and the therapist (Williams) were at comical cross-purposes, neither seemingly listening to the other until subsiding into suspicious ‘conjunctio’. It required considerable facility from Glynn’spiano.
Two Wendy Cope poems, both fanciful and parodistic, made an amusing intro to the cleverest setting of the four, the duet Sigh No More, Ladies. As a composer, Williams has as much of a feel for the piano as he does for voices, if not more. Blair showed remarkable composure and a mezzo-like timbre that is extremely appealing.
We had also heard several settings of The Salley Gardens – by Ireland, Clarke and Gurney – but they were outclassed by Britten’s setting with its rueful postlude, heard as an encore. It rounded off a thoroughly rewarding evening, all of it crisply conveyed in our own language.
JakoJako: “Perpetually adjusting the various sound modules”. Picture: Katja Ruge
AS the auditorium lights diminished, our focus was immediately locked into an illuminated JakoJako, aka Sibel Koçer, sitting at the modular synthesiser, headphones on, zoned in and calmness personified.
It was fascinating to see the performer-composer perpetually adjusting the various sound modules. Like a micro-electronic orchestra with these modules (instrumental tools): firstly, sliders – allowing pitches to slide between notes like glissando in string instruments; secondly, switches – kind of router selection circuits (putting me in mind of my Hornby train set functions); thirdly, panels – e.g. voice panel, and fourthly, patch cables – cables connecting sections of the synthesiser, such as oscillators.
OK, this may be a long-winded window into the tech side, but it is important to describe the ‘interconnectivity’, which is the core of JakoJako’s performance and compositional journey. We see it as well as listen to it; the performance is, in its own way, musical theatre.
The performance began with a kind of distorted electronic vocal prologue that brought to mind mildly ominous instructions from Tolkien’s Mordor. Little did I know at the time that Sauron would indeed become manifest later that night. Although this was distinct and effective, it was not really used again, which seemed a pity.
The main body of the performance was one of modulating layers of slowly unfolding sounds. I loved the melodic simplicity, familiar electronic transformations, for example pizzicato strings, echoes of the Caribbean steelpan drums.
What might be termed ostinato figures in classical terminology were used throughout; beautiful melodic loops, sometimes syncopated, always rhythmically transforming. Quite often they would surface, for want of a better term, from the depths of a ‘harmonic’ sound world into prominence. These looping melodies had a relaxing timeless quality.
I think the term ‘minimalism’ is a good one to describe the music and, just maybe, the influence of Philip Glass or Steve Reich can be felt. But it is the continual evolution or variation of these elements that makes the music so enriching. There was also a sense of fun.
The overall impression was of beautifully crafted interconnecting, layering musical moments to create a patchwork quilt of sound; musical clouds drifting by. Meditative, hypnotic and very distinct.
Actress, assistant stage manager and University of York alumna Georgia May Firth
SINCE graduating from the University of York in 2023, actress Georgia May Firth has taken a circuitous route to her making professional debut in Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of).
“I was a witch on the York Witches and History Walking Tour, a Victorian maid at the Sherlock Holmes Museum [in London], then very randomly I became a dog food salesman – and then this job came along through the grapevine,” she says, on her return to York for this week’s run at York Theatre Royal.
“I heard about this touring production and was originally applying to be an assistant stage manager, but I mentioned I happened to be an actor too and was originally hired to be a book-cover understudy to the cast as well as an ASM.
“But then ten days into rehearsal, Susie [Barrett] took over from Eleanor [Kane], becoming our Anne for this run of shows until Eleanor rejoins in the New Year.”
In turn, Georgia is now Susie’s understudy in a multi-role involvement that takes in not only servant Anne, but also Mary Bennet, Lydia Bennet and Mr Gardiner, and she is covering for Christine Steel’s role too as Clara, Jane Bennet, Lady Catherine de Burgh and George Wickham.
“We’ve been touring since the beginning of September – though it feels like it’s been years already! – but I’m yet to go on. So, hopefully in York, but also not hopefully, as I want everyone to be well,” says Georgia.
“I’m so eager, but the nice thing is that as assistant stage manager I get to watch the show every night, so I don’t feel too far removed.”
In Isobel McArthur’s audacious re-telling of a certain Jane Austen novel, the stakes could not be higher in the early 19th century game of high society match-making as men, money and microphones are fought over.
“To begin with, it’s such a well-known and well-loved story,” says Georgia. “Before I’d even seen the show, I was a massive fan of the book, and so I came to the play with a bit of scepticism as I thought, ‘I’m not sure I want to make fun of it’, but Isobel has such a sense of love and respect for Austen’s story from the beginning. So much heart has gone into the script.
“Absolute chaos” in Isobel McArthur’s Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of) after Jane Austen
“You can tell Isobel really loves the book, and there was a lot of discussion at the start of rehearsals about what we all thought of it, the love she shows for the characters, which has then built into the absolute chaos on stage that’s so much fun. The pace never drops. It’s a good two hours flat out but it feels like you’re only on there for half an hour!”
McArthur’s “party time” version of Pride And Prejudice is told by the servants, kitted out throughout in black work boots as they work flat out at each of the posh houses where high society passes the day fretting and frothing over match-making.
“It really lends itself to multi role-playing, with lots of quick costume changes – and those costumes are phenomenal,” says Georgia. “Not only are they so beautiful, but they also need to be able to whipped off and the next one thrown on. It’s chaos!”
Georgia has enjoyed working with writer Isobel in the director’s chair. “It was so special to have her in the rehearsal room with us, especially as she was in the original cast,” she says. “We’ve kept it like Isobel performed it, but she wasn’t precious about it being her play, instead treating it as a gift for us all to play with.
“It was a case of ‘what do you think your character would do now or be thinking now?’ It was such a lovely atmosphere to work in; Isobel was a lovely presence to have around and such an inspiration.
“This is my first professional job and some of the girls’ first touring job, and Isobel has made it so calm for us. For her to be there, making us all feel part of the same team, all on one level, all wanting to achieve the same things, has made for a wonderful show.”
Georgia studied theatre when attending Langwith College at the University of York, performing such roles as Athena in Athena, Teodoro in The Dog In The Manger and Martha in That Face. “I basically stayed with Drama Society productions [at the Drama Barn], rather doing shows with York companies, but I did do Stones On The River Bed at the Green Shoots festival at York Theatre Royal,” she recalls.
Originally from Frodsham, Georgia left York for London last year, and now returns this week. Will she finally break her professional stage duck on understudy duty on familiar ground? Wait and see.
Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
I THINK I should preface this review with a huge sense of gratitude to French musicologist Jérome Dorvial, who discovered and researched the music of composer Hélène de Montgeroult and introduced this remarkable body of work to pianist Clare Hammond.
Hélène de Montgeroult has a quite remarkable CV: an aristocrat who married a Marquis, carried out secret diplomatic missions to London, was arrested but kept her head by improvising an emotional set of variations on the Marseillaise. De Montgeroult was a radical and this was very evident in the advanced language and Romantic style of these studies.
The first study (No. 62) sounded Chopin-esque – a beautiful right-hand melody crossing over a rippling accompaniment, almost like a love duet. The sensitivity of Ms Hammond’s playing was exemplary.
No. 67 had echoes of Mendelssohn’s Songs without words. The swirling accompaniment feature was still present, but the soaring melodies were more animated. No. 104 was characterised by quickly articulated, rhythmically driven playing. To be sure, these works are pedagogical, but they are musical gems first and foremost.
No. 110 and back to Chopin. The shaping of the gorgeously ornamented bel canto melody was sublime. In No. 111 it was Schubert, for me anyway. Forceful, driving and a great way to sign off.
Dorvial described de Montgeroult as the “missing link between Mozart & Chopin”, and listening to this insightful performance of the studies, it is hard not to see why.
Despite declaring that she “once felt the soul of Beethoven in Bonn”, Cécile Chaminade’s music positively eschews any radical trends. She said of Debussy that “his music is to my ears . . . well, grey, a bit grey”. And yet I did feel the soul of Debussy in the opening Impromptu Op. 35, No.5.
And, when performed as wonderfully as this, I am sure he’d have been as thrilled as myself. The Etude Romantique, Op. 132 was a delightful rollercoaster ride full of joy and dazzling brilliance.
Here the influence of Chopin was so palpable, it could have been an homage to the great man, but I also heard a snapshot of Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? from My Fair Lady. Maybe.
What struck me when listening to Ms Hammond’s performance of the two Fauré Nocturnes was how technically demanding they are. In the Nocturne No. 8 in Db major the rhapsodic melody sang quite seamlessly in and out of all three registers, producing a gentle but intriguing experience.
The opening Nocturne No. 12 in E minor could not have been more different. Talk about the cry of a tortured soul, this was it. But you cannot have the dark – the anxiety was palpable – without the light, a sensual, rich-flowing tenderness, and, mercifully, Clare Hammond’s interpretation expressed both.
I have never heard Beethoven’s Sonata in C# minor, Op. 27, No.2 (“Moonlight”) live and Ms Hammond’s performance was just remarkable. It is easy to forget how radical the first movement is. It completely turns expectations, the laws of thermo-driven dramatic precedents, on their head.
We still get the same structural blueprint, but it is transformed into a Zen-like meditation. The playing was hypnotic and the thread mercifully maintained through the diminished 7th chords to the close.
The second movement Allegretto, which Liszt christened “a flower between two chasms”, was charm personified; the music danced. Ms Hammond’s adherence to Beethoven’s dynamic and articulation markings were integral to this. The syncopated rhythms of the Trio delivered contrast rather than any dramatic intent.
This, of course, belongs to the blistering helter-skelter drive of the closing Presto agitato with its now familiar sudden dynamic and expressive gear shifts. What really struck me here was the emotional control: nothing showy, flashy. There was an understated control.
The performance as a whole, and this final movement in particular, reminded me of the great Richard Goode’s approach to the Beethoven Sonatas. The youthful exuberance of the opening Allegro con spirito of Mozart’s Sonata in D, K. 311 was brilliantly refreshing.
Clare Hammond: “Evoking the musical imagery of a storm”
The playing was crystal-clear with the dynamic shaping of the driving semiquaver passages and the tapering-off of the musical phrases impeccably nuanced: a distinctive feature of the recital as a whole.
The central G major Andantino con espressione was just lovely: delicate with a dream-like quality. The longer Rondeau: Allegro returns to the exuberance of the opening movement. The young Mozart’s evolving powers of expression are evident here, as are the characteristics of the Mannheim style of composition: sharp dynamic and textural contrasts. The playing had a natural, instinctive flow; it oozed panache.
I was really struck by Clare Hammond’s performance of Clara Schumann’s Drei Romanzen, Op.21. They really are standout pieces; wonderfully crafted miniatures with a depth suggesting a larger canvas.
The influence of Brahms was obvious, particularly in the opening Andante with its ‘sombre Brahmsian melody’. By contrast, the short Allegretto: Sehr zart zu spielen did indeed bring out the delicate, playful nature of the ‘light-hearted semiquavers’. The closing Agitato proved to be a quite an energetic signing off. Impressive piece, impressive performance.
Then, out of nowhere, American composer Jeffrey Mumford dropped in to say hello. I really like Jeffrey Mumford, who says: “Being a black composer is itself a very subversive act because you offend both sides.” And I really like his music. The compositions invariably have beautiful aphoristic titles – such as tonight’s Of Ringing And Layered Space.
Clare Hammond performed the first of these five movements, Jenny – for pianist Jenny Lin, which delivered a static, dream-like atmosphere. Yes it was (quite) complex and modern – whatever that means now, but seductive and very accessible.
The recital closed with another set of five studies: Chopin’s Etudes, Op. 25, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 11 and 12. No.1 (‘Pollini’) is a study focusing on arpeggios and tone colour. Ms Hammond’s light-touch legato playing was, unsurprisingly, impeccable – the beautiful right-hand melody singing out of and with this gorgeous accompaniment.
No. 2 (‘The Bees’) came across buzzing with a continuous stream of rhythmic cross-accents – right-hand quaver triplets counterpointed with left-hand crotchet triplets and syncopation to great effect. The moto perpetuo legato playing, with very little pedal support, was flawless.
No. 4 (‘Paganini’) came across as delightfully quirky: left-hand leaping staccato quavers accompaniy the right-hand singing melody. In No. 11 (‘Winter Wind’) the lefthand was dominated by a dotted rhythm march with the right hand chromatically covering much of the piano keyboard. This was, amongst other things, an exercise in sheer stamina. It also (surely) referenced the famous Revolutionary Study.
The set and programme ended with the seriously challenging study No. 12 (‘Ocean’). As with No. 2, we heard cross-rhythms, syncopation, loud, dramatic sforzando accents. It came across as also richly contrapuntal.
Clare Hammond’s playing did indeed evoke the musical imagery of a storm, the pianist clearly relishing the unrelenting, almost elemental nature of this remarkable study.
Review by Steve Crowther
A footnote:
WE know that Liszt was a dedicated lover who had many relationships. We know he was attracted to Chopin’s lover, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, aka George Sand, which never bodes well. We know that Chopin had dedicated these Op. 25 Etudes to Franz Liszt’s mistress, Marie d’Agoult. And, after having just listened to Ms Hammond’s tortuous, passionate performance of the final C minor Etude, “the key of pathos”, I think I can see why.
Effie Warboys’ Silvia, Nick Patrick Jones’s Proteus, right, and Thomas Jennings’s Valentine in York Shakespeare Project’s The Two Gentlemen Of Verona. Picture: John Saunders
AMERICAN writer, director, performer and teaching artist Tempest Wisdom [they/them] headed to York to pursue a Masters degree in theatre-making at the University of York in 2021.
Itinerant from the days of their father serving in the Marine Corps., always moving every couple of years, like so many before however, once here they never left, first setting up York’s variation on Seattle’s Bard in a Bar, the Shakespeare karaoke night Bard at the Bar in The Den at Micklegate Social.
Now, after directing Anorak in Next Door But One’s Yorkshire Trios in the Theatre Royal Studio earlier this year, Tempest is at the helm of York Shakespeare Project for the first time for the rarely performed The Two Gentlemen Of Verona: “possibly the first play Shakespeare ever wrote and certainly the only one with a part for a canine,” they say.
Tempest has re-set Shakespeare’s 1593 comedy of cross-dressing, mistaken identity and courtly love as a play within a play, staged by Monkgate Music Hall, “a bawdy, raucous place” peopled by a host of Victorian variety acts.
Liz Quinlan’s sharp-shooting Speed, left, and Lara Stafford’s comedy act Launce. Picture: John Saunders
On the piano throughout is musical director Stuart Lindsay in a dapper waistcoat beneath a luxuriant moustache. On the piano too is a portrait of Queen Victoria, her face as “not amused” as ever. Determined to amuse, however, is Jodie Mulliah’s Chairwoman. No stranger to steering talent in the right direction as a secondary school drama teacher, she keeps her gavel busy in introducing act after act.
Their task is to deliver both their speciality act and lines of Shakespeare’s text, be it the North America golden gunslinger Speed (multi-disciplinary theatre-artist-turned scientist Liz Quinlan, in her YSP debut and first theatrical adventure for seven years), or Lara Stafford’s Launce in a comedy double act with canine companion Crab (a wooden puppet handled with the aid of a drawer handle on its besuited back by puppeteer Wilf Tomlinson).
Stuart Green, who returned to the stage after 35 years last year as The Torturer in York Theatre Royal’s community play Sovereign, has particular fun sending up furniture-chewing acting skills as the pompous Antonio. Forever looking for his Hamlet, his performance appears to be torn from Michael Green’s book The Art Of Coarse Acting.
For “proper” acting, look no further than Mark Payton’s Duke of Milan. Once part of Riding Lights Theatre Company before becoming an English teacher, he is belatedly treading the boards anew, every last vowel the thespian in resonance and intonation.
Dapper pianist Stuart Lindsay and the portrait of Queen Victoria in the Monkgate Music Hall. Picture: John Saunders
The sparring of Charlie Barrs’ Panthino and Four Wheel Drive director Anna Gallon’s Lucetta and later the antics of the Outlaws (Pearl Mollison, K Maneerot and Celeste North Finocchi) add to the merriment and mayhem.
What of the ‘Two Gents’, you ask. Ah yes, there’s the play. Step forward, in dapper straw hats and clowns’ rouge cheeks, the gentlemanly, but not very gentlemanly, all too arrogant and deceitful Proteus (Nick Patrick Jones) and Valentine (Thomas Jennings), not born a gentleman, but definitely as romantic as his name.
Proteus should be focusing on love-struck Julia (Lily Geering) but has his wandering eye on his friend Valentine’s secret love, Silvia (Effie Warboys), who the Duke of Milan has earmarked for the socially superior but unctuous Thurio (Charlie Spencer in circus ringmaster attire).
Jones’s programme profile speaks of having “no experience of music hall or vaudeville, but in many ways his whole life is an extended Buster Keaton routine”. As it happens, it is Jennings who reminds you more of the “Great Stone Face” of American silent cinema, but Jones is suitably duplicitous, dark beneath the light air.
Warboys, one of the best discoveries of York Shakespeare Project’s recent years and now studying for a Masters at the Shakespeare Institute, gives her best performance yet as Silvia. As a bonus, she returns to her musical roots to reveal a delightful singing voice in The Lass Of Richmond Hill.
Tempest Wisdom: Directing York Shakespeare Project for the first time
Geering is in fine form too, righteous in Julia’s indignation at Proteus’s deceptions, but canny, mischievous and nimble when taking on a disguise.
Jonathan Cook gives the requisite strong performance as the strongman variety act (Sir Eglamour) in a show full of such cameos, but amid so much physical comedy and clowning, with bursts of song too (Champagne Charlie et al), Tempest ensures Shakespeare’s expose of bad behaviour still hits home
Tempest’s cast makes use not only of Vivian Wilson’s set design but the stairs, doorways and mezzanine level too for a frantic climactic chase around the auditorium in Benny Hill style. Make that chase after breathless chase. Everyone then assembles, like a baying public gallery, to see Proteus being put in his place: wiping the smile off comedy’s face, if only briefly.
Shakespeare’s plays have a habit of running to three hours, and this production is no different, but comedies would always benefit from a shorter running time, for all the fast pace here.
Tempest Wisdom’s show, however, is full of original ideas, bags of energy, not-so-courtly romance, topical sexual politics, music hall ribaldry and slapstick aplenty.
York Shakespeare Project in The Two Gentlemen Of Verona, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Nick Patrick Jones’s Proteus and Lily Geering’s Julia in disguise in The Two Gentlemen Of Verona. Picture: John Saunders
