THERE cannot be many full-time students of mathematics and philosophy in this country who are capable of the solo role in any violin concerto, let alone the Sibelius, which is one of the most demanding in the repertoire.
One such is a final-year undergraduate at the University of York, Anna Lezdkan. Her appearance was the centrepiece of an evening that included shorter works by Wagner and Richard Strauss after a modern Icelandic introduction.
Born in St Petersburg, Lezdkan has lived in this country since early childhood and had all her training here. She exhibited extreme calm under duress and despatched the testing cadenza early in the first movement with considerable panache, which compensated for some lapses in intonation in the upper regions.
Her eloquence in the slow movement was partially masked by orchestral accompaniment that tended to be heavy-handed, especially in the horns. But she managed its tricky double-stopping without difficulty.
The finale was a rumbustious affair, if undeniably exciting, tinged with gypsy colourings. But the rondo’s main theme emerged with clarity and Lezdkan dug into her octave swoops courageously. It was clear that she was well inside this score, despite the shortcomings noted above.
The evening had opened curiously with Clockworking, a work originally for string trio and tape but worked into an orchestral version in 2019 by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. Its seven minutes began mysteriously, slow and hushed, and gradually assumed rhythmic identity as clockwork shapes and snippets of melody appeared. Its climax was abruptly curtailed by a sudden diminuendo at the finish, as if the mechanism had developed a gremlin.
The Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde got off to an uneasy start, but the prelude as a whole built impressively into a long crescendo that was propelled by the main melody rising in the cellos. This in turn inspired the violins into a sumptuously swelling blend in the Love-death (Liebestod) itself, eventually subsiding beautifully with Isolde’s ardour.
John Stringer allowed the orchestra to let its hair down paradoxically at the close with Richard Strauss’s Festliches Präludium (Festive Prelude). It was composed for huge orchestra in 1913 for the commissioning of the new organ at the Vienna Konzerthaus. It presented here as good as argument as any for this orchestra to play in the Central Hall rather than the confines of the Lyons.
At its heart, unsurprisingly, lies the organ and William Campbell cannot be blamed for pulling out all the stops at the start, over an extended pedal bass. Thereafter he achieved a welcome blend, as wind and brass engaged in vivid dialogue, until they united in a splendid chorale against much exciting activity in the strings. There was no need to agonise over detail: the wall of sound was breathtaking.
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.
Fenella Humphreys, violin, Martin Roscoe, piano, Ben Goldscheider, horn, and Jess Dandy, contralto
THIS was two recitals in one. It began and ended with three instrumental works, one each from Robert and Clara Schumann at the start, with the Brahms Horn Trio to finish.
In between we had a song recital from contralto Jess Dandy, with Martin Roscoe as her ‘collaborative pianist’ (we are no longer allowed to speak of accompanists, such is the woke world we live in). Indeed, he was omnipresent and vivid throughout the evening.
Ben Goldscheider’s horn was in pretty good form for Robert’s Adagio and Allegro, Op 70, if not quite at the peak he reached later. One top note even went astray, but he bounced back quickly. His legato was marvellously smooth in the Adagio. One had to smile at the ducking and diving between him and Roscoe in the Allegro, which maintained a tactically immaculate blend.
Less extrovert were the Three Romances, Op 20 for violin and piano by Clara. Fenella Humphreys wisely kept her violin intimate in the opening Andante in D flat major but without compromising her naturally rich tone. The ebb and flow with Roscoe in the finale was a delight. Clara may not have been as persuasive a melodist as her husband, but she knew how to balance these instruments.
Goldscheider was back to join Humphreys for the Horn Trio in E flat at the close. He despatched it with the panache of the super-confident. But Humphreys matched him stride for stride and their balance in the opening movement’s dialogue was impeccable. Goldscheider found a lovely pianissimo for the return of the first theme.
A smoothly elegiac trio allied to a perky scherzo prepared us for penetrating the Adagio’s darker moments. But the rondo was altogether light-hearted, gambolling through its episodes with gay abandon.
Roscoe was the mastermind behind this trio’s cohesion. The best was certainly kept until last. Jess Dandy is a fine talent and as a true contralto she is a rare bird, one to be carefully nurtured.
She is not quite the finished article, however. It took her until her very last song, Schumann’s Requiem, the last of his Op 90 settings, to produce a real pianissimo. Until that point, she had stuck to a stolid mezzo forte or more with little variation in tone. It was as if she had been casting around for a focus.
With a little more confidence she could stop worrying about delivering a beautiful sound – she already has that – and concentrate on interpreting the poetry (but not by shaking her head for emphasis as much as she does).
There was still a great deal to enjoy in what she offered. She glowed at the top of Clara’s setting of Heine’s Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen (I Stood Darkly Dreaming) over Roscoe’s richly flowing accompaniment and found a nicely contemplative mood for Robert’s Stille Tränen (Silent Tears), which was complemented by an exquisite postlude.
She and Humphreys (now on viola) had blended well in Brahms’s Two Songs Op 90, where they and Roscoe negotiated the tempo-changes with pleasing dexterity.
YORK Concerts continued its exciting and innovative series of concerts with a piano recital by Leon McCawley. The pianist is well known to concert goers at this series and his invitation to return to perform music by Scarlatti, Beethoven Chopin and Franck was eagerly anticipated, and with good reason.
As we all know, Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) was an Italian composer renowned for his prolific output of keyboard sonatas, an impressive 555 pieces, to be exact. As a Baroque composer with a visionary eye, he was noted for his radical, innovative and fresh approach.
However, the opening Sonata in F minor, K.69, appears to be a standalone work and a rather conservative one. Leon McCawley’s performance was incredibly tender and emotionally charged, giving it a haunting quality. To be honest, it sounded (quite) like Bach. The way the pianist delicately caressed the cantabile imitations, enhanced by the subtle ornamentation, was very moving.
By contrast, the performance of his Sonata in C, K.159 positively zipped along without a care in the world. The phrasing was crisp and clear, and the elegant melodic embellishments added to the sense of spontaneity.
The opening galloping rhythms and quasi fanfare-like motifs presumably gave the work its nickname La Caccia (The Hunt). Another striking aspect was McCawley’s embrace of the music’s theatrical quality, as evident in the leaps between registers. However, it was the darker introspection of the F minor work that left a lasting impression, until we bumped into Beethoven, that is.
As far as charm and elegance go, it doesn’t get much better than McCawley’s interpretation of Beethoven’s standalone Andante Favori in F major, WoO 57. It was originally intended as the second movement for the radical Waldstein Sonata but was criticised as being too long and replaced with a short Introduzione. Given that it is about nine-ten minutes long, this was surely a good call.
Leon McCawley possesses a remarkable ability to captivate the listener. The playing was characterised by richness, nuance and warmth. Moreover, like the entire programme, the performance conveyed an expressive depth that left a profound impact.
Beethoven humorously expressed his wish that he had never composed the piece, stating, “I cannot walk down a street without hearing it”. Unfortunately, for me, it evokes the Pemberley soirée from the 1995 BBC TV adaptation of Pride And Prejudice. In this scene, Georgiana Darcy plays the piece in response to Elizabeth Bennet’s rendition of “Voi Che Sapete” from Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro. Amidst the romantic atmosphere, love was in the air and here too, the cantabile melody did feel like a love song.
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 (Waldstein) is a musical masterpiece that continues to captivate audiences. The opening pianissimo was portrayed as a thing of beauty, but one with a government health warning. However, as the music progressed, the simple crescendo built tension and anticipation, leading to a dramatic and powerful climax.
What truly impressed me about this performance was the controlled elegance and precision of the playing. The dramatic shaping of the music was seamless and well-executed, without resorting to excessive virtuosity or raw power.
While the sonata undoubtedly conveys a sense of grandeur and monumentalism, it does so without the testosterone-fuelled intensity that some pianists find necessary to fully express its emotional impact.
The Introduzione: Adagio molto had a mysterious, even dark quality that created a hypnotic spell that seamlessly blended into the Rondo: Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo finale. McCawley’s playing here was simply impeccable. There was a genuine sense of majesty combined with the driving, flowing lyricism. Of course, the musical fireworks display at the end of the journey eventually erupts like a volcano, but it did so beautifully.
After a well-deserved 20-minute interval, we were treated to a programme of 19th-century Romantic music, featuring Chopin and Franck. Chopin’s Trois Écossaises, Op. 72, No. 3, were simply delightful.
Each of the three pieces exuded a charm and elegance that we associate with these popular and lively dances. No. 3, written in D-flat major, is perhaps the most well known of the set. The pianist clearly enjoyed the witty and syncopated rhythm, as well as the cheerful character of the piece.
The performance of the composer’s Berceuse, op.57 was the highlight of the second half. For me, obviously. The berceuse is a lullaby, with the left hand gently rocking the cradle while the right hand sings a series of increasingly intricate variations.
The pianist’s control was remarkable; the delicate ebb and flow of the music had a Zen-like quality. In the end, as the lullaby had sung itself to sleep, there was a feeling of absolute relaxation. The performance was simply sublime.
The performance of Chopin’s Barcarolle in F-sharp, op.60 once again projected an assured grasp of all that mattered. The rubato phrasing shaped and caressed the melodies, while the balance between the right-hand song and the left-hand rocking ostinato effectively imitated the rhythmic sway of a gondola.
While there was certainly a dramatic climax, the serene coda concluded the performance on a note of tranquillity, suggesting a sense of harmony and contentment.
The programme concluded with César Franck’s Prelude, Chorale et Fugue. Undoubtedly, this work stands as one of the great Romantic piano compositions. Franck’s ingenious incorporation of Bach-like counterpoint, coupled with the virtuosity of Franz List and his distinct French style, creates a masterful blend of musical elements.
The issue for me is that I don’t really ‘get it’. It is not one of my favourite piano works, even when it is performed as brilliantly as this. The Prelude, with its rich, searching chromaticism, technically brilliant arpeggios, the Chorale, with its rich processional quality and organ-like textures and references to Wagner’s Parsifal, obviously, left me looking inside from the outside.
Ironically, it wasn’t until Leon McCawley’s performance of the Fugue, that most disciplined, abstract of forms, that I actually emotionally engaged with the work. Mind you, it was worth waiting for.
Craven Faults: “Navigated rural map using loops, symmetries, images bleeding in to each other to create this inspired journey”
I MUST start off with a confession: I’ve never heard of Craven Faults. Well, actually that’s not true. I know the Craven Faults System in the Yorkshire Dales, having done a lot of hiking around Malham etc, and this, basically, is what we saw on screen.
Starting out with a pastoral loop of sheep safely grazing, we were transported over a monochrome, bleak and overcast landscape (as it often is in this part of the Yorkshire Dales). The way Craven Faults navigated this rural map using loops, symmetries, images bleeding in to each other to create this inspired journey was – for me – simply unique.
In front of the screen was an impressive modular synthesiser with a million leads and sockets (patch cables); the artist’s electronic orchestra. I assume the artist was the enigmatic Craven Faults himself. Not sure why, but he reminded me of Jeremy Corbyn (no insult intended), and his gentle, calm modus operandi never drew any attention to himself. Even his response to the spontaneous audience appreciation only drew an unassuming waft of the hand.
The ambient score(s) drew inspiration from Krautrock; Tangerine Dream and particularly Kraftwerk. The visual as well as musical parallels with their 1974 hit Autobahn – Wir fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n auf der Autobahn – are striking. But there were the obvious echoes of minimalism – cellular repetition, ostinati, electronic looping and, possibly, Harrison Birtwistle.
Although not from God’s own country, this great Lancastrian composer used musical layers when composing. He talked about an analogy with the construction of the stone walls that feature so powerfully in these rural landscapes.
To be sure, the patchwork of musical layers in this score is not hewn out of the rock face, but those layers are there nonetheless: invariably rooted in square four-beat phrases, the musical base upon which the repeating motives are superimposed. And then the magic happened.
Without any warning, the artist at work became part of the film, and in real time. Like bubbles released into the air, these real-life images floated into being and disappeared. We had the introduction of vintage colour images. It was genuinely transcendental. OK, spookily other-worldly then.
If the performance had ended here, I would have described the composition as a work of genius, but it didn’t. Instead we had a kind of psychedelic kosmische imagery signing-off that put me in mind of Stanley Kubrick’s finale of 2001 A Space Odyssey.
It was either a transformation too far or, at 10.50pm, past my bedtime. Nevertheless, Craven Faults is a truly remarkable artist with something distinct and significant to say.
Who’s conning who? Emily Carhart’s Fay, Jack Mackay’s Hal, centre, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in a scene from York Settlement Community Players’ Loot. Picture: John Saunders
THE monochrome cover to York Settlement Community Players’ programme for Joe Orton’s dark farce Loot takes the form of a death notice. Rest in Peace Mary McLeavy. Born 1916, called home 1966. Remembrance services will be held: 18th – 27th February 2025.
For “Remembrance Services”, read performances that raise Orton’s scandalous, scabrous first farce from the grave, directed by the “young (and probably) angsty” Katie Leckey with brio and brains, fresh from completing her MA in Theatre-making at the University of York.
Already she and lead actor Jack Mackay have made their mark on the York theatre scene with their company Griffonage Theatre, latterly swapping the roles of hitmen Ben and Gus for each performance of Harold Pinter’s menacing 1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last July.
Jack Mackay’s Hal, trying not to look alarmed in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Now Mackay forms part of another “double act” on the wrong side of the law: bungling thieves Hal (Mackay) and Dennis (Miles John), in essence representing Orton’s lover Kenneth Halliwell and Orton, in Loot.
Sixty years on from its Cambridge Arts Theatre premiere, when Orton deemed the play to be “a disaster” and the Cambridge News review called it “very bad”, it remains a shocking play. Not shockingly bad, but a shock to the system, still carrying a content warning.
It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.” Sure enough, Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, hiding behind his smokescreen of being “from the Water Board”, smokes without fire, never lighting his pipe.
Emily Carhart’s nurse, Fay, and Miles John’s arch thief, Dennis, in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Loot remains an iconoclastic play, even angrier than those Angry Young Men that preceded him, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, John Wain, et al. You might call it ‘odd’, or ‘strange’, but its audacious humour tugs persuasively at your arm, its attacks on convention beneath its conventional farce format landing blows on those cornerstones of the state, the (Catholic) church and the police force, as well as undermining the nuclear family.
It makes you ask what has changed since the 1965 premiere, as Leckey highlights in her programme note, drawing attention to the continuing prevalence of violence, racism, homophobia and misogyny.
She quotes Orton, who wrote “I’m too amused by the way people carry on to give in to despair”. There, in a nutshell, is the role of comedy, to home in on the warts and all and laugh at our failings and foibles. The bigger shock here is that we have not moved on, but on second thoughts, in the week when every new Trump utterance trumps the last one, maybe not.
Loot director Katie Leckey
Orton was once castigated for his play’s immoral tone, but it is the behaviour that is immoral, not Orton. Don’t shoot the messenger. Laugh, instead, at our failure to clean up our act, especially those in authority.
Leckey has not edited Orton’s text, letting it stand or fall in all its bold affronts, not least on life’s ultimate taboo: death. Preceded by Ortonian fun and games by a six-pack of support players, from a drunken priest (James Wood) to an excitable nun (Xandra Logan), Loot begins with an open coffin. Inside rests the aforementioned Mary McLeavy (a dead body played by a live actor [Caroline Greenwood] with Orton irreverence). Today is her funeral.
In the room, designed with kitsch Sixties’ detail by Wilf Tomlinson and Richard Hampton, matched by Leckey’s soundtrack, are widower Mr McLeavy (played with suitable befuddlement by Paul French) and Mrs McLeavy’s nurse, Fay, (Emily Carhart in her impressive Settlement debut). She may wear a cross, but Fay has an unfortunate of seeing off her husbands, seven in seven years, and now she has her eye on Mr McLeavy.
Eyeball to eyeball: Stuart Green’s Truscott carries out a close inspection in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Enter Mackay’s Hal, who protests he is too upset to attend the funeral, and John’s Dennis, whose heart is lost to Fay. Rarely for a farce, there is only one door into the sitting room, but a second door is all important: the cupboard door, behind which they have hidden their stash from a bank job.
A glass eye, a set of teeth and the constant movement of Mrs McLeavy’s body will follow, involving the cupboard, the coffin and the stash, in classic farce tradition, with rising irreverence and desperation as the investigations of Green’s Truscott mirror the impact of Inspector Goole in JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, written 20 years earlier, but this time with humorous results.
Green, in his Settlement debut after returning to the stage in 2023 from an hiatus, has spot-on comic timing, a twinkle in his eye and the over-confidence of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, Stuart Green’s Truscott, Jack Mackay’s Hal, Emily Carhart’s Fay (seated) and Emily Hansen’s Meadows in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Mackay and John evoke the Sixties in looks, acting style and attire, playing to the Orton manner born as the hapless thieves, somehow negotiating their way through a farce with a farce with aplomb and insouciance.
York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27, 7.45pm nightly except February 23, plus 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Post-show discussion tomorrow (21/2/2025).
TAKING part in pre-show and interval Orton-style vignettes, devised by James Lee, are: Xandra Logan (Sister Barbara); Chris Meadley (Sergeant Timothy Carruthers); Victoria Delaney (Mrs Edna Welthorpe); Helen Clarke (Edith, the church organist); James Wood (Priest) and Serafina Coupe (Keith Kevin O’Keefe).
Xandra Logan’s Sister Barbara and James Wood’s inebriated Priest in an interval vignette in York Settlement Community Players’ Loot at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: John Saunders
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.
