I AM going to frame this review of German pianist Elizabeth Brauss’s excellent recital with a couple of whinges. Firstly, there should be an usher seated at the exit doors during the recital. No matter how quietly someone intends to leave during a performance, the doors close with a disruptive kick. This could be easily mitigated and yes, it matters.
Now to the review: Throughout the concert, I was struck by how thoughtful, how sophisticated Ms Brauss’s playing sounded. This was self-evident from the opening Concerto in D minor by Bach (after Marcello).
The Allegro and Presto movements bristled with crisp, razor-sharp articulation while the central Adagio was achingly poignant, played with such lyrical tenderness. Quite remarkable.
As was Mendelssohn’s Variations Sérieuses. I confess that I have never heard the piece before, but goodness me what a wonderfully cultured, superbly knitted theme and variations it is. A few observations: stand-out points included the driven question-and-answer chat – left-hand octaves, right-hand chords of the third variation and the crispest of crisp staccato canon in variation four.
The sixth variation seemed to leap with neurotic joy, the seventh incredibly fast and thrilling. The musical bleed into the fugal variation ten was so wonderfully judged and the ensuing contrapuntal dialogue so clear and distinct.
Ms Brauss’s final variation or coda made the musical hairs on the back of your head stand to attention. They were still there throughout the performance of Hindemith’s mesmerizing, gently radical In Einer Nacht. What a marriage of intellect and emotion this turned out to be. Indeed, the character pieces, so wonderfully threaded together, had echoes of the second-half Schumann.
Once again, we were treated to a performance of serious insight and engagement. The work dazzles with diverse influences from opera, jazz and Debussy, closing off with a terrific bow in appreciation of J S Bach.
Ms Brauss delivered a full calendar of emotion, from simple playfulness to the gently twisted or grotesque. Her interpretation was infused with genuine empathy, as eloquently expressed in her introduction to the work.
After the interval, we were treated to a Schumann masterpiece, Carnaval. As is well documented, this collection of miniatures recreates a musical masked ball with guests including the composer’s friends, characters from the commedia dell’arte and Schumann himself.
The playing was so in tune with both the technical and creative demands, the characterisation so
vivid, that it left nothing to be desired or needed. Like the recital itself, every gesture here seemed infused with meaning, the whole work bristling with vitality.
Which brings me to close with my second critical point: why the encore? To be sure, it was Schumann (Von fremden Ländern und Menchen); to be sure, the performance was utterly poignant, but it just wasn’t necessary.
Following the conclusion of Elizabeth Brauss’s wonderful Schumann Carnaval, all that was needed was the rapturous applause it clearly deserved and then to set off, in the words of Paul Simon, homeward bound.
Robert Hollingworth: University of York Choir musical director
THE University of York Choir join forces with The 24 and The City Musick for an evening of the “Colossal Baroque” music of 17th century Rome at Central Hall, University of York, on March 18.
Under the direction of Robert Hollingworth, the 7.30pm programme combines Orazio Benevoli’s Missa Di Deus Pro Nobis for four choirs with what the choir’s musical director describes as “other monstrous works” by Benevoli’s Venetian teacher, Vincenzo Ugolini, among others.
Almost forgotten today, Benevoli (1605-1672) was one of the most important Roman Baroque composers of his day. “He wrote glorious, large scale, multi-choir music that included a technique called ‘reining in the donkey’, in which the lower parts move hastily underneath a static soprano line, supposedly like a priest sitting on and trying to hold back a frenetic donkey,” says Hollingworth. “Think King Of Kings in the Hallelujah Chorus,” he suggests.
The 24 is a University of York music department ensemble, conducted by Hollingworth, founder/director of I Fagiolini. The City Musick comprises cornett, sackbut, dulcian, strings, organs and theorbos.
Robert Hollingworth: Conductor of the University of York’s largest choir
University of York Choir & Baroque Ensemble, Central Hall, University of York, November 30
CHRISTMAS music of the Baroque and the 20th century were contrasted here in the five sections of Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit and four carol-anthems by Howells.
Interwoven with these were five extracts from A Child’s Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas. It was an ingenious idea, although none of these strands had much in common beyond the seasonal message.
Robert Hollingworth, who is now conductor of this choir, the university’s largest, read the passages from Thomas’s nostalgic view of a childhood Christmas, blanket-wrapped in an armchair and adopting an impressive Welsh lilt (that softened a bit towards the end). It was cosy, fireside stuff, with larger-than-life characters springing from the pages.
Charpentier’s late-17th century mass is almost balletic in its attempt to appeal to popular taste. The Baroque Ensemble, with guests leading three of its string sections, responded stylishly, with keen rhythm and taut ensemble.
The choir did not catch quite the same sense of urgency, perhaps feeling that Hollingworth’s baton was directed more at the players. That said, the tempo changes in the middle of the Credo were well managed. Alexander Kyle took over conducting for the final two sections, including a surprisingly jaunty Agnus Dei.
Variety came with several passages from a semi-chorus that additionally supplied soloists, who were at their most appealing when sopranos intertwined with recorders. A choir this size ranged on three flanks is always going to have difficulties with blend, especially in the very dry acoustic of Central Hall.
So, it was a pity that the least-known – and most recent – of the Howells pieces, Long, Long Ago, came first, before the choir had found its feet.
Here Is The Little Door, conducted by Kyle, was the best-shaped of the Howells. In contrast, A Spotless Rose was a little too fast for there to be no feel of the bar-line and the crunchy harmonies at the end, symptomatic of icy winter, were fudged. Bo Holten’s First Snow made an effective finisher.
Hollingworth is deservedly recognised as a first-class choir trainer. He will need just a little longer to stamp his mark on this choir. Watch this space.
Gould Piano Trio: Lucy Gould, Richard Lester and Benjamin Frith, right
NOT many ensembles undertake Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio. Its wide-ranging scope and the difficulties it presents, particularly to a pianist, put it outside many groups’ field of vision.
The Goulds, however, are not easily intimidated. They have recorded it, and preceded it here with Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn, Felix’s elder sister) and our own Judith Weir.
Tchaikovsky was pretty cut up by the death of his great friend Nikolai Rubinstein, the pianist who co-founded what became the Moscow Conservatory and also premiered Balakirev’s notorious Islamey.
After a summer of sorrow, he wrote his only piano trio over the Christmas period 1881-2, To The Memory Of A Great Artist. It reflects both the composer’s grief and the personality and prowess of Rubinstein.
The Gould’s success with the piece, played after the interval, depended to a great extent on the supreme control of its pianist, Benjamin Frith. His extremely rapid arpeggios in the opening movement, for example, were tastefully suppressed, so that balance with the strings was never under threat, and he kept his greatest intensity for the big climax after the central Adagio of this huge movement, from which the ensemble subsided gracefully.
The theme and 12 variations of the second movement, some of which are quite short, represent Rubinstein’s mercurial charm and incidents in his life, although Tchaikovsky is not specific about the details. So they require a chameleon-like response from the players. The Goulds were more than equal to the task, flashing between moods as to the manner born.
After the early repetitions of the folksong-style theme – sweetly eloquent in Lucy Gould’s violin, richly autumnal in Richard Lester’s cello – the two strings combined in tasty duet before Frith brilliantly evoked a musical box in Variation 6.
The succeeding waltz was sheer delight, while the Fugue was notable for the clarity of its individual voices. Frith really came into his own in the mazurka, where he evoked Chopin. The five-minute cut authorised by Tchaikovsky made the final variation and coda much more persuasive than if given complete.
Although going hell for leather, the players remained keenly aware of each other’s roles, while the closing funeral march, echoing the very opening of the work, was a tear-jerker. The work had sounded far better than this listener had thought possible. Indeed, I bought the disc.
Fanny Mendelssohn has only in recent years begun to be recognised for the superb composer she was, having languished far too long in her brother’s shadow. Her Piano Trio in D minor was written in 1846, the year before her death, although not published till 1850. So she never heard it, in public at least.
The work opened the evening. At once it was clear that the players were listening and responding to each other in the pleasing Allegro, and there was an equally charming lightness of touch in the gentle Andante. The 3rd movement, Lied, with its piano prologue, reached a surprisingly emphatic climax. In the finale, the Goulds again allowed the music to speak for itself – not as easy as it sounds – and this time its climax was beautifully prepared.
Judith Weir’s Trio – the first of two so far – dates from 1998 and is a beguiling piece. Although not programmatic, it is inspired by locations. The Venice of Schubert’s solo song Gondelfahrer (Barcarole) lies behind its opening, and it was easy to sense the bells of St Mark’s and the lights twinkling on the water, although the gondolier seemed to be making heavy weather of his paddling.
Scurrying strings with piano interjections marked the opening of the scherzo, with fiercer, lower timbres in its more accented trio, the two eventually coming into collision like satellites swerving off course.
African energies had been the inspiration here. Darting melodic snippets, looking for an alliance, resulted from her vision of deserted Hebridean beaches in the finale. This is spacious writing, gloriously uncluttered, and the Goulds revelled in it: music to hear and hear again, especially when played with such love.
Loré Lixenburg: Hosting SINGLR An Appera at the NCEM, York, on Sunday
MEZZO soprano Loré Lixenberg hosts SINGLR An Appera, an experimental sound event, at the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, on Sunday at 8pm.
Developed at the University of York, the world’s first contemporary music experimental voice Appera – a cross between an app and an opera! – comes to St Margaret’s Church for one night only.
The stories presented on stage recount the first meetings of participants in a specially created purely vocal dating app, SINGLR.
Welcome to SINGLR’s “fabulous dreamlike musical evening”
SINGLR ponders: What kind of voice do you like? Low growly voices or high and pure? Are you a fan of a throaty, husky sound or a voice as clear and sonorous as a bell? What would be the outcome if we chose who to be with on the basis of the voice and vocal creativity, rather than the usual parameters of visual appearance, income and what kind of pizza someone prefers?
“For the audience, the SINGLR salon will be a fabulous dreamlike musical evening where ambient electronic tracks and live musicians accompany the vocalised conversations of the SINGLR app participants,” says Lydia Cottrell, of York event organisers SLAP.
Tickets can be booked on 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk on a Pay What You Can basis: £2, £4, £6, £8 or £10.
Them There Then That, Tabitha Grove’s story about stories, tours Explore York York libraries for Big City Read through October
Tabitha Grove explores beauty in the way that everything holds a story in Them There Then That at Explore York libraries
IN a second SLAP event, Big City Read 2022 artist-in-residence Tabitha Grove is exploring the beauty of the way that everything holds a story in Them There Then That, on tour at Explore York Libraries on various dates until October 30.
This new solo performance is inspired by Behind The Scenes At The Museum, York shopkeeper’s daughter Kate Atkinson’s 1995 debut novel, wherein she depicts the experiences of Ruby Lennox, a girl from a working-class English family living in Atkinson’s home city.
“It isn’t just books that hold our stories. It’s the people. It’s the places. It’s the times. It’s the objects around us,” says the event blurb.
The poster for the Big City Read 2022’s tour of Them There Then That, a story about stories by Tabitha Grove
“We’ve all created stories from the moment that we could. We haven’t always written them though. We’ve drawn them, we’ve spoken them and we’ve sung them. And the point of all this? To share them.”
In doing so, “if we listen carefully enough, these tales can even help us create our own stories”.
Tabitha will be performing “a story about stories” at Tang Hall Explore Library tomorrow, 11am to 12 noon; Hungate Reading Café, October 26, 7pm to 8pm; Dringhouses Library, October 29, 1pm to 1.30pm, and York Explore Library, October 30, 2pm to 3pm. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, starting at free, at slapyork.co.uk/events?tag=TTTT.
Art science interface at Blossom Street Gallery: Artist Clare Nattress and scientist Dr Daniel Bryant stand either side of her pollution-marked bicycle. Picture: Matt Waudby
ARE people really aware of the dangers of polluted air close to home in York, ask arts researcher, educator and cyclist Clare Nattress and atmosphere scientist Dr Daniel Bryant?
Their studies are the subject of a collaborative exhibition under the title of The Art Science Interface: Making York’s Air Pollution Visible, on show at Blossom Street Gallery, York, with project support from the National Environmental Research Council.
“The work shines a light on the air pollution experienced in York while cycling with the objective of making the invisible, visible,” says conceptual artist and University of York St John graphic design lecturer Clare, whose white-painted, pollution-splattered, unwashed bike forms the exhibition centrepiece.
The same Bombtrack Beyond +1 German bike on which Clare had cycled around six countries – Norway, Germany, Spain, then Nepal, and onwards to Australia and New Zealand – in ten months in 2018 when taking a break from work and study as she approached 30.
“Pollution is a hot topic at the minute and a pressing global issue. Air pollution causes serious health risks and costs to the NHS could reach £5.3 billion,” she says.
“Recently I was in the company of air pollution activist campaigner Rosamund Kissi Debrah, who lost her daughter to asthma, the first registered UK resident to have air pollution as her cause of death.”
One of Clare Nattress’s rides on a bus route in York. Picture: Matt Waudby
Airborne particulate species less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, known as PM2.5, are considered to be the most deadly form of air pollution, contributing to millions of premature deaths per year globally.
“However, due to the small size of these damaging airborne particulate species, drawing public attention to the issue is challenging,” says Daniel, from the University of York’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, who has worked alongside Professor Jacqui Hamilton. “Our study aims to increase public awareness of PM2.5 through our art-science collaboration.”
Clare has used her bicycle as a performative tool to pedal on low and high infrastructure routes around the City of York – where the roads around the circumference of the University of York and York St John University are highly polluted areas often blighted by heavy congestion – to investigate if there are striking differences in air pollution levels and chemical composition, depending on the routes.
Clare’s bicycle was equipped with a miniature aerosol sampler and air quality sensor to gather street-level data over the course of three months as she cycled up to five hours per ride in urban and rural locations within York and the surrounding areas with a focus on six commuter/bus routes to and from the universities.
The filters collected were extracted and analysed by Daniel through an established method used for PM2.5 filter samples, using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography, high-resolution mass spectrometry to identify known compounds within the samples.
The process of collection and extraction were documented, and the filters also photographed and investigated under a microscope by Daniel.
Clare Nattress on her bike on one of her five-hour rides around York. Picture: Matt Waudby
The data and information gathered have been incorporated onto a digital map of York to reveal collection locations and routes, as well as pollution concentrations and compounds present within filter samples.
“Combining this data with photographs and video snapshots of each performance ride will improve the public’s ability to see for themselves pollution within their city,” says Clare, whose work forms part of her own Digital Smog project, hence the involvement of her partner, Matt Waudby, as photographer and videographer.
His photography, by the way, featured in an exhibition at Cycle Heaven, where he works, during the 2021 York Design Week.
“As an artist, I’m interested in the embodied experience of bicycling using theories of performativity and materiality,” says Clare. “The body becomes a site for academic enquiry. How does the body attune to air pollution? Can we smell it and can we taste it? How does it interact with our bodies while cycling? This other than human collaborator is interconnected with our bodies; we are intertwined.”
Clare and Daniel’s interdisciplinary, frontier-pushing partnership has increased their understanding of environmental hazards that face cyclists and the benefits of a healthier environment through improved infrastructure.
“This study has been beneficial to help monitor and creatively disseminate exactly what cyclists and the public are exposed to and will help to inform effective solutions,” says Clare.
Clare Nattress: Ride 4. Picture: Matt Waudby
“Despite ongoing evidence that suggests art enhances our understanding of science and data, there’s still much to analyse regarding impact and personal realisation for action.
“This research project and resulting exhibition provide initial evidence that the public engages with creative and visual outcomes that aim to make the invisible, visible.”
Clare and Daniel’s research project comes against the backdrop of between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths every year in the UK being attributed to human-made air pollution.
“But it’s very difficult to pinpoint because everyone is subjected to it,” says Daniel. “It’s like how you could smoke all your life and not die from cancer, or you could smoke only one cigarette but die from cancer.
“The whole point of the project is to highlight pollution visually, especially to make you think if you’re travelling in a car.”
Clare points out: “Pollution is worse if you’re sitting in a car in traffic, whereas a cyclist or pedestrian is not exposed in the same way because they’re on the move. In a car, you’re in a hot box for pollution.”
Clare Nattress: Ride 10. Picture: Matt Waudby
Daniel rejoins: “Pollution levels vary, depending on the weather, the temperature, the time of year, the day of the week, the density of traffic. What we do know is that idling in traffic is a big issue in a small city like York where you have to stop a lot, deal with the one-way systems, and everyone trundles along Gillygate, for example.”
Clare adds: “In terms of smelling it, Rougier Street is the worst, the most pungent. That’s because it’s ‘bus central’.
“Look at what’s happening in York. In Gillygate, where Wackers [fish and chips restaurant] is being turned into flats, they’ve been told to keep windows shut…because of the air pollution.”
Clare’s cycling is powering her PhD studies in the School of Art at Leeds Beckett University. Here is the snappy thesis title: “How can cycling be a performative methodology to investigate, reveal and disseminate the problem of air pollution?” As Freddie Mercury once exclaimed, the answer is: “Get on your bikes and ride”.
In practical terms, Clare has learned: “There are cheap, affordable sensors that you can buy to attach to your cycle or backpack to record your exposure, and I now choose my cycling routes more carefully, going on longer routes to avoid pollution,” she says.
York likes to portray itself as the city of cycling. “York is lucky that it has the two rivers [the Ouse and the Foss], with all those cycle paths, but if you took the rivers out of York, it wouldn’t really be a cycling city, with all that heavy traffic,” says Clare bluntly.
Pollution, as captured on a Clare Nattress bicycle ride
Looking at the art and science interface from the artistic perspective, she welcomes the chance to make her Blossom Street Gallery debut with conceptual work that “sits differently to the art it’s positioned alongside, so hopefully it brings a new audience there”.
To prove the point, invitations to the opening private view were extended to the cycling community, scientists and lecturers interested in air pollution, as well as York’s creative network and artists.
Daniel has welcomed the opportunity for collaboration between different disciplines at York’s universities. “Before this work, I would never have thought of doing a project like this. If I just did it for a journal, no-one in the wider public would see it, but the Blossom Street Gallery exhibition makes that possible,” he says.
“We’re now looking for further funding to expand the interface. If we get it, we would look to purchase sensors to make them available for commuters and hobby cyclists to get a breadth of pollution research material and then upload the data.”
Clare adds: “We would also look to run workshops, getting people together from different industries to really look at where pollution is worst in York and what can we do about it.”
The Art Science Interface: Making York’s Air Pollution Visible runs at Blossom Street Gallery, York, until June 30.
Lab work for the Art Science Interface
The science bit:
Particulate Matter 1, 2.5 & 10. (PM1, PM2.5 & PM10) PMs are small solid particles that can penetrate into the lungs with the finest ones even binding to blood vessels. PM10 refers to particles smaller than 10 microns in diameter or a tenth of the width of a human hair. PM2.5 are those smaller than 2.5 microns.
PMs can come from road traffic, energy consumption and natural phenomenons such as volcanic eruptions. PMs can change according to wind speed, weather and temperature, often settling in locations with a lack of wind.
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) NO2 is a suffocating gaseous air pollutant formed when fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gas or diesel are burned at high temperatures. 50 per cent of NO2 emissions are due to traffic.
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) VOCs are a combination of gases and odours emitted from many different toxins and chemicals found in everyday products. These can include household paint, new furniture, candles, cooking, cleaning and craft products as well as beauty products and cosmetics. They can also be emitted by traffic and industries. Some VOCs are classified as carcinogenic. (Plume Labs, 2022).
The funding bit:
THE Art Science Interface: Making York’s Air Pollution Visible is one of three projects to share a £76,000 grant from the NERC Discipline Hopping for Environmental Solutions grant awards.
Did you know?
YORK has the highest rate of bicycle thefts in England.
Clare Nattress and Dr Daniel Bryant looking at a book compiled from their research project. Picture: Matt Waudby
SARA Davies, the Queen of Crafting from Dragons’ Den, will bring her interactive, creative debut tour to York Barbican on December 3.
On her 13-date travels, University of York-educated Sara will pass on every possible tip and solution to create the perfectly styled Christmas in Craft Your Christmas With Sara Davies. Tickets go on sale at 10am tomorrow at Sara-Davies.com and yorkbarbican.co.uk.
An estimated two in three women take part in a craft hobby, making it a fast-growing trend. From gifts to garlands, cards to crackers, wrapping paper to mantlepiece decorations, Sara will show her tour audiences how to craft Christmas with a range of practical demonstrations, tips and a healthy slice of her down-to-earth know-how.
“It goes without saying how much I love crafting but crafting for Christmas is simply the best time for crafting,” says County Durham-born Sara, 38. “I’m going to share all the little hacks and shortcuts to achieve that perfect look for the perfect crafty Christmas.
“Sharing this with your friends will make a great night out and hopefully you’ll leave having had a ton of fun, feeling excited about having a home-made personalised Christmas.”
Sara Davies: Crafting businesswoman
Sara Davies’s back story
BUSINESS has always run in her blood, Sara having taken inspiration from her parents’ decorating shop to build her own empire.
It began with The Enveloper, a bespoke envelope maker she designed at the age of 21 at university that became an instant hit with the crafting crowd.
This soon evolved into Sara’s Crafting Companion business, which sells all types of creative materials and boasts an average turnover of £34million.
Sara’s company has more than 200 employees across her British and California headquarters, gaining her an MBE for services to the economy in 2016.
She became Dragons’ Den’s youngest ever female investor in 2019, since when she has made more than £1.1million of investments on the BBC show, giving new businesses a shot in the arm.
She was partnered by Aljaž Škorjanec in the 2021 series of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing.
Martin Roscoe: “Let’s his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent“
PIANISTS do not come much more deceptive than Martin Roscoe, who closed the British Music Society of York’s season with this recital of Schubert, Brahms and Liszt.
He goes against convention by using a score – no harm in that, especially if you consult it as little as he did. Having walked unassumingly to the keyboard, he plays without fuss or histrionics. In other words, he lets his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent.
Although Schubert’s second set of impromptus, D.935, was not published until 11 years after his death, he had presented them as a foursome to his publisher (who, incredibly, rejected them). There is no suggestion that they are the movements of a sonata, but there is undeniably a feeling that they are related – for one thing, the first and fourth are in the same key, F minor. Certainly, I have never felt them to be so closely linked as they sounded here.
There was an understated elegance in Roscoe’s approach. He unfolded the opening Allegro moderato gently, melting smoothly from the minor to the major key and back again. There was a touch more emphasis in the second, marked Allegretto.
The ‘Rosamunde’ variations were beautifully contrasted: the three different voices in the second variation, for example, emerged with lovely clarity. The sense of impromptu, essentially improvisation, was kindled most keenly in the final dance, especially in the link to the return of the main theme.
The three Brahms intermezzi, Op 117, which are late, autumnal pieces, emerged as if they were the composer’s innermost thoughts, at once intimate and revealing. A lovely cantabile flow permeated the first, while it was the inner voices of the more sombre second that gleamed to the surface in turn. The syncopations of the third, which might have felt more restless, were not allowed to disrupt its serenity.
Petrarch’s Sonnet 104 finds the poet in a confused state over a burning love affair. Liszt’s reaction to it was first to set it as a song and then, more famously, to transcribe that into a piano piece, which appears in the Italian volume of his Years of Pilgrimage. Roscoe treated its harmonies tenderly, as if aware that the topic was sensitive, and it unfolded logically to its bitter-sweet close.
In both the remaining Liszt pieces, there must have been plenty of temptation to treat the piano as an orchestra; Liszt piles on the pressure relentlessly. Roscoe resisted. Isolde’s Love-Death, his transcription of the closing scene from Wagner’s Tristan Und Isolde, reached a passionate but controlled climax, with the lovers finally achieving satisfaction together after death.
Even more orchestral was St Francis’s triumphant walk on the waves, its rushing, stormy figurations not disrupting the relentless flow. Here we had the only out-and-out fortissimo of the evening. After that, a quiet Beethoven Bagatelle seemed the perfect antidote as encore. An evening of impeccable taste and considerable virtuosity.
Paul Lewis: ” A strain of melancholy threaded through the evening but the result was riveting”
PAUL Lewis is among Britain’s finest pianists. So to have him visit York at the invitation of the British Music Society – which is enjoying a bumper season – was a special privilege.
He presented two of Beethoven’s better-known sonatas, the ‘Pathétique’ and the ‘Appassionata’ (not names assigned by the composer), which framed a Debussy suite and Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy.
A strain of melancholy threaded through the evening but the result was riveting. The opening Grave of the ‘Pathétique’ was exceptionally spacious, with chord-resolutions delayed to the absolute maximum, so that the succeeding Allegro, taken at lightning pace, felt even quicker by contrast.
The accompanimental figures in the slow movement were rich and dark, which lent the main melody, beautifully sustained, an autumnal fireside warmth. In contrast, the rondo theme in the finale was surprisingly light and frisky at first, becoming progressively more urgent until its resolute last appearance, which recaptured the intensity of the very opening of the work.
Debussy’s Children Corner suite is not kiddies’ music, either for players or listeners. Lewis offered the pretence that it was, touching in the details of these character-pieces with a delicate brush while keeping their droll humour to the fore.
Jimbo’s clumsy lullaby, the doll’s clockwork serenade and a snowy white-out were but preludes to the loneliness of the little shepherd and the Golliwogg’s self- satisfied strut (with a moment of self-doubt thrown in). It was hard not to smile throughout.
Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy Op 61 in A flat. which dates from 1846, three years before he died, is one of the most forward-looking pieces he ever penned. It belonged next to Debussy in this programme exactly because it is so impressionistic.
Its dance element – the polonaise section of the title – only really becomes clear towards the end, after a considerable stretch of varying, improvisatory ramblings. Lewis excelled in differentiating its many changes of colour, where lesser pianists can get lost in its brambles. In his hands it became a ballade, often tinged with melancholy, with the third of its three main sections building persuasively into dramatic closure.
By now, Lewis’s adrenaline must really have been flowing: volatility was the name of his game in Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’, Op 57 in F minor. Where there was some cloudiness in the first movement’s bass line, its very detail endowed the central variations with a marvellous nobility, stoically underpinning the increasingly taxing decorations.
He preferred to gloss over the ‘ma non troppo’ (not too much) of the third movement’s Allegro – which added to its fearsome frenzy but left little acceleration in reserve for the closing Presto. No matter: it still became a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, daringly delivered.
Sacconi Quartet’s Ben Hancox (violin), Robin Ashwell (cello), Hannah Dawson (violin) and Cara Berridge (cello): Performed Schubert’s incomparable String Quartet in C and York composer Nicola LeFanu’s newly commissioned Quartet, both a celebration and a reflection. Picture: Emilie Bailey
FORTUNE favours the brave. Back in May when the Covid outlook was far from clear, the British Music Society of York (BMS) took the courageous decision to go ahead with their 100th season in October. It had already been delayed a year.
This quintet – a string quartet with added cello – was the happy result, in a members-only evening last Friday.
Schubert’s incomparable String Quintet in C was preceded by the world premiere of an engaging new BMS commission for the same forces from Nicola LeFanu, one of the society’s two vice-presidents.
Titled simply Quintet and lasting some 20 minutes, it lives up to the composer’s typically lucid programme-note as a combination of celebration and reflection, which are mirrored in two contrasting themes. The faster of these provides a rondo motif while the slower inspires its diversions.
The device works excellently. The two cellos generally operate as a pensive pair, while the higher strings interrupt, sometimes intensely, always excitedly, often preferring a catchy iambic rhythm when not adding twinkling filigrees. But all of the instruments have something individual to say.
At the centre of the work is a solemn chorale, after which the second cello has a broad, yearning passage – which Tim Lowe attacked with relish. This is the signal for mounting urgency that is capped by a return to the opening cello duet at the close. Did I detect here the semitone with which Schubert so determinedly ends his quintet?
Second cellist Tim Lowe: “The engine” in Schubert’s String Quartet in C
The Sacconi and Lowe brought fervent application to their task, clearly enjoying its challenge. The music makes real sense on a first hearing, but would also repay deeper listening. It certainly commends itself as a partner to the Schubert.
Any players faced with one of the towering monuments of Western music will feel humbled. This manifests itself in different ways. Here there was a studied intensity to the first two movements of the Schubert, before an earthier Scherzo and a finale infused with the spirit of dance.
The mood of anticipation in the introduction was satisfied when the Allegro got going, but the repeat of the exposition was much tauter (and rhythms wittier too) than its first statement.
Second cellist Lowe was the engine, as in several places later, for the development section. He also ignited more fire in the middle of the slow movement – although the pregnant rests that followed were a tutti effort, before the heart of the Adagio hovered beautifully again.
In the Scherzo, the ensemble really began to relax, so much so that its Trio almost ground to a halt, it was so leisurely. In the circumstances, the return of the Scherzo came almost as a relief.
The finale, so often a let-down in this work, was anything but: there was even an element of mystery before the main theme returned. Doubt lingered as to whether all five players shared the same overall vision for this piece. But the BMS is back in business. Hurrah!
