Reviews By Performers and Audiences

26th April 2009

Duncan Honeybourne gave the last recital in his series of Piano Masterpieces on Sunday, 26th April. Regulars at the Lion Ballroom have been treated to performances by a pianist eager to communicate his enthusiasms to his audience. The Chopin Ballade No 3 was in turns imperious and tender. Chopin has been a regular feature to the series. William Mathias wrote his Piano Sonata No2 in the early 1970’s. I know the composer best for tuneful music with acid harmonies. This sonata was a tougher nut, having the energy of Bartok and the visionary mysticism of Messiaen or Tippett. Richard Francis, of Ludlow, was represented by some of his Characteristic Pieces, witty and reflective. There was an easy going lyricism which made his music very attractive. Schumann has been a recurring favourite and in Carnaval, we were treated to both Schumann’s alter egos, the introspective Eusebius and the exuberant Florestan. Duncan Honeybourne can do justice to both and in the finale of the piece combined both their characteristics fervently.

                                                                                                                                                   Fur Elise is a much loved piece  murdered by many budding pianists. A special request had been made to include this in the series. He played it with a wonderful musical touch. Those of us who were present at these concerts will treasure the memories, and will hope that he can be tempted back to Ballroom.

Friday 15th - Corinne Frost & Janine Smith

TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC IN THE LION BALLROOM

 

Who was it once said that the only language in which one could usefully comment on music is – music itself?  And one way in which composers do that is by writing variations on themes – their own and other people’s.  More of that anon.

 

But words can report musical events, and there was a singularly happy one in Leominster’s Lion Ballroom, on Friday 15^th May.  Outside, lashing rain and chilling winds were doing their best to prepare us for the arrival of an English summer.  Inside, against the backdrop of this lovely room, built in 1843 but in an earlier Georgian style, the chandeliers shone gently and warmly on a near-capacity audience  (any more and the Fire Officer might have started to count heads).  They had defied the weather to hear a recital of music for ’cello and piano by Corinne Frost and Janine Smith, artists of very extensive experience and both now based in Worcestershire.  Lucky us.

 

The programme was thoughtfully constructed, admirably appropriate to the period setting, and beautifully executed.  This is a duo that sounds as if it has worked together long and hard, really listening to each other. The balance between the instruments – often problematical for composers as well as performers in this combination - was finely judged, the co-ordination precise.  One noted particularly Corinne’s experience with the Philharmonia Orchestra in its third and still great incarnation that started in 1979; and that Janine had in 1997 been a finalist in the Young Accompanist of the Year competition.  These days, of course, Accompanists are called Collaborative Artists, and this recital was a true collaboration.

 

Variations figured prominently in this programme.  Beethoven was 26 years old, on tour in Berlin in 1796, when he wrote the Twelve Variations on Handel’s “See the Conqu’ring Hero Come”, and perhaps he saw himself in just that light.  The cellist for whom he probably wrote his early works, was teacher to King Frederick of Prussia and had met Beethoven as a child, describing him as “very conceited”. Beethoven’s variations are indeed confident and clever, not lacking in swagger and tongue-in-cheek pomposity. Nor do they lack signs of the Beethoven still to emerge; though the profundity of the Diabelli Variations and the exploration of the variation form that was almost obsessive in the last piano sonatas is still far in the future. 

 

Profundity is not the first word that comes to mind when mentioning Mendelssohn, whose Variations Concertantes, written in 1829, came not quite at the end of the first half of the programme.  Bi-centenaries of births are convenient excuses for concert promoters and recording companies, but can Mendelssohn really sustain a whole year of celebration and adulation?  Like Mozart and Schubert he died young, and we all love child prodigies.  His music is often entrancing, recklessly pretty, even; but rarely beautiful in the way that Mozart and Schubert can pierce the heart to its profoundest depths, so that we do not know whether to laugh or cry.

 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the programme was that after the Mendelssohn, and without any break for applause, the cellist gave us a solo improvisation.  Picking up the quiet dynamic of the last variation and a fragment of a phrase, the cello mused, explored, expanded. Like an uncaged bird it soared, finally settling quietly, like the Mendelssohn, but first having found and enjoyed a freedom, a depth of emotion that young Felix himself might have envied.

 

The final work of the evening was Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata in A, written in 1886.  The excellent programme note made much of the fact that the composer ‘endorsed’ its transcription from violin to cello.  And one sympathises with cellists and their comparative paucity of repertoire: indeed, it is such a marvellous work that one would want to hear it, if there was no alternative, played on an ocarina and accordion.  But though the cello can cope with the transcription and transposition involved, the sonata loses more than it gains by such artfulness. 

If indeed Franck’s first idea was to write it for the cello, then his second thoughts were infinitely wiser.  And his layout of the texture would surely have been different.  The violin can ride, clear as a jewel, with and above the rich sonorities of the piano part: the cello gets embedded in them. What should have the fiery sweetness of an Eiswein has, at best, the quality of a superior pudding wine.  Asti Spumante is no substitute for Champagne in this company.

 

Nonetheless, this was a fine performance of a marvellous work that demands and received virtuosic skills and passionate commitment from both players. Attention to details, clarity of inner voices, and care with sonorities were all a joy, even when the music was headlong in its dash to ecstasy.

 

Congratulations to Espressivo for organising this recital, to the players for its execution – and to Leominster’s listeners who turned out in such numbers to support it. All were amply rewarded.