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SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW
Beethoven, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Ravel: Nash Ensemble (Ian Brown, Marianne Thorsen, Paul Watkins), Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham, 24.1.11. (RJ)
This recital contrasted two worlds: one
safe, comfortable and optimistic, the other shell-shocked and insecure. The
first was represented by Beethoven's Piano Trio in C minor Op 1 No 3 composed in 1795 (before Napoleon's armies began to menace Europe) and
Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No 1 in D minor (composed years before
the revolutionary fervour of 1848). On the other hand, the two compositions by
Debussy and Ravel represented a world that was tearing itself apart.
Debussy's late Sonata for
Cello and Piano was written in 1915 and is pervaded with dark
undercurrents. It started off promisingly with a soliloquy for cello played
with passion by Paul Watkins who handled the technical aspects of the piece –
spiccato, flautando bowing and false harmonics – with assurance. The second
movement was a mysterious affair with snatches of melody from piano and cello
as Pierrot serenaded the moon with desperate pleadings; there is none of the
charm of Clair de Lune here. The rhythmic finale was a little more
cheerful but did nothing to dispel the overall sense of foreboding.
There seemed to be even more
notes for Mr Brown to play in Mendelssohn's Trio and his nimble fingers
scurried up and down the keyboard without a break. Despite its gentle
introduction this is an extrovert work in which the composer aimed to
reinvigorate a musical form which had gone out of fashion and succeeded
magnificently. The three musicians threw themselves into the music with
splendid crescendos and accelerandos which kept the audience on the edge of
their seats.. The slow movement – a kind of Song without Words – offered an
expressive contrast and the whimsical Scherzo was sheer delight.
The Ensemble's superb
performances of both the Beethoven and Mendelssohn works found great favour
with the audience, but their reaction to the two twentieth century works was
decidely mixed. Ravel's four movement Sonata for Violin and Cello had
started out as a single movement allegro dedicated to memory of Debussy who had
died in 1918. This is music “stripped down to the bone” to use the composer's
words, and inhabits sa disturbing, atonal sound world. Marianne Thorsen and
Paul Watkins brought tension to the agitated first movement and gave a
brilliant rendition of the scherzo which alternates between pizzicato passages
and brusque rhymical interludes The slow movement promised to offer an oasis of
calm but unexpectedly erupted into a fierce argument. The finale started off
with a jolly dance-like melody from the cello but the tension increased as the
violin attempted to take the lead.