Many players or record companies would have opened with the Couperin
or Handel and held the Monti back for an explosive encore. But
not MSR, who have decided with commendable good sense that this
isn’t necessary – you can programme things differently – and neither
is it desirable musically. Too many recitals still get hung up
on chronology.
Ashley Sandor
Sidon plays the Czárdás with a certain hauteur and reserve;
her tone can sound a touch nasal which means that whilst the
thing’s not camped up – something I dislike except when Nigel
Kennedy does it because the boy has chutzpah – it can seem
rather too reserved. Musical, but straight. Andaluza, from
the Spanish Dances, is accompanied on guitar by Luis Millán,
who has arranged several things in this recital. The other
movements are accompanied on piano. The B section does sound
a touch dogged in this performance and colours could be varied
more consistently – but at least things are kept on a lead
and not allowed to go for a metrical walk as more indulgent
performers would.
I wasn’t taken
by the Couperin which is phrased with a rather unappealing
short-breathed articulation that fails to convince. This is
beginning to sound as if Sidon doesn’t project naturally or
warmly and I think there’s something in that – stiff phrasing
is a weakness. This recurs in the opening of the Handel, a
standby through the ages. Maybe Sidon is trying to avoid the
kind of glutinously phrased performances that one does sometimes
hear from leading players. But her solutions tend toward the
clipped, detached and cool. Nicholas Roth covers her in the
slow movement once or twice, some of the ornaments are overdone
in the first movement and the finale could end more dramatically.
Bergmuller was
one of the many followers of Chopin and with the guitar accompanying
a nice case is made for his Nocturne. Next to, say, Parry
Karp Sidon’s Bloch does once again sound too withheld – sympathetic,
yes, but not necessarily projecting fully. It must be me –
but why do people persist with Piazzolla? Café 1930 has a
nice middle section but is otherwise nondescript.
Sidon is clearly
a sensitive, accomplished player but a greater sense of involvement
and colour is needed to bring this wide-ranging collection
more fully to life.
Jonathan Woolf
Ashley Sandor
Sidon (cello) 
