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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
August 4, 2006
"Fiddlers, pipers, and id genus omne, most unedifying and unbecoming company for a man of fashion."
With all due respect to Lord Chesterfield, to whose son that advice was addressed, surely even a "man of fashion" would have acknowledged that, as "fiddlers" go, Albert Markov is as edifying and becoming as they get.
Not to mention exciting: the old canard about demonic violinists predates Paganini - Prince Henry, in Henry IV, Part 1, says that "The Devil rides upon a fiddlestick" - and there were moments during Friday night's spectacular recital when such thoughts definitely came to mind.
Some decades ago, it was a running joke that the most prolific of all baroque composers was "attr. Corelli"; musical scholarship has since cleared up much of the confusion, but Kreisler was not alone in believing that Corelli was the author of the Portuguese dance melody "La Folia" which, over the centuries may have been the subject of more variations than any other single melody. (I was a little surprised that the programme still listed Corelli/Kreisler as the authors of the piece.)
A spectacular showpiece, this was once held in reserve for encores and is certainly an unusual way to open a recital.
Albert Markov may no longer be in the first flush of youth, but I imagine that many a younger musicians would give his or her eye-teeth to be able to play with half of Markov's style and intensity - and energy. His opening statement of the main melody, for example, was played with rich, burnished tone and a huge, throbbing vibrato, immediately grabbing the listener's attention and never for one instant thereafter did the performance allow said attention to flag.
Pianist Robert Holliston accompanied sympathetically, although the Kreisler does not exactly give the pianist a starring rôle.
César Franck's only violin sonata, on the other hand, is a genuinely collaborative work. It is far less imbued with the occasionally saccharine chromaticism to which Franck was sometimes prone, and has been a central repertory piece virtually from its first performance.
Markov and Holliston turned in a marvellous performance of the sonata. The intense languor of the opening movement was wonderful; the scherzo was full-blooded, with an almost dreamy central section; that dreamy mood continued in the slow movement, with its impassioned outbursts from the violin. The finale, which must have one of the most memorable melodies of any sonata, was relaxed and yet exuberant.
As fine a performance as any I've heard.
After the interval, Markov demonstrated the other attribute which makes him such an outstanding musician: his own music.
In his spoken introduction, Markov said that when his Sonata for violin solo was composed, about 40 years ago, "it was very modern - today it sounds like Mozart."
Well...four decades ago Markov was still living in the Soviet Union and his idiom may have seemed modern in that context, but compared to what people like Cage, Berio and Stockhausen were doing in the West - it sounded like Mozart.
Actually, Markov's idiom reminded me far more of Max Reger (a wonderful composer for solo strings), densely chromatic in places, but nonetheless obviously tonal.
The sonata's first, slow, movement seems to be based around a five-note phrase which, clothed in double- and triple-stops though it frequently was, gave the music an underlying unity. The quick second movement also seemed occasionally to make reference to the theme, but so quickly did it move that it was hard to be sure. A fine addition to the repertoire.
The Baroque Variations on the Chinese Theme, which followed, featured a quite lovely theme - certainly the way Markov and Holliston played it - followed by a handful of inventive variations. The fugue, it must be admitted, seemed a little dry, but the others were a constant delight.
Many composers - both great and small - have written music based on the 19th century's greatest one-off opera, Carmen. the 20th century's equivalent was arguably Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and, although others have used the themes (notably Percy Grainger) I'd not come across a full-blown, jaw-droppingly virtuosic workout on them before.
Markov's "Porgy" Rhapsody seems the latterday equivalent of Pablo de Sarasate's "Carmen" Fantasy, dazzling us with its technical demands while seducing us with familiar melody.
Of the four melodies Markov used - "Bess, you is my woman now", "It ain't necessarily so", "I got plenty of nothing" and (of course) "Summertime" - I suspect "It ain't" is Markov's personal favourite: "Jonah, he lived in a whale" kept sneaking into the background even when the main event was one of the other three tunes.
One again Markov's intensity and technique beguiled and amazed; Robert Holliston accompanied with panâche and sensitivity, as indeed he did all evening.
For a well-deserved encore Markov played (presumably) his own arrangement for solo violin of Albeniz's Asturias: music, as he observed, today more frequently played by guitarists.
It was everything an encore should be: the singing tone, the fabulous technique, the extraordinary pizzicatos.
Albert Markov is, undoubtedly, The Real Thing.
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