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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 18, 2012
It frequently comes as a surprise to the casual music-lover (if such a thing there be) to learn that the piano is classified as a percussion instrument.
Of course, the technical explanation (the sound is produced by hammers hitting the strings) is an obvious one, but to truly hear why the piano is arguably the exemplar of what Percy Grainger called "tuneful percussion" you need a work such as Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.
It was with a marvellously precise account of this unique work that Jamie Syer and Robert Holliston, together with percussionists Masako Hockey and Jonathan Eng, closed their superb recital, "Duelling Pianos", on Saturday night.
The mysterious, brooding opening was very fine and the accelerando into the main body of the first movement the first indicator that one of the key aspects of this performance was going to be rhythmic precision and razor-sharp ensemble.
Despite the almost constant motor rhythms of the music, it never sounds even remotely like Stravinsky - a feat that few other 20th century composers ever managed. The signature timpani glissandi underlined the great vitality of the performance.
The second movement is a splendid example of Bartok's "night music", highly atmospheric in this case, with a threatening central section.
The finale is arguably the closest to an expression of pure joi-de-vivre of anything in the mature Bartok; the performance was exuberant, exciting and, especially in the morendo close, humourous.
This was the first time I've heard this music live in more years than I care to remember. It was well worth the wait.
Brahms drew the theme of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn from the movement entitled "St. Anthony Chorale" in what used to known as Haydn's Divertimento No.1; in fact the theme used by Brahms is the entire movement.
Since around 1950 there has been debate over whether the divertimento is really the work of Haydn (Pleyel has been suggested as the true author) and, indeed, whether the theme of the movement is by the composer of the divertimento in any case.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Brahms knew a good theme when he heard one and, from this one, wove an enchanting set of variations.
Although composed before the orchestral version, the two-piano version, Op.56b, is less frequently heard, and so it was a real treat to hear it on Saturday, superbly played by Holliston and Syer.
After the opening music by Debussy, the pair adopted a much warmer tonal palette for the Brahms - and the unanimity of tone and phrasing of the two was notable throughout the evening.
The theme itself was given a most genial reading; the first variation, while perhaps taken at a slightly steady tempo, featured some nice rubato.
The heart of the performance was, for me the penultimate variation, which was truly balm for a trouble soul.
The finale built impressively from its solemn opening to the final, ringing peroration. There was one moment, a sudden and, as far as I am aware, unmarked accelerando just before the coda, which took me slightly aback, but it was the only time in the entire programme when I did not see entirely eye-to-eye with the duo interpretively.
That almost infinitesimal quibble aside, this was a wonderful performance
Claude Debussy's En Blanc et Noir opened the concert. it was written in 1915, just three years before Debussy's untimely demise. He denied that the work was in any way a comment on the carnage of the Great War and insisted that the three movements "derive their colour and feeling merely from the sonority of the piano."
Syer and Holliston gave a splendid account of the work, although like much of his late, unprogrammatic music, En Blanc et Noir always strikes me as being somewhat semantically opaque - enigmatic, if you prefer - a feeling which this performance, while full of ravishing sonorities, did little to dispel. The fault is doubtless mine.
Even though I was looking forward to this concert immensely, the reality outshone my expectations by some margin. A glorious evening.
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