Sussex Musicians SMC Chapel Royal September 14th 2024
The Sussex Musicians Club (SMC) began their new season of monthly concerts in their new home on Saturday September 14th. They now perform just up from the old one, the Unitarian. The Chapel Royal has finer acoustics and hosts its own concerts on Tuesday lunchtimes.
Kevin Allen performed Schoenberg’s Five Pieces Op 23. Schoenberg had a morbid fear of 13 the day he was born. He wasn’t primarily a pianist but piano compositions came at crucial stages of his development. His tempo markings are far too quick and no-one – not even Eduard Steuermann the Second Viennese School’s house pianist – has ever played them as Schoenberg wrote them. Allen is faster than most. Especially in the third.
His Op 11 date from 1909 his first atonal work after his String Quartet No 2 where the soprano “breathed air from another planet.” He didn’t stay there long Nd there our es from 1923 were the first to fully adopt his 12-tone mode.
Sehr langsam is a moderately paced expressive piece with sudden lurches to another tempo.
Sehr rasch is altogether more turbulent and distantly recalls moments of the Beerg Sonata though more harmonically advanced.
Langsam isn’t played so here. The way Allen has worked with this piece for over 60 years convinced him the tempo isn’t some still centre. It’s also more spectral invoking a touch of that air but from another planet again. It sounds like a set of variations at one point.
Schwungvoll is an interesting piece using more of the extremes of the keyboard and somewhere semaphoring catastrophe like Schoenberg’s putative film piece of 1934. It’s also briefer.
Walzer is the first 12 tone piece written so far as we can tell. The waltz rhythm is just about discernible. But like the preceding piece there’s a continual pressure of transformation and broken scales. It ends as it must in an auditory question mark. Or seems to. I wonder if Hindemith’s 1922 Waltz was hanging parodically in Schoenberg’s mind? And this with his demented tempo markings (as Allen has called them) is a parodic response to Hindemith’s own riotous send-ip?
Allen is consummate in this repertoire and has lived it through the heyday if Schoenberg’s influence. It’s still exciting to hear him bring that air from thec195)s and 1960s, back here o release on the day after Schoenberg’s 150th.
The Brighton Guitar Quartet (Ruari Gann, James Hartl, Simon Hopkins, Oliver Thereaux) at well established and have been welcome recitalists here for a few years.
Belarus-American Olga Amelkina-Vera born 1976 writes a very attractive and quite South American sounding music. Her Ninocchka employs the quartet in this arrangement across the board, with knocking and noises off interrupting the essentially traditional idiom; and could easily lilt into a film.
Bach ‘s ‘Where Sheep May Safely Graz’ from his Hunting Cantata 208 is famed for it’s pastoral idyll (introduced wryly by Hopkins as safe for animals) and an antiphonal use of the banked guitar sonority, often the outer two where the inner voices then the left two play the central section taken up across the quartet.
Australian Philip Houghton 1954-2017 is well-known in the guitar world. His three Opals – Black, Water and White are attractive.
With Black Opal Much plucked and pizzicato effect flecks the tonal and antiphonal sound strongly rhythmic and certainly consummately written for the guitar. There’s no moments when you feel the pulse will drop: different ones enter until the last drop.
Water Opal is as it suggests the largo of the set. With Thereaux strumming across the tonal range in seeks there’s accompanying interjections, sometimes counter melodies. The effects close to a processional. The slow pulse a kind of funeral march. It’s hypnotic and holds the attention with its glinting cross-lights.
White Opal is a gathering of these strands a ice more unified timbrally and textually. It’s a fine finale. This isn’t demanding music but it’s immersive and enjoyable, beautifully written and again texturally exciting with some winning harmonic individuality.
The Elegia Concert – soprano Daria Robertson, tenor Paul Houston and pianist Andrew Storey perform Italian romantic arias. It’s built around the centenary of Puccini’s death and involving his friends and rivals.
Mascagni’s ‘Vio sapete o.mamma’ from his Cavalleria Rusticana. The marked woman knowing her husband is cheating on her and involves aid from her mother to forgive.
Good clean piano accompaniment. Robertson has a fine rich deep voice – reaching down to mezzo with a slightly covered quality. Until she lets rip! And then it’s a very powerful voice.
His ever-tethered compatriot Leoncavallo is represented by a stand-alone song ‘Mattinata’.
From 1904 and dedicated to Caruso who recorded it that year with the composer at the piano, is an Aubade. Houston reads the poem first. A vain serenade exhorting a woman to get up dressing white and open the door!
It’s an attractive art song with some sidelights for the piano. But essentially it’s a beautifully airborne serenade. Houston relishes the light and humour
Puccini is represented by two songs sung but Robertson.
‘Chi bel sogno di Doretta’ from Puccini’s neglected La Rondine from 1914. It’s an arietta. The heroine Magda sings reflectively about wealth and riches versus love. It’s again far lighter than you’d expect and has still recently meant La Rondine has been absurdly neglected.
Nevertheless there’s deep feeling here and scrubbing melody somewhere Unchained Melody. It’s remarkably modern in some of its show-tune melos. Robertson pins back the ears with her overwhelming delivery, piercing but also with vocally clear enunciation.
‘Quando m’en vo’ from his 1896 La Boheme is naturally more famous.
Robertson sings Musetta in her wryly sexy mode as she teases her on-off boyfriend Marcello, with how the old men want her. And she knows it. It’s a glorious hymn to hedonism with a rapturous top soaring above all-comers.
Robertson again gets the words across as well as the melody. There is some forcing of tone in this last song especially, which with Robertson’s voice is both unnecessary and ultimately could be vocally damaging. Nevertheless, some of the very best singing we’ve had here in a while.
A superb concert in range and performance to kick off the new season.