Skip to main content

Love, chaos and hope: Gabriela Montero and Scottish Ensemble in Kendal

After a sublime Friday lunchtime concert, Saturday (16th February) got even better. The day started with the February edition of Clitheroe Piano Group, and even more than normal we had an excellent afternoon's music.

Quick smart up the M6 to Kendal and a quick meal courtesy of Farmhouse Kitchen (very nice) before we headed to Kendal Leisure Centre. Lakeland Sinfonia seem to have a good set of concerts this season - I tried to book for Jess Gillham in January but sold out - and the February concert, Gabriela Montero and Scottish Ensemble, was definitely a treat. There seem to be a lot of season ticket holders as quite a lot of the audience seemed to know each other; and with a few single ticket holders like us, the hall was pretty full! 

Scottish Ensemble are a 12-piece string group, and a quick look at their website shows they are interested in anything strings! Gabriela Montero is renowned for her pianism, improvisations and compositions - certainly one of the draws for the concert was to hear her latest composition, Babel. Also that I really enjoyed hearing her back in 2017 in London.

The Ensemble started off the evening with Mozart's Divertimento in D K.136 which was a lot of fun! Followed by J S Bach's Ricercar à 6, which was well played but not really my thing. We were then treated to an excellent performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 14 K449. Dating from early 1784, this seemed to me to be a love story. The first movement seemed almost like an operatic overture and to me seemed to set the scene for two lovers first meeting, maybe in a village square. The slow movement (andantino) was absolutely beautiful, starting like a lament '(s)he loves me not' moving towards a more requited '(s)he loves me'. The finale (allegro ma non troppo) was all well-behaved jollity, until the cadenza, after which let's have a party! I haven't always been particular to Mozart - notably finding Concerto No. 17 dull (Emmanuel Ax back in 2009) although I'd probably think differently now! - changing tastes and all that - but the small number of musicians certainly added an intimacy that belied the size of the hall and really added to the performance.

Gabriela treated the audience to 2 improvisations as encores - the first one, a happy birthday to her husband (after the Ensemble had played the 'regular' Happy Birthday), followed by an improvisation on the Bond theme (audience suggestion). Both very popular.

That's about where the gaiety ends. In the second half we heard Gabriela's new composition, Babel, for piano and strings. The programme notes refer to the piece expressing Gabriela's frustration at humanity's inability to comprehend one another. I felt and heard three distinct sections: the first, an insistent left-hand voice at the piano with thin strings (very tender and melancholic); followed by a rhythmic turn to discord (perhaps reminiscent of Prokofiev's War Sonatas) which descended into cacophony; and a third, major-feel utopian end, with lines and spirals, ending in simple harmony. Beauty and its antithesis.

After that, everything went a bit Nineteen Eighty-Four with a performance of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 118a (arrangement of the composer's String Quartet No. 10, Op. 118 by Rudolf Barshai). The fear that came through the second movement scherzo; and the passacaglia seemed very much the telescreen in the corner...  

The works have been on tour - reviews in the Guardian (London date) and the Herald (Perth).

An excellent evening but not one for the faint hearted!
  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Angela Hewitt Week, 14th-20th May 2012

I just received information from a friend about Angela Hewitt Week in Ottawa, 14th-20th May as declared by Mayor Jim Watson. Ms Hewitt is performing with Chamber Players of Canada on Friday 18th May; there will also be An Afternoon With Angela Hewitt on 20th May at the National Arts Centre hosted by the Canadian Friends of the Trasimeno Music Festival .

Mini update

I have finally sorted out my site links to reflect some new/renewed interests and my current location. We have something of a National Arts Centre bonanza shortly: I had already booked to see Angela Hewitt on 16th Feb but found a good ticket offer on LivingSocial.com to see Radu Lupu this coming Wednesday, 26th. In addition to all that, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross (his recent book, Listen To This , is excellent, as well as his previous tome, The Rest Is Noise ) is giving a talk there on 13th February. This is all followed in March by a complete about turn to the Bronson Centre to see Finnish band Apocalyptica . They have been somewhere on my radar for a while but I was spurred on to book tickets after a bout of nostalgia. M and I were regular visitors to Wolverhampton UK to see various bands at Civic Hall/Wulfrun Hall; a few months ago a mutual friend posted on that there Facebook thing about seeing said Apocalyptica at Wulfrun Hall. Nostalgia for the venue and renewed intere...

Light, shade and sunshine - Chiaroscuro String Quartet and Gesualdo Six

Another new year, another hectic start! However I have found some time for concerts. The January edition of Skipton Music featured trailblazers Chiaroscuro String Quartet . The quartet perform with gut strings but that doesn't mean they're old fashioned! They generally perform standing up and certainly there is a lot of movement and vibrancy in their performances. The programme was: BEETHOVEN     String Quartet in D major Op.18, No. 3 MENDELSSOHN     String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 12 SCHUBERT     String Quartet No.14 in D minor, D810 I have a love/hate relationship with the Schubert 'Death and the Maiden' quartet (much like the Brahms piano quintet) and I have to say I wasn't expecting to enjoy it... but in fact this was the best performance of the evening.   There's another review on the Skipton Music page here .  Just as spring seems to be coming (judging by the bright blue sky outside my window), I h...