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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!
  

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