United Kingdom Varied, East Neuk Competition 2024 [1]: Crail Parish Church, Fife. (SRT)
26.6.2024 – Hisako Kawamura (piano), Doric Quartet (Yume Fujise, Ying Xue [violins], Hélène Clément [viola], John Myerscough [cello])
Ravel – Sonatine
Beethoven – String Quartet in G, Op.18 No. 2
R. Schumann – Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op.44
27.6.2024 – Hisako Kawamura (piano)
Beethoven – Piano Sonatas, Op.27 Nos. 1 & 2 ‘Moonlight’
Nadia Boulanger – Vers la vie nouvelle
Akio Yashiro – Sonate pour piano
A giant birthday requires a celebration. 2024 is the 20th 12 months of Fife’s East Neuk Competition, and the pageant’s five-day span incorporates a terrific showpiece of what it does finest, specifically bringing nice artists to play terrific music in stunning venues.
Within the pageant’s opening live performance, John Myerscough, the cellist of the Doric Quartet described Crail Parish Church as a ‘excellent place for chamber music’. He’s proper. It’s partly the church’s measurement – spacious sufficient to let the music breath however intimate sufficient to let the viewers really feel like they’re eavesdropping on one thing personal – and partly the inside’s mixture of stone and wooden that give the sound simply sufficient resonance and presence. The Dorics made probably the most of that of their enjoying of Beethoven’s Op.18 Second Quartet, however the acoustics work was made straightforward by the marvellous tone the quartet was in a position to produce. They play this repertoire with interval bows, and that bites into the sound in a method that’s as stunning as it’s revelatory. Textures are clear with out being spare, and the gamers have a method of leaning into the longer notes that makes them sound lean and vibrant. That gave a dance-like high quality to the outer actions, even within the quicker sections, however they managed to realize a stunning, oaky richness within the sluggish motion that was mellow sufficient to soften any listener’s coronary heart.
The pageant does this yearly. The mixture of performer and venue appears to be made in heaven, as a result of it brings out the very best in each. Take pianist Hisako Kawamura, for instance, whose enjoying of Ravel’s Sonatine introduced out all of its rippling, undulating strains in a method that appeared to roll the music via the air in the direction of the listeners’ ears, tenderness and reserve serving because the foil for bursts of muscular tone within the central Menuet.
Nevertheless, the ENF’s director, Svend McEwan-Brown, has a selected knack for recognizing partnerships, and it’s in those who the pageant’s magic actually sparkles. The Doric Quartet joined forces with Kawamura to offer a efficiency of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet that was nothing wanting masterly, not least as a result of they knew when to offer and when to carry again. A living proof was the ebullient opening, which didn’t lay all of its playing cards onto the desk without delay. As an alternative it held numerous vitality in reserve, releasing it slowly via the primary motion, brimming over at the beginning of the recapitulation whereas leaving area for the beautiful, mellow sweetness of the second topic. Their sluggish motion trod a fragile line between happiness and sorrow, deciding on a fantastically understated melancholy, whereas there was terrific vigour to the Scherzo alongside the targeted summation of the finale. This was a kind of performances the place the viewers gave a noticeable sigh of delight between the actions, making a palpable vitality that the gamers fed off to lift their sport to larger peak.
And that was solely the opening live performance! Kawamura performed a solo live performance the next day, enjoying each of Beethoven’s Op.27 sonatas, and making the fantastical first one sound much more ingenious than the well-known Moonlight second. Nadia Boulanger’s Vers la vie nouvelle started with horrible dread, expressed in chords of muscular energy, however remodeled into music that shimmered quietly with hope. Most curiously, nevertheless, she performed the sonata by fellow Japanese composer Akio Yashiro. He studied with Boulanger and Messiaen in Paris, and there are flashes of the European avant garde within the sonata’s music, however it additionally incorporates hints of Japanese Gagaku, bursts of energy alternating with music of virtually pointilliste delicacy. The second and third actions, particularly, contained scattergun explosions of notes, however they have been all the time performed with exceptional management. She then dazzled us all together with her encore, one in every of Guillaume Connesson’s Angel Dances whose shoulder-shaking vitality appeared briefly to make Crail Church really feel like a smoky Manhattan jazz membership.
The East Neuk Competition runs till Sunday thirtieth June for extra info click on right here.
Simon Thompson
