Milton
Court
Tomkins – Barafostus Dreame
Gibbons – Pavan in GScheidt – Also geht’s, also steht’s
Bach – English Suite in D minor, BWV 811
Patrick Jones – Santoor Suite
Daniel Kidane – Six Etudes (world premiere)
Viktor Kalabis – Akvarely, op.53
W.F. Bach – Sonata in E-flat major, Fk.5
The Guildhall’s recently
appointed Professor of Harpsichord, Mahan Esfahani, gave an inaugural recital,
his first at Milton Court, in music by composers ranging from the Elizabethan
virginalists to the present day. An ‘English’ emphasis was unmistakeable, even
Bach represented by one of his English Suites, that in D minor. Far from that
indicating any restriction, the hallmark of the recital was more variety,
excellent performances throughout proving the guiding thread. In a typically
engaging programme note, Esfahani wrote: ‘In English hands, the harpsichord
truly came alive in all its guises – as a marvellously clear vehicle for
counterpoint, as an effective imitator of whole ensembles and consorts, as an
instrument of great sensuality as made possible by the confluence of various
registers and harmonics naturally occurring in the sound made by a plucked
string.’ Such was certainly what we seemed to hear on this occasion.
Thomas Tomkins’s variations
on a broadside ballad, ‘Barafostus Dreame’ proved as ‘magnificent’ as was
claimed in the performer’s note. Compositional and performing virtuosity
sounded as one in a splendidly developmental account. Metre was subtly ‘bent’
on occasion, but always, it seemed, with a greater plan in mind, not for its
own sake. Above all, there was a real sense of fantasy; it made sense as a
performance in its own right, but also as the opening to a programme (perhaps
rarer than one might expect). That characteristic ‘English’ melancholy which
persists unto Birtwistle and beyond was certainly to be heard in the Orlando Gibbons
Pavan. What sounded as if it were an infinitely flexible subdivision of the
beat indicated a good deal of art concealing art – again both in work and
performance. Samuel Scheidt’s seven variations on the German song, Also geht’s, also steht’s, offered a
well-chosen staging-post on the way to Bach: a different voice, yes, even a
different accent, but subtlety in technique that seemed also to offer continuation
of a line.
Bach’s D minor English Suite
completed the first half. In a short spoken introduction, Esfahani offered a
way in to some of the composer’s complexities with a strikingly simple – in the
best sense – demonstration of palindromic tendencies, both melodic and rhythmic.
The opening Prelude initially resounded as if it announce Bach’s French
inheritance – let us remember that a hallmark of earlier eighteenth-century
German art, especially as understood by contemporaries, was its openness to
different national ‘styles’ – but Bach’s undoubtedly Germanic legacy soon
manifested itself ever more strongly. In the following Allemande and Courante,
Esfahani struck a fine balance between phrases, paragraphs, and the whole, offering
plenty of time, though never too much, for Bach’s music to speak in all its
glory – and all its necessary complexity. The Sarabande’s proliferation seemed
to this listener, doubtless partly on account of so much of his recent
listening, to look forward to later Boulez. (If only we could hear some of the
younger Boulez’s Bach performances!) The ‘busy’ quality of the first Gavotte
was founded upon secure command of line, whilst the second benefited from
typically imaginative yet idiomatic registration. The closing Fugue, perhaps in
the light of my recently having heard Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet, sounded as if a danse macabre. And of course, there were the inevitable
labyrinthine presentiments of the Second Viennese School too. A well-shaped
account throughout ensured that, once again, we heard that there is no composer
less archaic than Bach.
There followed three very
much more recent works, two from the twenty-first century, one from the
twentieth. Patrick Jones’s Santoor Suite
takes its cue, or at least a cue, from the composer’s study of south Indian
raga, ‘specifically,’ according to Esfahani, ‘the “gat” (a cyclical, fixed
melody)’. In its brief span, roughly five minutes in total, we heard an
inventive response both to that world and indeed to the Baroque suite, a nicely,
naggingly persistent Courante particularly striking to me on a first hearing.
Daniel Kidane’s Six Etudes received
their first complete performance. They definitely sounded as studies, for
instance in the first piece’s treatment of repeated notes, the intervallic
explorations of the second (and not just the second), and so on. A hotel
reception bell made an appearance as duet partner (albeit operated by Esfahani’s
foot) in the final piece.
Viktor Kalabis’s 1979 Akvarely (‘Aquarelles) seemed, again on
a first hearing for me, almost to start, in its first movement, where Poulenc,
in his Concert champêtre, had left
off, and then, as it were, to run with whatever the composer had picked up. In
this performance, I found it impossible to dissent from Esfahani’s view that
this was most definitely music for the harpsichord, as opposed to ‘so much
modern harpsichord music which seems like the word “piano” has simply been
crossed from the title page’. The second piece revelled further in
possibilities both musical and instrumental. At one point, it sounded almost as
if a response to the celebrated solo in The
Rake’s Progress.
Finally, there came a rare
opportunity to hear a piece by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. I cannot say that I was
entirely convinced, especially in the finale, by its stopping and starting:
rhetorical, perhaps, but not with the mastery of the eldest son’s younger
brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel. At any rate, this was a brilliantly ‘free’
performance, the slow movement at the work’s heart proving especially eloquent,
indeed possessed of considerable harmonic depth.
