Friend/Daraskaite/Sokolovskis, Cheung - Messiaen, 20 November 2022

St John’s Waterloo

Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Anthony Friend (clarinet)

Agata Daraskaite (violin)

Peteris Sokolovskis (cello)

James Cheung (piano)

Photograph: Matthew Johnson

What a joy to return to a new series of Spotlight Chamber Concerts, itself returning to St John’s Waterloo following refurbishment (and looking like new). Here a single work was on the programme, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, sounding ever more a classic of the chamber repertoire with every fine performance, of which this was certainly one. A quartet of young musicians, clarinettist Anthony Friend (also presiding impresario of the series as a whole), violinist Agata Daraskaite, cellist Peteris Sokolvskis, and pianist James Cheung offered an eminently musicianly view of Messiaen’s work that, rightly, felt no need to dwell one-sidedly on circumstances of composition, leaving space for all to find their own standpoint. Hope, joy, and the mystery of God can take many forms—and frankly, right now, we should be well advised to take what we can.  

The opening ‘Liturgie de cristal’, all four instruments rendering metre and harmony immanenthypnotised, entranced, had one believe. Infinitely flexible within an iron framework, it set the scene wonderfully for what was to follow, whether in affinity or contrast. The coming of the angel who announces the end of time in the following ‘Vocalise’ certainly offered immediate, declamatorily apocalyptic contrast, itself followed by the many faces or melodies of that angel in well-nigh hallucinatory fashion. Their sweetness was both unreal and hyper-real: not unlike the colours of a world created anew after a storm. 

The solo clarinet ‘Abîme des oiseaux’, in similar paradox, seemed to stretch time so as both to have all that in our world and, yet, in that of the piece only just enough (fitting, given the end of time itself announced). In Friend’s performance, it emerged, intriguingly, as an heir to the cor anglaise solo, beyond good and evil, in the third act of Tristan und Isolde, a work whose enraptured victims certainly included Messiaen. A shepherd song, yet sweeter, perhaps even stranger, still more mysterious, it was expertly shaped in performance so as not to sound shaped at all. It was spellbinding, but then so was much else, for instance the twin relief and intensification of the ensuing brief ‘Intermède’. Only after did one have pause to think how tricky it is to write for clarinet, violin, cello, and no piano.

Cheung’s piano returned, of course, for the celebrated ‘Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus’ with cello. Unhurried, never dragging, it always moved, seemingly founded on a sense of harmonic rhythm from which all else grew. It was as intense as it was big-hearted, Sokolovskis’s vibrato generous, yet never excessive. The strange unisons of ‘Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes’ glistened, gleamed, glowed, and occasionally glowered. 

Such warm precision was felt again, like the rainbows of which the movement told, in ‘Fouillis d’arcs en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du temps’. There was darkness too, yet always colourful darkness, the angel’s swords of fire palpably present without need to underline. The final ‘Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus’ sounded very much a kindred spirit to the earlier ‘Louange’, only this time with violin and piano. Daraskaite’s rich-toned, equally generous playing contributed movingly towards a consolation that came close to passing all understanding.

Waterloo Festival (5) – Isserlis, Haywood, Bruch, Strauss, Dvořák, and Le Beau, 24 June 2021

St John’s, Waterloo

Bruch: Kol Nidrei, op.47
Strauss: Cello Sonata in F major, op.6 (London premiere of first version)
Dvořák, arr. Isserlis: Four Romantic Pieces, op.75
Luise Adolpha Le Beau: Cello Sonata in D major, op.17

Steven Isserlis (cello)

Sam Haywood (piano)

Image: Matthew Johnson

All good things must come to an end, or at least from time to time a pause. Let us hope that this, the last in the Spotlight Chamber Concert series, now also part of the Waterloo Festival, is only au revoir. Anthony Friend’s achievement in attracting such an array of musicians, to give such excellent performances at the darkest of times, merits our deepest gratitude; it certainly has mine. This long-delayed concert from Steven Isserlis, now with pianist Sam Haywood, made for a splendid finale—at least for now.


First up was Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, treated to a performance of High Romantic expressivity, balanced with great dignity, Haywood’s sensitivity as accompanist crucial here. Bruch’s piece is very different, of course, from Schoenberg’s Kol nidre for speaker, chorus, and orchestra. Schoenberg wrote to Paul Dessau that ‘one of my principal tasks’ had been to ‘vitriolize away the cello-sentimentality of the Bruchs etc., lending this decree the dignity of a law, of an “edict”.’ Whatever one thinks of that, one probably knows what he meant. Dignity takes many forms, however, as does sentimentality. It would have taken a harder heart than mine not to admire and enjoy so committed and freely romantic a performance. The way the music subsided just as dusk outside began to fall offered magic in itself.


Strauss and Schoenberg had a fraught relationship over the years. Schoenberg could not possibly, however, have known the first, 1881 version of Strauss’s Cello Sonata, since it only became available last year, Strauss’s music having passed out of copyright. (The same fate or opportunity awaits Schoenberg’s music next year.) Isserlis and Haywood gave the London premiere with a conviction that suggested a repertoire piece—which, even when one considers the first movement, in which relatively little changed, is perhaps something of an exaggeration for Strauss’s revision, let alone this. Both musicians were clearly inside the music, the pianist in particular, unsurprisingly, given quite a work-out. Strauss’s talent, at only seventeen years old, at writing for any instrument was heard both in his cello writing and in its combination with piano. There is little, even no, sign of the ‘real’ Richard Strauss, but it is an enjoyable, incredibly competent piece. The first movement was shaped as if it were Brahms, underlining an astonishing, Mendelssohn-like security of harmony and form. Its successor, an Andante entirely absent from the more familiar version of the work, received a rapt reading that did not obscure but rather enhanced its essential simplicity. The third movement, again replaced in its entirety in the second version, was likewise imbued with all the freshness of discovery and all the apparent familiarity of repertory. Mendelssohn again came to mind. It sang beautifully, if not remotely like the Strauss of maturity. There were some splendidly deadpan surprises too.


Dvořák, arranged by Isserlis, was next. One might never have guessed the Four Romantic Pieces were not originally written for cello and piano such was the success of arrangement and performance, clarifying textures that might conceivably have proved awkward. A delectable, songful performance of the first had genuine simplicity, albeit one that concealed much craft beneath the surface. The second was given in passionate contrast, founded on fine command of detail and articulation, leading aptly enough to a third that seemed to combine many of the virtues of both. Melancholy nobility, moving me considerably, proved the hallmark of the fourth.


Finally, a curiosity: the D major Sonata of Luise Adolpha Le Beau, written, albeit three years earlier and emerging victorious, for the same competition Strauss’s failed to win. The first movement’s opening proved, like Strauss’s, highly accomplished and, in performance, rich in tone. Where it travelled thereafter seemed more arbitrary. It nonetheless benefited from great care and evident belief. This big-hearted performance more or less melted my sceptical heart. A sad, yet warm and dignified slow movement, and pleasant enough finale likewise benefited from committed performance. I could not help but think the latter went on a bit, but did not mind in the slightest. The encore, Cécile Chaminade’s Sommeil d’un enfant was very much what one would expect: pleasant and well-crafted in its salon way.

Waterloo Festival (2) - Solem Quartet and friends: Schubert, 4 June 2021

St John’s Waterloo

Schubert: Octet in F major, D 803

Amy Tress, William Newell (violins)

Stephan Upshaw (viola)

Stephanie Tress (cello)

Anthony Friend (clarinet)

Catriona McDermid (bassoon)

Stephen Craigen (horn)

Marianne Schofield (double bass)

Images: Matthew Johnson

Back to St John’s, Waterloo, for the next in Spotlight Chamber Concerts’ contribution to the Waterloo Festival. It was clear that the Solem Quartet and friends enjoyed their performance of Schubert’s Octet. So, surely, would all in the audience have done; this audience member certainly did. As we begin to rebuild our lives in line with this year’s Festival’s guiding word, ‘respair’, that return of hope after seemingly endless despair, far from yet banished, civilisation and enjoyment are not the least of the resources on which we shall continue to call. They were found in abundance here at nine o’clock on a Friday night, as outside the sun and inside the spotlight began to fall.


Pregnant with expectation—a feeling common to us all right now—the first movement introduction, redolent of works by Schubert’s Viennese Classical predecessors yet unmistakeably his own, presaged the mood to come: of a world that might still long for the serenades of Mozart, yet which ultimately knows that time is past. The main Allegro was beautifully, meaningfully flexible, shifts in tempo contributing to the greater whole. There was a keen sense in work and performance alike of roots in tradition, without so much as a hint of the merely reactionary. The development’s turn to F-sharp minor proved rightly both surprising and the most natural thing in the world, heard and felt with a pathos given space to blossom—and which therefore did. There was a fine impression of tonal ascent to the moment of return. During that recapitulation, I especially loved the transfer of melodic line between Catriona McDermid’s bassoon and Stephen Upshaw’s viola.

 

The Adagio flowed like a river on a summer’s day: subtly yet undeniably. The more closely one listened, the more there was to listen to. Expressive, non-dogmatic variation of strong vibrato guided our path, enhancing the impression of a string quartet joined and enhanced by friends. Stephen Craigen’s horn and Anthony Friend’s clarinet likewise did much to guide an unerring tonal plan, realised in full when Schubert’s owl of Minerva began at movement-dusk to spread its wings. A scherzo as fresh as it was bright nonetheless seemed predicated on the memory of something darker. The trio relaxed on the one hand, intensifying on the other, its counterpoint both blithe and serious, the scherzo’s reprise heard in the light of what had changed.


The fourth movement sang with a naïve charm that yet knew its place was too late, thus turning, heartrendingly, to variation. Each variation was finely characterised yet found its place within the greater scheme. If it would be invidious to single any one out, it was perhaps inevitably the turn to the minor mode that touched most deeply. There was a subtle melancholy—at least I fancied so—to the Minuet, which again suggested already the neoclassicism of a time that knew its distance from Mozart. Allied to that, even necessitated by it, was a sense of corners still to be turned, of new vistas still to be seen and heard.


Darkly Romantic tension in the introduction was shown to be but one side of the finale’s coin, the sheer good nature of its harmony and counterpoint the other, in a finely judged performance that both refused to be hurried, let alone harried, and yet with seeming effortlessness maintained its forward impetus. It took us through contrast and conflict to something more equitable and, yes, civilised: something greatly needed in our present condition.

Friend/Maxwell Quartet - Haydn, Scottish folk music, and Mozart, 13 December 2020

St John’s, Waterloo

Image: Matthew Johnson Photographer

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op.74 no.1
Scottish folk music
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A major, KV 581

Anthony Friend (clarinet)

Colin Scobie, George Smith (violins)

Elliot Perks (viola)

Duncan Strachan (cello)

A highlight of my (late) summer was a visit to the Bandstand Chamber Festival in Battersea Park. For the dark nights, in every sense, of December, artistic director Anthony Friend has had the festival decamp a little further down the Thames to St John’s, Waterloo under the new guise of ‘Spotlight Chamber Concerts’. Very apt, too, the church in darkness, musicians spotlit in front of the altar steps.


The Maxwell Quartet’s concert (later joined by Friend on the clarinet) opened in arresting fashion, thanks to Haydn’s grand gesture—a simple perfect cadence, and yet…—to open his op.74 no.1. It is very much a ‘London’ quartet, written for the same public as those astonishing final dozen symphonies, and there seemed in these darkest of times something special indeed to hearing it in a city that has suffered so greatly not only this year but ever since Cameron’s infernal referendum. Keenness of playing encompassed civilisation and rusticity, detail and longer line, Haydn’s vision of humanity thus diverse and reconciled: a European union. I was struck by the concision of the whole, nowhere more so than in a development that, in performance as on the page, changes everything and yet has us return. The surprises, well-nigh Beethovenian, of the recapitulation, if we may call it that, afforded both delight and imperative to listen.


Cultivated innocence characterised the Andantino grazioso. Such dialectical reconciliation—not for nothing was Haydn Beethoven’s teacher—did not efface but rather brought into relief both the movement’s darker movements and the composer’s ever-astonishing powers of invention. Speaking of invention, what an extraordinary movement the Minuet is, here relished and communicated as such with evident love and understanding. Its swing said so much, as did the relaxation, finely judged, of its A major Trio. The finale fizzed with character, connoisseurship, and yes, invention. As in the first movement, performance made clear the richness of use to which Haydn puts his material. It was, again like the opening, impressive in a frankly symphonic sense that remained true to this mesmerising chamber music for Johann Peter Salomon, an earlier ‘citizen of nowhere’.


There remain—dare one even use that verb any more?—other unions for our political masters to break, not least that with us since 1707. At least for this evening, though, that could be postponed, the Maxwell players rewarding us with a little Scottish folk music, as arranged by fiddlers William Marshall and Isaac Cooper. In excellent command of the idiom, the players built and shaped both selections finely.


We were left in no doubt from the opening bars of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet that here was a very different composer from Haydn, or indeed his eighteenth-century Scots counterparts. Lyricism of a quality it is difficult not to think divine—and why would one try?—is the order of the day, and so it sounded, Anthony Friend’s liquid tone just the tonic for cares we had (almost) left without the church. Distinction of method in so many ways was communicated with an effortlessness, however apparent, however illusory, that remains nonetheless crucial to so much Mozart. The development sounded every bit as exploratory as Haydn’s, the recapitulation both returning and venturing into new, Così-like territory. That sense was furthered in a reading of the Larghetto of rare hushed intimacy, clarinet first among equals—until another instrument was. The Minuet brought ebullient contrast that yet already hinted at a vulnerability, even anguish, given fuller voice in the first trio. The second trio’s serenading chimed with both tendencies. Both uniting and providing new points of departure, Mozart’s finale once again proved the very model of Classical variation writing, transformative in a fashion difficult not to consider operatic. For, in those most European of music, wistful and joyful, we both recognise ourselves and a world now sadly, even tragically, unattainable.


Hopes to attend the final two concerts in this series, scheduled for later this week, have now been dashed by the latest preposterous restrictions. Shops, gyms, even saunas remain open; a Christmas massacre looms; yet Covid-secure chamber concerts are once again forbidden. However, there is spotlighting at the end of the tunnel; Steven Isserlis and Angela Hewitt will reschedule their recitals. Perhaps it was too much to hope that my final concert music of 2020 would be Beethoven’s opp.110 and 111. As I have recently written elsewhere, this virus-ridden world remains obstinately deaf to the music it most needs to hear. If anything can have us retain hope, it is the composer of the Ninth Symphony, with which I heard out 2019. Let us hope; let us pray.