Esfahani - Scarlatti, 14 October 2022

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Sonatas: in F, Kk.296; in F, Kk.297; in F minor, Kk.466; in F sharp minor, Kk.25; in G minor, Kk.12; in C minor, Kk.11; in F, Kk.6; in F minor, Kk.19; in F, Kk.106; in F, Kk.107; in D minor, Kk.552; in D minor, Kk.553; in C minor, Kk.116; in G, Kk.470; in G, Kk.471; in E minor, Kk.263; in E, Kk.264; in A, Kk.24; in D minor, Kk.32

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

One of the first professional concerts I heard—it may even have been the first—was of Scarlatti sonatas on the harpsichord, at the suggestion of my childhood piano teacher, with whom I learned a good few along the way. I cannot now remember who the harpsichordist was and am not even sure of the venue; oddly, I think it may have been Rotherham’s Civic Theatre rather than the Arts Centre (part of a wonderful brutalist complex, since demolished, that included the town’s Central Library from where I borrowed many of my first books and, later, first musical cassettes and scores). Scarlatti loomed relatively large in the early repertoire I was occasionally allowed to try out on my teacher’s spinet. As soon, though, as I started organ lessons in my teens, my adoration for Bach somewhat crowded out contemporaries. Not that I have or had no interest in Scarlatti, Handel, Rameau, Couperin, and many others, but I am reasonably sure I have never been to an all-Scarlatti recital since. I have no idea how I might react today to what I heard as a schoolboy in Rotherham—I assume I am not imagining the whole thing—but I can say that this immersive experience from Mahan Esfahani, performed without an interval, much of it without as much as a break between pieces, was quite a journey on which to be taken.   

Over ninety minutes or so, with a couple of bonus D minor sonatas as encores, Esfahani’s selection covered a broad range, whilst still of course only encompassing a small proportion of Scarlatti’s output in this genre. (One might reasonably go so far as to call the Scarlatti sonata close to a genre in itself. It does not spring out of nowhere, nor does it lead to nowhere, but few if any binary forms are quite like it.) From the outset, we knew that this was music internalised, so that these performances, without a hint of the wilful, could in a positive sense be like no others. Freedom was not licence; rather, it offered a guiding thread that enabled a particular sequence of works to emerge in a particular way, with fresh performances that would have been otherwise in a different order, let alone a different day. For instance, in the first pair of works, in F major, harmonic rhythm that was allied to, yet never dictated by, metre was the frame for a relish in the composer’s obstinacy and graciousness alike: aristocratic in the best sense. As the recital progressed, repeated figures, sequences scales, ornaments and other building blocks emerged as characteristic, yet varied, nothing so mundane as a cliché. The illusion of dynamic contrast was conjured—except, of course, that it was not always an illusion. 

A fascinating sequence of minor-key works communicated a proper sense of Affekt, quite distinct from later tonal understandings, associative or otherwise. Where I as a teenager had been tempted to the maudlin, here this music was brought to life, without any of the irritating, nonsensical reductionism of many so-called ‘Baroque’ musicians who would claim all music of the period is a dance. This is a world with as many options as ours, and so too it sounded here, whilst making the sum of those options more than the sum of its parts. Continuities and discontinuities, and the way they fit together, offered here and elsewhere courtly dignity and allure, and a fine sense of caprice. Crossing of hands, leaning appoggiaturas, agogic accents, fanfares that spoke of a world beyond the keyboard, and magical moments of suspense expertly punctured led towards a final sequence of sonatas that built in gravity and abandon, tempting us to think each one the last, until a successor twisted the screw a little further. Something darker, mysteriously Mediterranean characterised the final programmed work, the perfect response to its predecessor’s abandon. Programming and performance worked as one.

Esfahani - ‘Bach: Before and After’, 21 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Pachelbel: Fantasia ex dis
Georg Böhm: Partita on ‘Wer nun den lieben Gott lässt walten’
Pachelbel: Chaconne in D major
Samuel Scheidt: Allemande: ‘Also gehts also stehts’, SSWV 137
Sweelinck: Fantasia cromatica; Six Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’
Johann Kuhnau: Frische Clavier-Früchte: Sonata no.6 in B-flat major
C.P.E. Bach: Sonata in G minor, Wq.65/17
Johann Wilhelm Hässler: Grande Gigue in D minor, op.31
W.F. Bach: Sonata in D major, F 3

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

I have been to recitals by Mahan Esfahani when I have known, or rather been acquainted with, all the music; only, I think, though, when the programme has been devoted to Bach (and not even always then). More often than not, there has been a good part of the programme that was entirely new to me. In this case, all but three pieces were. What a varied conspectus of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music this was, both as works and in their performance.

Pachelbel’s Fantasia ex dis offered a bejewelled portal. Clear where it was heading but always with time to admire the view, to make a telling agogic point, Esfahani’s performance offered the ideal introduction. A similar balance was struck in Georg Bohm’s Partita on ‘Wer nun den lieben Gott lässt walten’. Sparing, typically intelligent use of two manuals, in tandem with imaginative, meaningful changes of registration furthered character and progression. Rhetoric was stronger, more fantastical in one variation, in which registration altered after (almost) every phrase. Pachelbel’s D major Chaconne is more virtuosic, perhaps a little lighter in style. (Bach’s example can mislead.) Esfahani relished its potentialities, the piece’s seeds growing into a fine tree indeed. 

For the next set, we moved to Samuel Scheidt’s Allemande, ‘Also gehts also stehts’. Hearing such variation in variation writing, as it were, proved both illuminating and frankly enjoyable, Esfahani teasing out and communicating the music’s secrets. Sweelinck’s Fantasia cromatica, chronological distance notwithstanding, seemed to me to come closest of all the works to that of Bach—though I suspect that says at least as much about my own conception of Bach as the composer’s own self-understanding and practice. At any rate, its darkly chromatic world, unmistakeably of the North, and dazzling instrumental drama in an almost Brahmsian sense (again betraying my own prejudices!) proved richly satisfying. The same composer’s Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ offered yet another varied variational journey, Esfahani ever the enlightened guide. The nice sense of return at the close here was echoed in the last of the five movements of Johann Kuhnau’s B-flat Sonata. Bach’s predecessor as Thomaskantor offered music that was catchy, exuberant, and much more besides. Architecture was keenly communicated, as was detail, the two clearly linked and mutually reinforcing. 

The second half of the programme took us beyond Bach, or rather beyond Johann Sebastian. Two of his sons and one of his grand-pupils were heard, each with pleasure (certainly by me). Carl Philip Emanuel Bach’s 1746 G minor Sonata opened in declamatory fashion, with a heightened sense of musical theatrics and well-nigh kinetic energy. Wild yet ultimately coherent and disciplined, this first movement only underlined the composer’s reputation for avant-gardism. A true Adagio, albeit with typically clever complications, led to a finale that both mediated and concluded. Many, I know, are sceptical about CPE Bach’s modernity, but it remains real and admirable to me. Johann Wilhelm Hässler’s piece offered enjoyable light relief as well as opportunity for virtuosic display. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s 1745 D major Sonata was for me a fascinating discovery. A first movement imbued, not unlike the music of his brother, with nervous energy prepared the way for an Adagio just as restless in its way, prior to a lovely, galant ‘au revoir’ in its finale, Esfahani a compelling advocate throughout. For an encore, we headed south, to Domenico Scarlatti’s B minor Sonata, K.87, in an Apollonian reading that acknowledged yet never exaggerated discord beneath the surface.

Esfahani - Rasmussen, Berio, Srnka, Cage, and Abbasi, 17 January 2019

Milton Court Concert Hall

Sunleif Rasmussen: Quadroforone no.1 (2018, world premiere)

Berio: Rounds (1965)

Miroslav Srnka: Triggering (2018)

Cage: HPSCHD (1967-9): 'Solo VII'

Anahita Abbasi: Intertwined Distances (2018, UK premiere)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Electronic Music Department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (electronic realisation)

Images: Mark Allan/Barbican

Now this is what I call a harpsichord recital programme. We have all the time in the world to hear more Bach, Rameau, Byrd, et al., and shall very happily do so. But what could be more important than to establish and, just as important, to strengthen the instrument’s standing as an instrument of the present? This, moreover, was what I should call a harpsichord recital performance too. In such a situation, one can all too readily take virtuosity and musicianship for granted, concentrating, as is only natural, on the music ‘itself’. It may be unnatural, but it is also unfair, for nothing does new music a greater service, alas, than well-meaning yet incompetent performance. Such were the circumstances in which Pierre Boulez founded the Domaine musical. Let us steer clear of the cul-de-sac of ‘discipleship’ and say that Boulez has many successors. Mahan Esfahani certainly took his place among them in this Milton Court recital.

Sunleif Rasmussen’s Quadroforone no.1, a Barbican commission, received its world premiere. It is intended to be the first – as the numbering may have implied – in a series of four pieces that will set a live instrument against recorded, transformed sounds of itself. Ironically, or perhaps not, my first impression, prior to hearing any electronic transformation, was the unadulterated sound of Esfahani’s instrument: very much a modern instrument, in a grand line we might trace back at least to Wanda Landowska. What struck me throughout the twenty minutes or so of the performance was above all a sense of material turning around, not just in the spatial realisation, although that must have played a part, and of never quite repeating: a spiral, then, at least to this confirmed, even obsessive Hegelian. Electronics conveyed a sense, almost old-fashioned, of a round: interesting, and perhaps noteworthy, that that rather than ‘canon’ was the word that first came to mind. Confrontation and integration alike between solo instrument and electronic at times suggested a reinvention before our ears of a Baroque concerto. Then came a slower section, apparently, according to the programme, entitled ‘Nocturne’, in which a duet between hands, between manuals, co-existed, indeed interacted, with duetting between soloist and electronics. There was a sense of unwinding: again circular, spiralling, but downwards. Gathering pace once again, upwards (even when not in pitch), the music arrived at a final section, seemingly going nowhere but going nowhere interestingly. Harmonies and hierarchies of hearing continued to reproduce themselves, albeit with ever greater difficulty, until – nothing.

Luciano Berio’s classic Rounds followed, our early music for the evening. Square notes and round notes, turning the page around, upside down too: it emerged in contrast very much as a successor to, and/or precursor of, Rasmussen’s piece. The delicacy of playing and writing, silence included, registration changes telling, offered a keen sense of the ludic. But if procedures were audible – rightly, helpfully audible – they were never the music ‘itself’, any more than in Berg. Wit of work and performance alike proved fleeting in the best sense.

Miroslav Srnka’s Triggering appears to be relatively scant in its notation. (I am judging simply from Esfahani’s typically engaging, informative spoken introduction, since I have seen the scores for none of these pieces, save the Berio – and that many years ago.) About 85 per cent, we were told, of the instruction to the performer is in pitch classes alone: time or better times, central to the composer’s conception, may in his words, be ‘political, social, private, metaphorical, sporting, humorous, existential, climatic’. In this piece, he attempts ‘to construct all these different times – the instants and the betweentimes – until the mechanism of playing dissolves and the times change in nature.’ That ‘instant’ lies between the pressing of the key and the plectrum plucking the string: very much, then harpsichord music. Electronics come later – in the guise of e-bows attached to the strings of a second harpsichord – but even in the first of the eight short movements or sections, ‘Digital Wounds’, the digital binary being one of either plucking or not plucking, the low pitches speak in a fashion that does not sound entirely un-electronic; or so, at least it sounded in performance and listening. Esfahani’s extraordinary virtuosity, first over two manuals, and even over two harpsichords, was very much part of the theatre, but this was a theatre of musical drama, no ‘happening’. Major scales in ‘Major Rain’ again played with our notions of what was predictable: a connection, surely, with Rasmussen’s piece. We more or less ‘knew’ what would happen, but never quite: how extended would it be? In which direction would the ‘rain’ fall? What would the note values be? In sum, this seemed a highly visual work, in an almost programmatic sense, albeit for a digital, video age. Electronics came to evoke the unearthly, ‘historical’ world of the glass armonica, until work and performance alike subsided into silence – and, as the lights went down, darkness too.

John Cage’s ‘Solo VII’ from the installation, HPSCHD, is still more scantily notated – or rather not notated at all. His instruction is simply: ‘Practice and/or perform any composition(s) by Mozart. Amplitude and registration free.’ Esfahani chose the D minor Fantasia, KV 397/385g, and via an I Ching website, divined the parameters for questions he had previously defined. At which bar to start practising? Bar 57. At which point after the electronics had started, should he start practising (in multiples of ten seconds)? 110 seconds in. At what point should he stop practising? 2 minutes. And at which point after that, should he start to perform (in, if I recall correctly, multiples of thirty seconds)? 90 seconds. All the while, the electronic realisation by the Guildhall School’s Electronic Music Department, with its own questions and divinations, albeit founded upon the original, if you like ‘period’ electronics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ran its course: an absolute, set duration. There was wit, for instance when Esfahani pencilled something in (a fingering?) whilst practising, but it was also deadly serious: as surely Cage must be. It never came across as a joke, as whimsy. I was led to reflect on ways of listening, of being able to listen, of not listening too. A wonderfully free performance of the Mozart Fantasia unfolded, insofar as one could hear, far freer in tempo than I should ever have dared imagine, let alone convincingly despatched. Was that the point? The very question seemed beside the point; so too, perhaps, did any point.

Finally, we came to the United Kingdom premiere of Anahita Abbasi’s Intertwined Distances, a commission from Esfahani himself. Here, the quadrophonic electronics are taken from an improvisation (if I remember correctly!) Esfahani gave as part of a recital in San Diego. The composer plays with conceptions of distance, writing: ‘According to Merriam-Webster, distance is a separation in time, an extent of advance from a beginning; and in mathematics it refers to the degree or amount of separation between two points, lines, surfaces, or objects.’ How do they intertwine, then? How did they intertwine in time? Figures sounded generative and (almost) repetitive, sometimes simultaneously, yet (again) never quite predictably. A quasi-Ligetian swarm arose as the work gathered pace– probably more my seeking for ways to describe than an ultimately meaningful comparison – out of which electronic sounds emerged, whatever the truth of the material’s actual origins. Distance and dialogue, dialogue in distance: such seemed to be the crux of performance and listening as activity. There was, without doubt, an extraordinarily inventive musical imagination at work, but it was never merely invention: it was a sonic and instrumental drama that seemed somehow to summarise, to extend, and quite properly to question many of the tendencies we had heard so far. This was, then, a programme and performance of harpsichord music for the here and now.

Esfahani - Bach, 15 December 2018

Wigmore Hall

Four Duets, BWV 802-805

Praeludium et partita dei tuono terzo, BWV 833

Partita no.2 in C minor, BWV 826

Fantasia in C minor, BWV 906

Partita no.3 in A minor, BWV 827

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Fresh from a month-long Asian tour, Mahan Esfahani continued his Wigmore Hall Bach odyssey with a typically enlightening mix of the familiar, unfamiliar, and the reassigned. In the final camp fell the Four Duets from the third book of the Clavier-Übung. Although written for an organ collection, there is no reason why they should not be played on another keyboard instrument. I used to play them on the piano as well as the organ; Esfahani cites Ralph Kirkpatrick as a forerunner in his game of ‘musical larceny’. Whilst they might seem to offer – to the amateur – an ideal combination of absorbing musical interest and a lack of great technical challenges, such would be misleading. As Esfahani noted in a typically engaging and informative programme note, ‘their persistent two-voice structure so exposes the weaknesses of the player’ as to make ‘me regret this theft; it is something akin to kidnapping a very precious plant which can survive only on distilled water and the most expensive fertilisers.’ For what it is worth, performing them convincingly on their ‘original’ instrument, the organ, is no lazy stroll in the park either.

It was clear from this performance that Esfahani had thought long and hard, experimented long and hard, about how best to play them on his instrument, whether generically or specifically (coming from the workshop of Jukka Ollikka in Prague, ‘based on a free adaptation of theories from the Berlin court builder Michael Mietke (170) with a carbon fibre composite soundboard designed especially by Mr Ollikka himself’). This was certainly no generic ‘keyboard’ performance, articulation, registration, and much else both considered and convincing. Changes in registration between the duets offered no mere contrast for the sake of it, but intelligent contrast, allied to or rather born out of the demands and possibilities of the material. The darkness of the first, almost as if to demonstrate the seriousness of Bach’s late (well, late-ish) counterpoint, married to meaningful flexibility of tempo announced a priority of searching, of questing, which, even in this most ‘finished’ of music, would be maintained, indeed furthered, throughout the recital. Bach’s intense chromaticism, for instance in the second, had no need of grotesque overemphasis: it spoke, in context, for itself. Likewise the relative galanterie of the third piece and the return to gravity of utterance in the fourth. Neither Bach nor his interpreter could justly be accused of failure to approach the task from a multiplicity of standpoints. Such, then, augured well for the rest of the evening.

I confess to never having heard the Praeludium et partita dei tuono terzo, BWV 833, previously – or, at the very least, not being able to recall having done so. It exists, it would seem, only in the hand of Johann Christoph Bach the Elder (the oldest surviving brother of Sebastian), and thus is marked, at least in the score, by that Bach’s ‘highly individual approach to ornamentation and embellishment which may or may not have anything to do with JS Bach’s own practices’ (Esfahani). I have not had chance to consult a score, so any comments are based on the one-time evidence of my ears alone: just like hearing a piece of new music, then, which experience always brings its own excitement as well as shortcomings. Much sounded, perhaps unsurprisingly, very much in the French style: the opening Prelude in particular, albeit not without German accent. The following Allemande put me a little in mind of Handel: not that I should necessarily have identified him as the composer, but perhaps more a matter of common influence. Again, ornamentation and indeed performance may be part of the matter here. The bright contrast (registration again, but again not only registration) of the Courante offered a certain, far from inappropriate brashness, not least in Esfahani’s strong rhythmic drive: this is, after all, a young man’s music, coming as it does from some time before 1708. Woven like a superior (Gobelins?) tapestry, the Sarabande and – I think, not having movement titles and details to hand – double led to a strangely operatic closing Air, whose style looked back to the seventeenth century and in some respects perhaps even earlier still. Bach was not always ‘Bach’ – which should interest rather than disquiet us.

With the second of the Six Partitas, that in C minor, BWV 826, we returned to more familiar ground. The advent of the opening Sinfonia brought C MINOR in unquestionable upper case to our consciousness: not so much with the baggage that key might entail, but with so many of its expressive opportunities. Its central Andante music, freer yet inevitable, confirmed a well-nigh Schoenbergian (Beethovenian, if you prefer) dialectic between freedom and organisation, only furthered in the movement’s headlong closing fugal section. Thoughtful intensity, arising out of the notes, certainly not appliqué, yet arising out of a broader culture too on the part of composer and performer alike (one would hope, audience too), characterised the ensuing Allemande and Courante. Similar in some respects, quite different in others, they fulfilled their roles admirably both in themselves and as part of the suite’s grander scheme. Inward, even wayward, yet without excessive introversion, the Sarabande did likewise. The busy quality of the Rondeaux and closing Capriccio was certainly not idle; rather, it offered a point of observation and, to a certain extent, focus of contrast to the preceding dance’s harmonic richness. The resolute quality Esfahani brought to that final movement, very much a finale here in character, would surely have been admired by at least a couple of Richters: Karl and Sviatoslav alike.

The C minor Fantasia, BWV 906, seemed to take up, interval notwithstanding, where the Partita had left off, prior – crucially – to going its own way. Again, Esfahani used imaginative, telling registration to delineate structure, but that was only part of his developmental strategy in a performance that seemed very much to partake in nineteenth-century visions of the Bachian daemon. It was not Liszt, of course, but it – whether ‘it’ be work, performance, audition, or ideally a conversation between all three – spoke a little in his tongue or at least his spirit.

The A minor Partita, BWV 827, was the final work on the programme. Esfahani spoke of understanding this work in particular as a work of questioning rather than answering – a view reflected or, better, expressed in the harmonic restlessness of the opening Fantasia. Likewise, albeit with very different character, in the Allemande, whose connections, however intangible, to the first movement were felt as strongly as those to the ensuing Corrente, whose fantasy seemed necessitated by what had gone before. Once again, that dialectic between freedom and organisation proved properly generative. I found myself quite taken by the nagging yet elegant persistence of the opening bars of the Sarabande, thereafter by its unfolding, both unexpected and, in retrospect, inevitable. Excited relief characterised the Burlesca and Scherzo, the latter possessed of a curious obsessiveness. Taken attacca, the closing Gigue responded, with a still more heightened sense of necessity, in more involved fashion. Relished and dramatised, it dazzled from within. In response to that, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel’s ‘Bist du bei mir’, long attributed to Bach, proved a charming encore. Bach can sometimes be ‘Bach’ even when he is not.

Proms 29 and 30 – Swedish CO/Dausgaard - ‘The Brandenburg Project’: Bach, Turnage, Hillborg, Caine, Neuwirth, Dean, and Mackey. 5 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046

Mark-Anthony Turnage: Maya (2014, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BWV 1048

Anders Hillborg: Bach Materia (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.5 in D major, BWV 1050

Uri Caine: Hamsa (2015, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.4 in G major, BWV 1049

Olga Neuwirth: Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016-17, UK premiere)

Brett Dean: Approach – Prelude to a Canon (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV 1047

Steven Mackey: Triceros (2015, UK premiere)

Fiona Kelly, Claire Chase (flutes)

Per Gross, Katarina Wiedell (recorders)

Lisa Almberg, Daniel Burstedt, Mårten Larsson (oboes)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Göran Hülphers, Terése Larsson (horns)

Pekka Kuusisto, Antje Weithaas (violins)

Brett Dean, Tabea Zimmermann (violas)

Maya Beiser (cello)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Uri Caine (piano)

Swedish Chamber Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

It is always a fascinating prospect to hear contemporary and indeed earlier composers respond to repertoire works. Think of Mozart learning from and adding to Bach and Handel. Last year in Vienna, I heard newly commissioned responses from eight composers to Le Marteau sans Maître, interspersed with the movements of Boulez’s work. This summer, Bach’s were the masterpieces, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra having commissioned six composers to write companion pieces to each of his Brandenburg Concertos. Rarely if ever will all contributions be of equal stature or prove equally satisfying to different tastes. Such was certainly not the case, in my experience, with the responses to Boulez; nor was it to be so here. Alas, only two of the new works seemed to me to have been worth the effort; the other four proved at best over-extended and, in at least two cases, probably more, meretricious. Still, even in somewhat variable performances of the ‘originals’, Bach, as Boulez would have put it, remained.

First up was the first of Bach’s set of six. Its first movement was light, airy, not unlike Claudio Abbado’s late way with these pieces with his Orchestra Mozart, if not quite so secure. Although there was much to admire in the playing of the Swedish CO under Thomas Dausgaard, here and elsewhere, rarely if ever did I gain the feeling of being truly grounded in Bach’s music; it seemed as much an excursion to them as, perhaps still more so than, the new works. Still, it breathed – just about, and was well balanced, in itself no mean feat. What a relief, moreover, it was to hear modern horns in this music. The following Adagio enjoyed some delectable oboe playing; I also loved the dark, velvety bassoon tone. Its successor danced freely – not, thank goodness, in the bizarrely dogmatic ‘This is a Baroque dance and this is how a Baroque dance must sound and be experienced, exterminate, exterminate…’ so prevalent in certain circles. Mahan Esfahani, playing harpsichord continuo throughout the first concert, never failed to work with Bach’s harmony, to call it by name and thus create it anew (if I may slightly misquote Adorno). If certain ‘effects’ in the Polacca irritated, the closing dances nevertheless beguiled. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Maya perplexed – that is, before it merely bored. Beautifully played by all concerned, not least cello soloist, Maya Beiser, its status as response, companion piece, anything at all to the Bach work was less unclear than absent. It did not employ the same musical forces, had no connection, at least so far as I could hear, to its material; worst of all, though, it came across as a frankly cynical prolongation of what might have been a couple of minutes or so of television serial mood music. Vaguely blues-y at times, vaguely threnody-like, it might initially have filled a gap in a concert programme; soon, however, I developed a suspicion that the gap would have been better left unfilled.

Bach’s Third Concerto offered cultivated modern playing, albeit with very small forces. (Is that really a sensible way to treat this music in the Royal Albert Hall?) It was not hard-driven as so many authenticke performances tend to be, even if it lacked a good deal in gravitas. Again, it was the continuo playing that afforded the greatest pleasure, grounding the harmony and rendering Bach’s form dynamic. About Anders Hillborg’s ‘new’ second movement, the less said the better. On a slow day, it might, I suppose, have taken five minutes to jot down. The third movement (Bach’s, thank God) was very fast yet not unreasonably so; something of Bach’s spirit and humanity remained. Hillborg’s Bach Materia opened intriguingly, out of the orchestra’s tuning up. Alas, it was all downhill thereafter. The music moved into vaguely minimalist churning out of violin arpeggios from soloist Pekka Kuusisto, offered ‘effects’ aplenty, from silly chirping noises to shouted interjections as Kuusisto and double bass player Sebastien Dubé improvised. The collaboration showed Dubé to better advantage than Kuusisto. Should unpleasant wailing be your thing, however, there was some of that too. Again, the sense was of filling in time that really had no need to be filled in. When bits of Bach returned, there was some enjoyment to be had, soon not so much dashed as dissipated. Attempts to be ‘right on’ rarely prove edifying; this, frankly, was just a mess.

The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was for me the unquestioned highlight of the first concert and indeed of the Bach performances as a whole. Here, it seemed, the soloists, especially Esfahani, took the lead rather than Dausgaard and turned what they were doing into a performance in the living, emphatic sense. The first movement was lively and breathed, its contours and formal dynamism not only apparent but felt, experienced. Esfahani’s way with the cadenza not only impressed, but reminded us what astounding music this is. It would be foolish to imitate Furtwängler, even on the piano, but his incredible recorded 1950 performance from Salzburg remains the model here. Esfahani proved a worthy successor. The second movement was true Kammermusik: flexible, beautifully balanced, with all the give and take one might have hoped for between harpsichord, flute (Fiona Kelly), and especially violin (Antje Weithaas). Bach’s closing Allegro danced with far greater ease than any of those aforementioned self-conscious ‘Baroque Dance Lessons’ and, naturally, went far deeper. These were not soloists who, again to borrow from Adorno, said Bach yet meant Telemann. Its contrapuntal complexity was embraced; that complexity embraced both performers and audience in return. It was perhaps a little puzzling not to have a ‘response’ that involved the harpsichord, but Uri Caine’s Hamsa was doubtless written with himself in mind as piano soloist. There is no doubting the quality of his pianism; his tone was often to die for. Hamsa, named after the Arabic word for ‘five’, seemed to me sincere and ambitious. It certainly confronted Bach in quotation, allusion, and, in its way, vaguely neo-Classical procedure. Again, it seemed far too long for its material, whose treatment began to sound merely arbitrary. Perhaps I simply did not ‘get’ Caine’s aesthetic. There was certainly no gainsaying the quality of the performances here.

Bach remained, of course, and endured into the second concert. The Fourth Brandenburg Concerto reverted somewhat to the more tentative or at least constricted ‘early-ish’ style of the First and Third, at least so far as the orchestra and Kuusisto were concerned. Per Gross and Katarina Widell on recorders, however, offered infectious enthusiasm. Dausgaard seemed overly keen to mould the central Andante; its fussiness continued into the finale, which alas, had something of that ‘This is a Baroque Dance’ quality to it. A somewhat disappointing performance, then, prefaced Olga Neuwirth’s brilliant Aello – ballet mécanomorphe, to my ears by far the strongest of the new works. In three movements, like its companion, it immediately spoke with the tones – in every sense – of a serious composer at work. Figures remembered from Bach, whether melodic, rhythmic, or both, sounded as if trapped in a machine. Or were they actually perfectly happy to be there? Claire Chase on flute, shadowed by two muted trumpets, offered breathtaking virtuosity, set against an ever-changing ensemble that included synthesised harpsichord and glass harmonica as well as portable typewriter. Machines can be fun as well as serious – indeed sometimes especially when they are serious. So too can Bach. An almost Berio-like malaise, material dragged down into something mysteriously different yet related, led, toward the end of the first movement, into a reinvention of Bach and Neuwirth in almost jazzy style (all the more convincing for making no claims to be jazz ‘itself’). The glass harmonica soundworld of the second movement, however ‘artificial’ – what art, by definition, is not? – seemed to incite more ‘traditional’, arabesque-like flute writing which yet did not lose its ‘mechanical’ edge. Jesting with form – or perhaps simply my lack of understanding! – had me think for a while we were embarked upon a transition to a finale in which Bach would reassert himself, only to realise that ‘transition’ had been the finale along. I very much look forward to hearing it again.

Brett Dean’s Approach – Prelude to a Canon was written to preface the Sixth Concerto. Its opening busy counterpoint seemed to evoke, in melody and harmony, a Bach who may or may not have been ‘real’. Different moods, never predictable, whether ludic or songful, prevailed at different times, sometimes suggesting a more ‘modern’ conception of double concerto for the composer and fellow violist, Tabea Zimmermann, sometimes very much a reinvention of Bach’s own terms. Emotional and intellectual tension was often coincident; when not, the disparity proved equally suggestive. If I responded more strongly to Neuwirth’s piece, there was no doubting the accomplishment of Dean’s either. Bach emerged from its final bars. Again, my ears had been tricked; I had expected another section of Dean. This is a very difficult work to bring off. However, if I found the first movement unreasonably fast, Bach’s dark colours nevertheless shone through (or whatever the more appropriate verb for darkness here would be). The outer movements benefited from being Dean and Zimmermann taking the lead as soloists; the central Adagio ma non tanto seemed less certain in direction.

Bach bade farewell with his Second Brandenburg Concerto. It was hard-driven and light-textured in the now fashionable way. Nevertheless, balance came across very well: no mean feat in this of all works. Perhaps the highlight was the central Andante: not, I hasten to add, because the excellent Håkan Hardeberger was not playing, but because it flowed more freely, again taken as chamber music. I am afraid I could not get on with the machine-like approach to the finale. Even Stravinsky, I imagined, might have asked Dausgaard and company to calm down a little. That said, it helped pave the way for Steven Mackey’s Triceros, which followed without a break, a held trumpet note for transition. Its initial (post-)minimalism passed amiably enough. It certainly came across in polished, even accomplished fashion when contrasted with the offerings by Turnage and Hillsborg. Again, the aesthetic is one to which I find it difficult to respond, so I shall not say too much, other than again to say that it could have done with being half, even a third of the length. Note-spinning may have been the way of many a sub-Telemann composer; it was never Bach’s. Bach, however, remained – and always will.

Esfahani - Bach, 19 June 2018

Wigmore Hall

Clavier-Büchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Nine Little Preludes, BWV 924-932

Toccata in E minor, BWV 914

Toccata in D minor, BWV 913

Capriccio on the Departure of his Most Beloved Brother, BWV 992

Clavier-Büchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Five Little Preludes, BWV 939-943

English Suite no.6 in D minor, BWV 911

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Mahan Esfahani opened my ears – and mind – not only to Bach on the harpsichord, but to the instrument itself. With this Wigmore Hall recital, he continued to do so. It was certainly not that I had ever thought Bach that ‘must’ be performed on the piano; that would be as absurd as saying that it must be performed on any other instrument(s). (Not that that prevents many from making such an absurd claim.) However, with a few exceptions, such as recordings from Wanda Landowska and Ralph Kirkpatrick, I had heard few interesting performances: performances that treated the music in anything more than naïve archaeological fashion. If you are neither able nor willing to hear the Schoenberg in Bach, just as much as the Bach in Schoenberg, then you might as well give up. If only the sectarian ayatollahs of ‘authenticity’ would – or indeed those who present an image founded upon silly hairstyles and other carefully manufactured ‘quirks’. Esfahani, however, with his insistence on the harpsichord as a living instrument, at home in Xenakis as Bach, in Ligeti as Byrd, shows us not that the choice of instrument is irrelevant; of course it is not. Esfahani shows us, as he did once again here, that he is a musician worthy of the supreme challenges with which Bach confronts him – and us.

Nine Little Preludes from the Clavier-Büchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach made for a wonderful overture: not unlike, perhaps, a selection from Boulez’s Notations, for another instrument (about which I shall now shut up). There was a sense less of a conspectus, of a summa – this is not the 48 – but of new paths opening up: not least in the ninth, left incomplete in work and performance, the break theatrical in the best sense, a curtain-raiser rather than something applied from outside. Esfahani played these little pieces as a set, tonal progression again emerging from within: a sign of freedom, not a straitjacket. This is not the age of the Classical sonata, but of the suite (all or mostly ‘in’ a single key): progression means something different here. It means something nevertheless, and holds implications both historical and musical.

Landowska’s style and indeed that of Willem Mengelberg came to mind in the E minor Toccata. I say ‘style’, but really I mean ‘spirit’ – not that one can or should dissociate style and idea, as Schoenberg would warn us. This, I felt, was a performance I should like to have given, if only I had the technical and indeed musical facility to do so. Esfahani revelled in the young Bach’s music, never trying to turn it into older Bach; why should he? Percussive moments seemed almost to suggest Scarlatti; indeed, there was more than a little of the Mediterranean, or rather a German’s longing for the Mediterranean, to the performance. Perhaps I am sentimentalising, or applying my own preoccupations to what I heard. This was a performance open to personalisation, though – in the best sense. And Bach sounded, quite rightly, at least as radical as Ligeti. A bravura performance of the D minor Toccata followed. Following a slightly improvisatory opening, it teased and charmed; the performance compelled the music to speak, not unlike a recitativo accompagnato. This was Bach as generative as Beethoven or Brahms, albeit in somewhat different ways. It was anything but austere, the dialectic between freedom and organisation as spellbinding as it would be in any later composer, Schoenberg included.

Registration choices truly rang the changes – musical changes, no mere ‘effects’ – in a performance of the Capriccio on the Departure of his Most Beloved Brother that permitted of many standpoints or, perhaps better, ways in. Roots in earlier music came to life: living traditions in themselves. Chromaticism grew out of simple, diatonic beginnings. Something Italianate or at least ‘southern’ – Scarlatti again a kinsman? – sang in the exultation of homecoming. But it was Bach, and only Bach, who spoke, sang, and told of the glory of God in the fugue. Old ‘debates’ about programme music refuse to die, at least in the popular imagination; surely such music and performances ought to kill them off forever. It is never either/or.

Five further Preludes, BWV 939-43, opened the second half, Esfahani beginning very much in medias res. They sounded – regardless of questions concerned their ‘authenticity’ – as jewels in a Webern-like suite. Whoever wrote them, their quality spoke for itself; as, at least in performance, did their diversity in unity.

A Prelude in every sense opened the Sixth English Suite. We heard, experienced a youthful, exhilirating representation of chaos: something I fancied both Landowska and Alfred Cortot would have appreciated. The Allemande and Courante seemed almost to function as secular(ish) – not that the distinction between sacred and secular is remotely meaningful for Bach, or indeed at all – versicle and response. Redemption seemed almost at hand, if not through our own works. The intrinsic grandeur of the Sarabande and its Double was released in a fashion that seemed haunted by an earlier ‘Englishness’: Purcell, perhaps, or Lawes. My expectations were confounded – in a good way – in the Gavottes, taken at quite a lick and all the better for it. Interplay between hands told a story just as it would in Liszt or Webern. The Gigue danced in, not despite, its almost Bergian density. And then, a surprise: a Fantasy in C minor, written apparently when Bach was only fifteen years old. I was delighted to make its acquaintance. As ever with Bach, it looked backward and forward, those long, profound glances in mutual service. That, surely, should be how we strive to understand his music too; such was certainly the case here.

Esfahani - Bach, 21 December 2016

Wigmore Hall

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

What could be more capable of lightening our darkness on the longest night of the darkest year most of us have ever known, perhaps even of defending us from some of its perils and dangers, than the music of Johann Sebastian Bach? Mahan Esfahani’s searching exploration of the fathomless Goldberg Variations – one of the few Bach keyboard works of which I stood so much in awe and trepidation that I never dared touch, let alone learn it – certainly did a great deal to offer solace and nourishment, intellectual and spiritual.

 

The Aria, flexible, though never for the sake of mere flexibility, imparted a fine sense of a storyteller, a narrator: ‘Once upon a time’, or ‘Es war einmal’. Already, by the second variation, we heard the truth of Bach’s plan as outlined by Esfahani in his excellent programme note, by turns scholarly and winningly speculative. The first of ten groups of variations – genre-piece, virtuous piece, canon – was clearly upon us, even if we had not yet heard that first canon at the unison. One of the many strengths of the performance was that that truth related equally to the work and to its interpretation: not in a bald, formalistic sense, but so as to liberate the musical imagination. Indeed, the Canone all’Unisono might have been subtitled ‘The Joy of Canon’; for no one, not even Haydn, does joy better than Bach. (Just think, if you doubt me, of the opening of the Gloria and Sanctus to the Mass in B minor.)

 

As the variations unfolded, we heard lines intertwine, as if they were solo singers in a cantata, or a pair of oboes or other obbligato instruments. Such connection occasionally had me speculate about ‘meaning’, but not for too long, lest I miss the ‘purely’ musical drama. Formal, rather than expressive kinship, with Scarlatti’s keyboard music came to mind too. More than once, I thought of the earlier, apparently less complex world – relatively speaking – of the Brandenburg Concertos, and indeed of the later world of Max Reger’s transcriptions of those works. Sometimes, especially at moments like those, I could have sworn I heard a third hand; I did not see it though.

 

Dance rhythms enabled connections, then: across and beyond the keyboard repertoire. They played an equally important role structurally, delineating the narrative – and narrative was very much a strength here, I think – of the performance. So too, though, did the canonical writing. The Canone alla quarta spoke with a perfection worthy of Mozart, or perhaps better, suggested why Bach’s music, although not necessarily this very work, proved so transformative for the later composer.

 

And those harmonies! This is not ‘just’ counterpoint, as if the opposition ever made any sense whatsoever in Bach, or indeed in most great music… Mozart would surely have relished, just as Esfahani did, the turns to the minor mode, to his special key of G minor, and the chromaticism unleashed. The ‘black pearl’, as we shall always know it, post-Landowska, seemed to renew its mysteries before us. Registration, tempo, rubato, no one component, nor indeed their combination, seemed quite enough, splendidly navigated though all those interpretative challenges were, to explain the alchemy not only heard but experienced. (We must, as the soloist told us, be active, not passive, as listeners, just as we must be active to transform the world around us.) A labyrinthine Bach who looked to Berg, a ‘Bach The Progressive’ in an almost Schoenbergian sense, a ‘Bach The Subjective’ in an Adornian yet not-Adornian sense: all those and more recomposed the work before our ears. This heightened, ‘special’ quality was not only apt but necessary.

 

Relief thereafter ran through Esfahani’s fingers – and our hearing of them. Yet soon, a quality of proliferation, reminding me how much Boulez revered Bach, took on its own, not always relieving life. There was an almost Brahmsian satisfaction to the ‘Quodlibet’; its good nature suggested a different musical future, that of Haydn’s sonata forms, which might initially seem to have eclipsed Bach’s music, but not for long. The return of the Aria, though, was, quite rightly, both return and nothing of the sort. It framed, like the return of our tale to the world of the storyteller himself; it was the same, and yet different. There was here, in Bach’s music, I think, both a glint and a tear in the eye. ‘Die Zeit,’ as a distinguished lady once said in not entirely dissimilar mood, ‘die ist ein sonderbar Ding.’

 

Esfahani - Bull, Kalabis, D’Anglebert, Borup-Jǿrgensen, Saariaho, Kidane, and Scarlatti, 19 July 2016

Wigmore Hall

John Bull – Chromatic Pavan and Galliard, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’
Viktor Kalabis – Aquarelles, op.53
Bull – Fantasia XII
Jean Henry d’Anglebert – Pièces de clavecin: selection
Axel Borup-Jǿrgensen – Tarocco, op.124
Saariaho – Jardin Secret II, for harpsichord and tape
Daniel Kidane – Six Etudes (new version)
Scarlatti – Sonatas: in F major, Kk518; in G major, Kk259; in G major, Kk260; in A major and E major (Barcelona MS 1964 nos 34 and 31); in D minor, Kk516; in D minor, Kk517

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord).


One would be hard put to find a more varied programme from any instrumentalist today, or indeed in the past. It was indicative of Mahan Esfahani’s typically venturing spirit – and achievement – that this harpsichord recital, sadly my final visit to the Wigmore Hall of the 2015-16 season, was listed under both its Early Music and Baroque Series and its Contemporary Music Series. I think we can forgive him for the lack of Chopin and Liszt. Instead, we heard intriguing juxtapositions, the intent not, insofar as I could tell, didactic, but willing or, perhaps better, permitting the listener to make what connections and contrasts he or she would. Where unapologetically modernist artists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Maurizio Pollini would more often than not present us with a guiding, almost Schoenbergian Idea behind a programme, Esfahani’s approach might be considered more post-modern, which is not in any sense to imply unconsidered, far from it.

What a joy it was to start with John Bull, whose waywardness clearly attracts Esfahani. The Chromatic Pavan and Galliard seemed almost to look forward to Purcell, albeit with a knack for surprising one that made me think not so much of English contemporaries or successors, but of Gesualdo. (Would that we had more keyboard music from him!) There was great flexibility to the performance, but flexibility with reason that always announced itself. Both dances seemed to gather up complexity as they developed – in a fashion that, doubtless fancifully, put me in mind of Schoenberg and his school. Viktor Kalabis’s Aquarelles, which I had also heard Esfahani play at a Milton Court recital a little more than a year ago, opened with an intriguing hint of Poulenc (the Concert champêtre), but developed – that word again – in a very different way. There was perhaps more than a hint of Shostakovich to the second, marked ‘Andante’; what struck me, though, more than any mere correspondence, was the sense conveyed of what lay between and beneath the notes. There was an intimacy in the spareness of halting progress. The third and final piece proved kaleidoscopic and adamant in its rhythm, in turns and also together. Bull’s Fantasia XII emerged from it as if a cousin, which then proceeded upon its own, highly virtuosic, wonderfully realised way.

Five pieces from Jean Henry d’Anglebert’s 1689 collection followed: a ‘Prélude’, an ‘Air d’Apollon du Triomphe de l’Amour,’ an ‘Air ancient: Ou estes vous allé,’ ‘Les Songes agréables d’Atys’, and the ‘Passacaille d’Armide’. The opening Prélude was gravely rhetorical, or should that be rhetorically grave? And yet, it sounded full of light and shade. The airs were sung gracefully, kinship and differentiation both perceptible. The Lully ‘Passacaille’ was imbued with proper grandeur and impetus, which yet proved capable of more tender yielding.

The first half closed with two pieces of what we might consider to be Scandinavian modernism. First was Axel Borup-Jǿrgensen’s Tarocco. Its twists, turns, and above all, guiding thread were communicated with a winning sense of adventure. Logic and fantasy were revealed not so much as in competition but as two sides of the same musical coin. Kaaija Saariaho’s Jardin Secret II I found harder to get on with, but the fault may well have been mine. It opened in almost concertante fashion, but the relationship between harpsichord and tape seemed to be in a state of constant, or at least continuing, flux. Some of the rather strange electronic noises – the work was written using IRCAM technology – puzzled me in themselves, but that was perhaps the point. I was delighted, in any case, to have the opportunity to hear such music – music, I must admit, I had not even known existed, and which the ‘Early Music’ crowd would not touch with an authenticke bargepole.

A new version of Daniel Kidane’s Six Etudes, an earlier version given in that 2015 recital, opened the second half. Before looking at the programme, I was struck by the varying transformative techniques running throughout these six beautifully crafted miniatures. I was then delighted – and relieved – to see the composer’s own reference to an ‘inbuilt transformative aspect [which] also adds a playful nature to the pieces’. That was certainly how it sounded here, particular ‘problems’ set up – as is traditional with a ‘study’ – and explored within certain restrictive parameters. Cellular is probably not quite the right word – I have had no opportunity to read the score – but I am not sure that it was entirely the wrong word either. And yes, it was great fun to welcome back the hotel reception bell, wryly described by Kidane as ‘an external pitch’, in the sixth piece.

Finally, we heard several sonatas by Scarlatti. That in F major, Kk518, offered characteristic insistence but also variety of figuration, clearly, meaningfully brought out in performance. The turn to the tonic minor was splendidly, even heartrendingly, inward in quality. G major (Kk 259 and 260) proved warmer and, in the first sonata, perhaps gentler, also, I think, more exploratory. The second of those two sonatas offered relatively extrovert contrast, surprising both harmonically and melodically; Esfahani proved an expert judge, moreover, of its rhetoric. The two sonatas from a Barcelona manuscript, discovered by Barry Ife, may well have been receiving their modern premieres. They sounded very much as a pair here, their different key signatures notwithstanding: contrast and kinship, as in earlier works in the recital, were both apparent and to be questioned. There were, even by Scarlatti’s standards, some striking disjunctures to be relished in the E major sonata. The D major Sonata, Kk516, seemed at times to evoke the world of John Bull in its manner, at least before highly contrasting material took it along a quite different path. It struck a note of melancholic relief, Esfahani, having heard some of its material performed by Spanish folk musicians, taking it at a significantly slower tempo than marked. Keyboard fireworks returned in the closing D minor work, Kk517. And then, it was time for another, charming surprise: a Richard Rodney Bennett encore, Little Elegy.

Walker/Esfahani - Couperin, Quantz, Benda, Duphly, Rameau, and Philidor, 24 June 2016

Wigmore Hall

Couperin – Concert royal no.4 in E minor

Quantz – Two Capriccii
Franz Benda – Flute Sonata in E minor
Rameau – Pièces de clavecin en concerts: ‘Le Forqueray’
Jacques Duphly – Troisième livre de pièces de clavecin: ‘Le Forqueray’
Pierre Danican Philidor – Suite in E minor, op.1 no.5

Adam Walker (flute)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

 

This was my first visit to the Wigmore Hall’s series of late (10 p.m.) Friday evening concerts; I am sure that it will not be my last. It is a wonderfully civilised time to hear music, and these were wonderfully civilised performances of wonderfully civilised music. Adam Walker and Mahan Esfahani left one wanting more – which is just as it should be.

 

The fourth of Couperin’s Concert royaux made for an arresting and varied opening work. Its Prélude offered impetus and leisure; what could be more Versailles-like? Harmonies and melodies alike proved generative, but above all juste. The Allemande proved a playful response (even, I am attempted to suggest, quasi-liturgically and with an ear to the Boulezian future, a playful répons). Yet, as one listened, many of the same qualities as those heard in the preceding dance were revealed. The first Courante likewise presented continued affinity and difference: very much the trick in a Baroque Suite (so very different from the world of sonata form). In that ‘French’ dance, and in its ‘Italian’ counterpart, variegation was very much the thing. Character without exaggeration was to be heard and experienced; we were made, or perhaps better, gently yet firmly led, to listen. Dynamic contrasts, terraced and otherwise, were always meaningful, always tending towards musical explication. The Sarabande, graceful, but certainly not in a merely generic way, had me visualise knowing glances between dancing partners. A keen Rigaudon and a Forlane (opening with Esfahani tapping the rhythm on the case of the harpsichord) of impeccable rhythmic, and thus melodic, impetus proved both charming and exploratory.

 

Two Quantz Capriccii for solo flute followed. Walker truly transformed what can easily sound like mere studies – in a way, that is precisely what they are – into music, beautifully phrased and shaped. Esfahani joined him once again for Franz Benda’s E minor Sonata (published in 1756). Again, juste was the word that came to mind in the first movement, ‘Largo, mà un poco andante’: not just in mood, not just concerning tempo, but also with respect to its status as chamber music in the truest rather than just the default sense. The second movement, ‘Arioso, un poco allegro’ proved both quickened and quickening. It was absorbing to follow its twists and turns, our musicians the surest of guides. More than that, it was fun. Rhythm and harmony likewise worked together in the final ‘Presto’, goading each other to the conclusion.

 

Esfahani had the stage to himself for two ‘Le Forqueray’ pieces, the first by Rameau, the second by Jacques Duphly. In the former, rhetoric ‘spoke’, without the exaggeration sometimes marring performances of such music as music. Rather to my surprise, although I greatly enjoyed the busy quality of that piece, I found that Duphly’s perhaps went deeper. Or at least its mood was more thoughtful (the piece, that is, for both performances were excellent). Rubato was well judged: enhancing, enticing.

 

Pierre Danican Philidor’s E minor Suite concluded proceedings. The variety of flute colours summoned up by Walker from his instrument was not the least of the joys of the Prélude. Likewise the colours from Esfahani’s harpsichord. The players took their time, and the performance was all the better for it. Much the same might be said of the ensuing Allemande, although its mood and its mode of eloquence were, of course, quite different. The Sarabande took my mind back to that of Couperin, as much on account of subtle difference as kinship. The give and take between musicians ensured considerable variety, without sacrifice to a strong sense of the whole. The final Gigue did just what a Gigue should. Far less hard-driven than one too all often hears, this was a musical delight to conclude an evening of similar yet different delights.