Well, the musical year in Christchurch really seems to be getting underway with Concerts by the Christchurch Symphony, the Lansdown Festival, various lunchtime concerts and New Zealand Opera’s Tosca opens next week.
And last night brought us the first in the Christopher’s Classics chamber music series at The Piano with a superb recital from violinist Natalia Lomeiko and pianist Kirsten Robertson.
Natalia Lomeiko Photo: Jane Blundell
Ysaÿe (1838-1931) – Solo Violin Sonata No. 4 in E minor (Fritz Kreisler) (1927)
Last Saturday Natalia Lomeiko’s encore after her Bruch Concerto with the Christchurch Symphony, was a piece by Ysaÿe, the first movement of his 4th Sonata for solo violin, and last night we heard the whole work. Despite Ysaÿe’s six unaccompanied sonatas being intended as a sort of treatise of violin technique, what really came across with Natalia Lomeiko were the musical values. The double-stopping counterpoint, especially in that first movement, and the variety of left hand and bowing techniques were very much secondary to the poetry and humanity of the music.
Ysaÿe’s music doesn’t contain much in the way of immediately compelling or memorable material, but it grows on you with familiarity. Natalia Lomeiko’s performance of the 4th Sonata (dedicated to Fritz Kreisler) made a very persuasive case for this music, and she played it all so expressively that the technical difficulties were not at all obvious.
Debussy (1862-1918) – Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917)
But, before this, the concert actually started with Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last major work, written in 1917, just a year-or-so before his death. It’s a work that’s always referred to as being “for violin and piano” and I couldn’t help feeling, both here and later in the concert, that Natalia Lomeiko and Kirsten Robertson were not totally a partnership of equals. Kirsten Robertson certainly played with fluent ease and technical mastery, but she was very much an “accompanist”. Several factors contributed to this: firstly, the piano lid was only slightly open and, at times, I wished for a more open-hearted dialogue between the two instruments. There’s so much in the piano part of the Debussy Sonata that seemed last night to fade into the background. Another factor was that Natalia Lomeiko dressed like a star in a colourful full-length dress, while her pianist, dressed in subdued and unglamorous black, so that the feeling was very much of a dominant soloist with a supportive accompanist.
Even so, the performance was beautifully crafted and the attention to detail was masterful, with such variety of articulation and timbre – no opportunity was missed in bringing out every nuance of Debussy’s invention. Debussy was telling us a story with an endless series of plot-twists, dramatic situations and page-turning anticipation.
Strauss (1864-1949) – Violin Sonata in Eb Major, Op. 18 (1888)
The second part of the programme began with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata, and I realize that because I’m not very familiar with most of the works on last night’s programme, I’m reviewing the music as much as the performances.
Strauss was very much a contemporary of Debussy and, to some extent Ysaÿe, his Violin Sonata is a very early work (completed when he was just 22) and precedes those other two sonatas by 30 and 40 years respectively. And, again, I sensed a very strong feeling of story-telling in the music and the performances. Every movement reminded me of Strauss’s song-writing style with the violin singing Strauss’s long-spun melodies over a beautifully expressive piano part. The high-lying violin part could just as easily have been the soprano voice that Strauss was so fond of.
The second and third movements had several hints of the composer’s harmonic and texturally complex later style. But although I could hear nothing of the familiar Strauss style in the first movement, it did contain an absolutely gorgeous and immediately memorable idea. It came on the piano near the start and was then taken up by the violin in its beautifully projected upper register. And every time it recurred it was simply meltingly expressive in this superb performance from both Natalia Lomeiko and Kirsten Robertson.
Brahms (1833-1897) – F-A-E Sonata (Scherzo), (1853) – “Frie Aber Einsam” (“Free but lonely”) Joseph Joachim’s personal motto.
The last programmed work was Brahms’ F-A-E Sonata – a movement from a sonata jointly composed by Brahms, Schumann and one Albert Dietrich. And here was the one piece on the programme that I was completely familiar with, and brilliantly played it was too. This is the earliest of Brahms’ works for violin and piano and, at last we got much more of an equal partnership between the two musicians on stage, although, again, a fully open piano lid would have been even more effective. But this was one of those performances that totally dispelled memories of others; Natalia Lomeiko and Kirsten Robertson played with almost abandoned vitality and expressiveness. Brahms’ light-hearted scherzo danced and swirled with wonderful charisma, and the enthusiasm of the audience at the end was totally understandable.
And back they came with the best performance that I’ve ever heard of Elgar’s Salut d’Amour. I always find this piece almost saccharinely sentimental, but there was no sentimentality here at all last night, and the piece struck a real chord of genuine feeling with a fluid tempo and beautifully phrased contrasts and rubatos.
So – a really promising start to this year’s Christopher’s Classics series which, if it continues with this sort of quality, might even surpass last year’s series, which brought us some of the most inspiring music-making of the Christchurch concert season.
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
