United Kingdom Various – Romsey Chamber Music Festival 2024 [2]: Sophia Jin (soprano), Thomas Guthrie (baritone), Imogen Whitehead (trumpet), Laura Rickard, Emma Roijackers, Luke Hsu (violin), José Nunes, Joseph Griffin, Coby Mendez (viola), Rainer Crosett, Lydia Hillerudh (cello), James Trowbridge (double bass), Johan Löfving (guitar), Jennifer Walsh, Michael Cohen-Weissert, Caspar Vos (piano). Houghton Lodge Gardens, Romsey Abbey, St. Mark’s Church, Ampfield, United Reformed Church, Romsey, 24-30.6.2024. (CK)
Reading their biographies in the excellent programme book makes one realise how versatile these young professional musicians have to be, and how passionately committed they are, not least to taking music beyond the parameters of the established concert-going public; a crucial element of the Festival is their sessions in schools, inspiring and enabling young players and creating new audiences. Before Saturday’s Family Concert I watched Mexican multi-instrumentalist Coby Mendez working with a large group of children, teaching them a bull-trainer’s dance and some interesting things about Mexico along the way – stimulating their curiosity while encouraging them in communal activity. In the Family Concert itself, Lydia Hillerudh’s storytelling (from Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit) alternated with skilfully chosen musical extracts to create a beguiling journey for young and old.
The first half of Saturday evening’s concert consisted entirely of songs. Emma Roijackers and Michael Cohen-Weissert played a transcription for violin and piano of the Chant de Roxane from Szymanowski’s rather wonderful opera King Roger (I well remember an English National Opera performance under Mackerras in 1976, and Rattle’s BBC Proms performance in 1998). It is a highly atmospheric piece; the song itself is launched low on the G string, reappearing later in ghostly harmonics. Perhaps Laura might consider programming Szymanowski’s Mythes for violin and piano at a future Festival. Lydia then joined Michael in transcriptions for cello and piano of five of Alma Mahler’s songs – written around the time of her affair with Zemlinsky, her piano teacher, but not published until much later (as Laura trenchantly put it in her programme note, Mahler made it clear that there was only room for one composer in the family, and it wasn’t her). Lydia and Michael gave the music’s post-Wagnerian lushness full value.
Finally, in Jennifer Higdon’s song-cycle Love Sweet (Suite?) we had a singer: and what a singer! The five chosen Amy Lowell poems chart the trajectory of a relationship (rather like Lucinda Williams’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road): Sophia Jin’s airy, beautiful soprano flew through the whole cycle, like a bird – ecstatic, lyrical, free in the opening song, trapped inside the closed sonnet form in the last. It was stunning. So too was the instrumental accompaniment (Luke Hsu, violin; Lydia Hillerudh, cello; Caspar Vos, piano): light and joyful in the first song, violin and cello curling gently over starlit piano chords in the second, turning sinister in the later ones (Caspar ‘stopping’ the notes of the piano with a finger on the strings), fading finally like a dying heartbeat. An outstanding performance of a stand-out piece.
As Laura said in her introduction, it was a pity that Romsey regular Ziteng Fan was prevented by illness from coming this year – Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Op.47 is apparently her favourite piece to play. Michael Cohen-Weissert took her place, joined by Laura (violin), José Nunes (viola) and Rainer Crosett (cello). It was a gorgeous performance, worthy of Laura’s description as ‘a love-song to Clara’. A solemn introduction, and then off we went, in playing of such energy and joy! After the quicksilver Scherzo, a glowing introduction of the Andante cantabile theme on Rainer’s cello; wonderful, easeful music-making from all four players. The rushing figures that open the finale led to another great surge of joy: they seemed to relish playing this music even more than we enjoyed listening to it. Bravo!
The Festival’s final afternoon brought a dazzling recital on trumpet and flugelhorn by Imogen Whitehead, accompanied at the piano by Jennifer Walsh. Imogen had chosen pieces – nearly all of them recent or contemporary – with which she has a personal connection: either commissioned for her and Jennifer, written especially for her, or arranged for her; one was a world premiere. No less than three of the featured composers were present (including Imogen’s father, responsible for the lovely arrangement of O Waly Waly played by Imogen as her encore). I found myself wishing for the umpteenth time that I could bottle in words the zing, the zest of this concert: but you had to be there.
After Sally Beamish’s quirkily brilliant Trinculo (one of a set of musical portraits of characters from The Tempest) Imogen exchanged her trumpet for a flugelhorn, an instrument she champions. She and Jennifer played the second movement, entitled I’ll Love my Love, from Barry Mills’s Concerto for Trumpet and Flugelhorn, written especially for her; this was the first performance of an arrangement he had made for Imogen and Jennifer. It was a beautiful treatment of a Cornish folk song, introduced by a meditative passage for piano, and ended by the piano, its last few notes sustained to make a magical chord.
Barry Mills was in the audience, as was Charlotte Harding, whose To Stay Open for solo flugelhorn was given its world premiere. Charlotte is a keen sports fan, and the title has physical as well as psychological resonance: she describes it as ‘a work based on connection: skin to brass, soundwave to space, head to heart…the notions of ‘being open’ and ‘connection through creation’ are explored and joyfully celebrated.’ Imogen’s long-breathed flugel playing conjured up a sense of expansion, of open space (rather as Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man does); her upward runs generated a sense of growing energy and joy.
After Stephen Dodgson’s ten-minute Trumpet Concerto (his last composition) – with a complex, Stravinsky-like first movement, a quirky second like fragments of popular song and a virtuosic finale, light-hearted and insouciant – Imogen took a deserved break while Jennifer played two Canons by Ethel Smyth (‘one of my favourite composers’): the first an extended Nocturne, the second brief, ruminative, Bach-like; neither of them, in Jennifer’s fluent and poetic playing, sounding at all like a dry, formal exercise.
Characteristically, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Sonatina for Solo Trumpet packs three movements into two minutes: spiky, unpredictable, hard to play – typical PMD. Imogen dispatched it with astonishing dexterity, including some dazzling flutter-tonguing. If this piece made me smile, the gentle Scotch snaps of PMD’s Farewell to Stromness brought me close to tears: I lived in Orkney for eight years, and I have often watched Stromness recede as the ferry passes the cliffs of Hoy and heads out into the Pentland Firth. My brother, who was the GP on Hoy, wrote words for the tune, and they were sung at his funeral on the island. Hearing it so sensitively played on Imogen’s flugel and Jennifer’s piano was something that I will remember.
Imogen and Jennifer ended their recital by diving back into the nineteenth century for Robert Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro, Op.70: Schumann’s music is always loveable, and this pair of pieces were like a display of the two sides of his nature: ‘Eusebius’ (reflective) and ‘Florestan’ (boisterous). Then the encore mentioned above, the melody floating at first on soft waves on the piano, then like running water, then on luminous chords; passing to the piano’s bass register before the flugel ended alone. Imogen’s father blew her a kiss. A special end to a special concert: it left me hoping that I may one day hear Imogen play the offstage posthorn solo in my favourite symphony, Mahler’s Third.
It was a brilliant idea of Laura’s to begin the Festival Finale with Scelsi’s Trio IV and Purcell’s Fantasia on One Note, segueing from the one to the other without a break. The Scelsi was played by Emma Roijackers (violin), Joseph Griffin (viola) and Rainer Crosett (cello). Rainer first demonstrated the tension generated when a note bends, as it were, out of true: the Scelsi piece subjects the note C to a gradual increase in tone and tension, ending in a cello plunge to the depths. They were joined by Laura (violin) and José Nunes (viola) for Purcell: after Scelsi the sounds were like balm, but with Joseph sustaining the note C throughout it sounded as though Scelsi was still hovering somewhere in the background: in fact a consequence of this inspired juxtaposition was that I heard the whole concert in a slightly different way.
Back on familiar, well-loved ground with Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor for Piano Four-Hands, played by Michael Cohen-Weissert and Caspar Vos. Caspar was very funny about how two previously unacquainted pianists size each other up and decide who sits where at the keyboard. They gave it an absorbing performance, haunting, powerful, deft (the airborne Scherzo), magical (its Trio, con delicatezza), impressive in its complexity and drive (the fugue) before the return of the opening music and the quiet close. It was enthusiastically received – indeed, I wondered for a moment if they might swap places and play the whole piece again.
Korngold’s String Quintet – what a wonderful climax to a festival about love and madness! Korngold at 24 was already at the peak of his powers – he had just written his extraordinary, hallucinatory opera Die Tote Stadt, and, as Lydia told us in her sparky introduction, madly in love. His no-holds-barred quintet is a marathon for the players, exhilarating (and exhausting) for the audience. Such energy and passion! Caspar (piano), Luke and Laura (violin), José (viola) and Lydia (cello) hurled themselves into it: they seemed to have an infinite variety of tones at their disposal in the astonishing first movement, soaring ecstasy and romantic yearning in the second, a giddily festive brilliance in the finale (fireworks from Luke). It was extraordinary.
Laura deserves recognition for her courage and enterprise in mounting a Festival such as this – so imaginatively devised, with unfamiliar and cutting-edge pieces rubbing shoulders with established classics, providing both a feast and a voyage of discovery for her loyal audience. Speaking after the performance, she acknowledged that in the current climate it is difficult to fund artistic events in the UK: and she saluted the adventurousness and dedication of her invited players – ‘It’s unusual to come to a festival and play this many notes!’ Then they all put down their bows and played Leroy Anderson’s Plink, Plank, Plunk! as a final encore.
I am already looking forward to next year.
Chris Kettle
For the first part of this Romsey roundup click here.