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Korngold/Mendelssohn Chamber Domaine Blackheath's Sunday Mornings are in recess, so to brave the vagaries of London's transport (delayed on the tube this time by a passenger taken ill...) to Wigmore Hall, which was was far from full. Regulars like to hear what they know and like; critics prefer to review what they don't hear too often, but not, maybe, on Sunday mornings! When as good as this, no regrets that Wigmore Hall's coffee concerts are only an hour or so long (plus free sherry!). Korngold's Piano Quintet (1921) is a big piece by the young Korngold, new to me, composed after Die tote Stadt and with a density of invention, a questing and orchestral feel in the scoring. The music is, I understand, derived from Korngold's own Songs of Farewell, which I don't know. Mendelssohn's Sextet (1824), with additional double-bass, could not be more different. Effectively a piano concerto, and as hard as any of the two so designated, it was despatched with all the requisite virtuosity by Stephen de Pledge and made a brilliant effect in the intimacy of Wigmore Hall. The bass player (not the blonde lady pictured!) caught the eye continually with his intense involvement and gestures rather like a Jaqueline Du Pré without the hair..... The sextet's numbering is misleading; it is a student work composed a year before the famous String Octet. For a fuller account of this interesting rarity see a programme note by R. Larry Todd, author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (OUP). This was a splendidly contrasted programme, well worth considering for a CD? |
