"Overwhelmingly, heart-rendingly beautiful"
Stratford Herald 18 January |
 |
EditR egion6 |
Stratford is indeed fortunate to have such a space as the Civic Hall provides in which big subjects can be aired with confidence in a suitably conducive environment.
The Rudolf Kempe Society's programme ENTIRELY MOZART, on 7 January, was certainly big - in music there is no one bigger than Mozart - and the evening was devoted entirely to his music, his own writings and writings about him.
The Bergonzi Quartet revealed the journey Mozart made from his early string quartet K80, light and good humoured, to the last composition of this genre, the powerful K590 with its hauntingly beautiful Andante. The Adagio K546 in memory of Wolfgang's father, Leopold, who had set the child genius on the road he was to follow for the rest of his life, was overwhelmingly, heartrendingly beautiful.
Rela Spyrou joined the strings for the Clarinet Quintet. It may indeed (as we were told by a long dead critic) not have contained the breathtaking surprises and ingenuity of some of Mozart's writing, but its purity of line and purpose, most sensitively played here, left no one in any doubt about its enormous cultural contribution over two centuries. No wonder Beecham averred that if everyone heard Mozart for 20 minutes a day there would be no wars.
We don't normally think of readers' voices as we do of singers, but their contribution was every bit as musical as the notes played. Respectively Tim Pigott-Smith, Pamela Miles and Simon Trinder were the baritone, soprano and tenor of the piece; they made the readings their own in a way we have not often witnessed in these word and music programmes. Simon Trinder was an unbelievably authentic Mozart  (does Schaffer's Amadeus beckon?) while Pamela Miles and Tim Pigott-Smith led us through the phases of his life and relationships as though they were family.
No programme could capture it all, but this was very nicely balanced and satisfying, and whets the appetite for the next feast on 4th February when the Bergonzis will be joined by Dame Judi and Jeffery Dench with Jamie Glover in the deeply moving SEVEN LAST WORDS.
F. A. Ruli |
|
