Kempe’s inspiring dance
through the centuries Stratford Herald 26. 8. 2010

A capacity audience of music lovers and poetry enthusiasts, the beautiful atmosphere of the light and airy Studio of The Muses on Waterside and a group of excellent musicians and readers provided a wonderfully inspiring experience under the title ‘Dancing Through Four Centuries’, devised by Cordula Kempe, in the Rudolf Kempe Society’s traditional summer concert on 16 August.

The Bergonzi Quartet – Cordula Kempe, Andrew Hughes, Ingrid Newton and Peter Wilson - with flautist Gabrielle Byam-Grounds and clarinettist Edward Watson were joined by RSC actors Janet Dale and Sam Dastor, and all these artists seemed thoroughly to enjoy performing a programme which covered not only the musically relevant periods of the last four centuries, but took us on a tour round the globe from America to Russia, visiting en route Europe’s great musical centres – London, Leipzig, Vienna, Prague and others – and all the way having the audience tapping its feet whilst listening to poetry and music that ranged from joyous exuberance to heartrending poignancy.

The 17th Century pamphleteer William Prynne’s vitriolic description of the activity of dancing set the scene – and the contemporary novelist Milan Kundera’s interpretation of the urge to express through dance even our greatest distress put matters in perspective; a haunting Eastern European Klezmer tune for string quartet, played with utmost sensitivity and tenderness by the Bergonzis and blended with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dance me to the end of love’ was one of the highlights which made your throat constrict - until Heather Wastie’s hilarious poem ‘Until I saw your foot’ brought relief. Comedy and tragedy were never far from each other.

The musical backbone were three settings of German Dances by Mozart, Schubert and Brahms, arranged for flute, clarinet and string quartet by Edward Watson, and here the interplay between the wind and string instruments was a masterly example of chamber music in the true sense of the word, for its subtle nuances in dynamics and tempo. The American composer Samuel Barber’s Centenary was marked by a beautiful rendering of his Serenade for Strings by the Bergonzis, who also gave us a lovely account of Puccini’s Crisantemi and, towards the end of the evening, Borodin’s Notturno, an all time favourite but rarely heard with such liveliness and sweetness of tone. And one had to agree with the author of the programme, that the best Viennese Waltzes came from Prague – nothing could surpass the seductiveness of Dvořák’s gentle lilts and rubatos in his Waltzes!

On the literary side of this rich feast, poems – alongside many others - by two lesser known American authors who could not be more diverse, Billie Collins and Samuel Menashe, were read with great panache, humour and insight by Janet Dale and Sam Dastor, the latter also giving hugely enjoyable accounts of a drunken Schubert addressing inferior colleagues, Mozart unmasking the superficiality of the Austrian aristocracy, and Brahms assessing his own work with tongue-in-cheek self-criticism.

When e.e. cummings’ poem ‘i thank You God’ concluded the evening, it spoke everybody’s mind.
A. L.