Music
Victoria Simonsen and Ben Powell in Plymouth (review)
16th November 2008Plymouth Chamber Music has now notched up over a hundred concerts, yet this recital at the Sherwell Centre by Victoria Simonsen, pictured, and Ben Powell was only the third cello and piano duo in the series.
Rather than keep to the well-proven pattern of both instruments combining continuously, Victoria chose to open with Bach’s quite substantial Third Suite for solo cello.
There was an initial slight sense of shared adjustment, especially during the opening Prelude, but the scintillating playing which followed, bringing together a gloriously rich tone with the neatest articulation and linear shaping, produced a reading of the highest order.
Brahms’s first Cello Sonata was a perfect choice, where both cello and piano combined in a flawless ensemble which finely captured every nuance of the composer’s essentially somewhat sombre writing.
Ben Powell gave a first-rate performance of the Two Poèmes by Scriabin, in fact an ideal aperitif for the final work, Shostakovich’s early Cello Sonata in D minor.
This proved the evening’s undoubted highlight, with both players almost nonchalantly dismissing the bristling technical difficulties, and equally capable of moments of tender lyricism or sardonic wit.
Given the wonderful repertoire out there for cello and piano together, the jury’s still out as to whether two individual solos did quite compensate, but this could in no way detract from a superbly enjoyable recital by these two talented and highly personable young artists.
PHILIP R BUTTALL
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