Rochdale Music Society concert - violist Rosalind Ventris and pianist Sam Armstrong

Violist Rosalind Ventris

The violist Rosalind Ventris and pianist Sam Armstrong joined forces for an evening of Classical and Romantic music presented by Rochdale Music Society in Heywood Civic Centre on 2 March as part of their 2018-19 concert series.

It began with Three Romances for Viola and Piano by Clara Schumann. These melodious pieces, with their subtly refined harmonies, gave the audience a very pleasurable introduction to the sound of a viola being played by a soloist with great artistry and assurance and accompanied by a pianist of equal musicianship.

There followed Niccolo Paganini’s Caprice No. 14. This short, energetic and fanfare-like piece was for solo viola, and it gave the performer an opportunity to show her consummate skill in playing more than one part at a time. So, too, and by great contrast, did the very subdued and intimate Elégie by Igor Stravinsky which came next. This work demands great finesse in playing melody and accompaniment at the same time. Rosalind proved more than equal to the task, and was able to communicate well its subdued, troubled and yet calming atmosphere.

Sam Armstrong returned to share in a showcase performance of the Sonata for Viola and Piano by Rebecca Clarke, a relatively unknown composer, who was born and educated in England, but spent most of her long life in New York (having been stranded there at the outbreak of World War 2). Her Viola Sonata was written in 1919 and shows the influence of such French composers as Debussy and Ravel. Its three movements are colourful, impassioned and withal ‘impressionistic’ with a British accent!

The joyful exaltation to be experienced in the work’s opening fanfare-like section was boldly proclaimed and the gentler feeling of the contrasting melody that followed was warmly delivered. Both performers then made it very easy for the audience to go with the flow of the finely elaborated dialogue that makes up this poetic romance.

As was also the case with the swirling fantasy of the second movement, and the mysterious tenderness and longing expressed in the opening of the third movement before being carried away by the outbursts of delight that lead on to the work’s final, enthusiastic assertion of musical joie de vivre.

To begin the second part of the concert, Rosalind played a version of the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5. Her performance well expressed the spiritual serenity and assurance this music contains.

The concert ended with the Sonata in F minor by Brahms. Written very late on in his life, and originally for clarinet rather than viola, it is a good example of the simple, yet enchanting beauties Brahms was able to share with the musical world, his mature and settled mind proving fruitful to the end.

From the piano’s somewhat mysterious yet bold opening to the work and the viola’s wide-ranging melody that goes with it, providing all the material for everything that happens in the first movement, to the final flourish of the fourth movement that has caused the players to join together in dancing for joy, this was a delightfully accomplished performance, acknowledged by an appreciative audience.

As an encore they played Fauré’s Aprés un rève, reminding the audience that music is conjured up from minds open to wonders of fantasy in sound.

The Rochdale Music Society’s next concerts:

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/events/search?searchvalue=Rochdale+Music+Society