Rochdale Music Society concert: Sveta and Slava Duo

Sveta and Slava Duo

Russian cellist, Svetlana Mochalova, and Ukrainian pianist, Slava Sidorenko met when studying at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Now husband and wife they form the Sveta and Slava Duo committed to engaging with their audience in imaginative ways. When they are not performing live in the concert hall, they allow audiences to vote for the pieces they will perform using the Music à la carte internet app they have developed.

Those of us who were present at the Rochdale Music Society concert in St. Michael and All Angels Church, Alkrington, on 2 April, may well seek out their internet presence having found their live performances of music by British, French, Russian and German composers both technically brilliant and artistically thrilling.

An evening filled with strange delights, it began with the set of Variations Concertantes by Mendelssohn. The simple song-like theme is explored in a series of eight variations. These gave both performers opportunities to display their technical skill in the mounting artistic inventiveness of the composer’s lively mind. A very satisfying hors d’oeuvre before things got more meaty!

Scheduled before the first lockdown in 2020, it soon seemed as though the programme had been put together recently and with very topical things in mind. It was partly concerned with music expressing feelings of regret, from the sadness of nostalgia in an arrangement of one of Rachmaninoff’s early songs through the ecstatic grief elaborated in Kenneth Leighton’s Elegy to the strident heartache of Frank Bridge’s Sonata written during the 1914-18 war. Not to mention Debussy’s Sonata, also written during that war and including sounds cogently depicting the composer’s state of mind at that time - the frustration, sarcasm and despair of man suffering from what was a terminal cancer. Both cellist and pianist sustained unerring, detailed attention to the very considerable technical demands made upon them by these scores, and could not be faulted in the way they showed their understanding of the music’s intended impact.

Such music, in spite of its intensity of superficially negative feelings, can fill us with the delight of being able to recognise and share in such deep, human emotion expressed in musically compelling ways. As always with great art, the subject matter is secondary to its artistic representation and performance. The audience reaction on this occasion showed just how strongly the duo engaged their listeners in sharing what the music had to say about the state of the world today, never mind a hundred years ago. Such is the human condition which the Rochdale Music Society can only try to give suitable musical expression to: and such is great art and great performances, which the Rochdale Music Society is committed to provide for the people of the borough.

For its next concert, on 14 May at 7.30pm, the society returns to the Heywood Civic Centre. The Victoria String Quartet will be playing music by Haydn, Puccini, Britten and Mendelssohn. Tickets can be obtained in advance from the booking office on 0300 303 8633 (with a booking fee of 5%) or at the door on the night from 7pm.

Next concert: www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/events/68397/events-in-rochdale/rochdale-music-society-concert-the-victoria-string-quartet

Graham Marshall