Rochdale Music Society Concert: Clare Hammond

Clare Hammond

Clare Hammond has played for the Rochdale Music Society on two previous occasions and each time left an abiding impression of being a pianist of consummate artistry and skill. This third occasion was just as satisfying.

She came to Heywood Civic Centre on Saturday 13 May with a programme making great demands on the performer in some of the early twentieth century’s most spectacular works for piano, preceded by some engaging insights into less spectacular, but equally enjoyable and aesthetically rewarding, music by two comparatively unknown female composers of the early nineteenth century. A delightful and spectacular combination.

The concert began with what was an eye-opening series of twelve of the Etudes written in 1820 by the French composer Hélène de Montgeroult, whom Clare has been prominent in making known to concert-goers in recent years. With good cause, since this music is, as Clare’s beautifully controlled performance revealed, equal to Chopin’s in every way - melodically, harmonically, texturally and structurally. Next came Clara Schumann’s Scherzo No. 2 in C minor, a work combining passionate intensity and graceful tenderness which was given a powerfully persuasive performance. The rest of the first half of the concert was devoted to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 Op. 13, known as the ‘Pathétique’. The dark fantasy and warm lyricism of this music was well and truly on display as Clare’s finger magic worked its way through its ground-breaking dramatic structure in a finely detailed performance.

The second half of the concert began with some of the most difficult music a concert pianist could choose to tackle, the five pieces making up the set entitled ‘Miroirs’ (Mirrors) by Ravel. These were written in the middle of the ‘noughties’ of the twentieth century by a composer, who at that time numbered himself among a group of Parisian artists calling themselves ‘the hooligans’ (Les Apaches), and whose vision was open to musical landscapes and seascapes of extravagantly futuristic impact.

When played as a set by a pianist as accomplished as Clare Hammond their effect can be, and was indeed on this occasion, of enormous aesthetic sensation and satisfaction. In particular her account of No. 3, ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ (a little boat in the midst of an immense sea’) had moments when it felt as though the rippling of waves against the sides of the boat were reassuringly calm, and moments of when it felt as though a tsunami was engulfing the audience on the shore as well as the boat struggling to keep afloat.

It was something of a brilliant stroke of programming that the next music was such a contrast to what had just been achieved and what was yet to come. It was ‘Deep river’, one of the numerous Negro melody arrangements of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a London-born composer of mixed race who was quite a celebrity in the late 19th century. Nothing spectacular, nothing superficial, this gave both pianist and audience a few moments of soulful reflection.

To end the concert Clare played three of the pieces that go to make up ‘Iberia’ by Albeniz, the Spanish composer who had undoubted influence on Ravel and other composers often described as ‘impressionist’. These were a very high note on which to end an evening of high notes. As the challenging textures and scandalously evocative rhythms and melodies of the final piece, ‘Triana’, died away the audience made clear its enthusiastic appreciation of the remarkable sharing of musical experience it had enjoyed. Clare returned to the piano and played as an encore, and to everyone’s delight, another of the Etudes of Montgeroult.

Rochdale Music Society’s next concert will be held in Heywood Civic Centre on Saturday 24 June, at 7.30pm. The Prince Bishop’s Brass will perform an evening of resounding brass ensemble music from Bach to Bernstein.

For more details and tickets visit: www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/events/72020/

Graham Marshall