Clare Hammond: Making the instrument sing

Photo: Tim Meara

Clare Hammond, making the instrument sing

One member of the audience was so taken with the dexterity displayed by Clare Hammond in the concert she gave for the Rochdale Music Society on Saturday, 22 February, that he went up to her at the end and asked her to show him her hands to prove that she had only ten fingers! Such was the technical brilliance of her performance, which had held the audience enthralled all evening.

Clare has made a special study of music written for the left hand only, and she demonstrated how effective such compositions can be by opening her programme with a finely judged performance of the arrangement for left hand only of a Chaconne in D minor by Bach made by Brahms.

The first of the works for two hands was a sequence of three of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, to which she brought delicate touches of feeling matching the composer’s charm and restrained passion and making the instrument sing.

The second was the early A major Sonata by Schubert, which she played with engaging lyrical warmth as befits music which, although it has moments of passion, is predominantly of a even tempered rather than argumentative kind.

After the interval came Mozart’s Variations on a Minuet by C. Fischer. Clare took up the composer’s invitation to join him in a journey of discovery, and made the members of the audience feel that they too were being privileged to experience the various delights uncovered as each of the twelve variations was unfolded.

The concert then took a leap into what might well have been regarded as the distant future in Mozart’s or even Mendelssohn’s time with the pieces called ‘Gnossiennes’ by the eccentric French composer, Eric Satie. Keeping the listener’s attention for the whole of this set of six pieces, played one after the other, is no mean feat for the performer, since they are all very slow and very similar both melodically and harmonically. That Clare managed to do this to the obvious delight of the audience was a tribute to her artistic sense of the spaced out time and motion underpinning Satie’s experimental technique.

Clare then worked her magic on Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne Op.9, two of the most romantic and endearing left hand only pieces in the repertory: intimate and restrained passion in the Prelude, arching melody and delicate Chopinesque brilliance in the Nocturne.

The concert ended with a masterful interpretation of Ginastera’s Danzas Argentinas. These three dances challenge the pianist to display both technical and expressive virtuosity, which Clare did to the full; bringing the programme to a breath-taking and satisfying conclusion.

That was not quite the end of the evening’s music making. Following the encouragement given to her by the audience’s enthusiastic applause, Clare added to the pleasure of the occasion by playing a short, nostalgic piece by a young, local composer, Michael Betteridge, who happened to be present in the audience. Quite an added bonus.

Next month’s concert will be at 7.30pm 29 March in Heywood Civic Centre. An exciting evening of music is promised, to be performed by the Fell Clarinet Quartet.

Included in their programme is a work by another local composer, Graham Marshall, which was written for a concert of music by members of the North West Composers Association given by the Fell Quartet a few years ago and goes under the
intriguing title, “Squirrels run along the fence top”.