An evening dedicated to pure music making with the final concert of the course of Giovanni Gnocchi .
Eight cellists filling this magnificent twelfth century deconsecrated church with sumptuous music making and spirited introductions from a Giovanni Gnocchi who seems to get younger as the years pass.
His knowledge and playing of course display his mastery and mature musicianship with his generosity in sharing his unbounded love for music with his younger colleagues.
Two performances of the Dvorák concerto, both completely different, but both displaying the genius of a composer and his unbounded love for the lady in his life who had passed away .
Enea Fava playing with a wide range of sounds etched in sand with youthful sensitivity . Gerardo Scavone playing with more nobility and monumental sounds etched in stone. In both, their musicianship and discipline shone through, helped by an orchestra always ready to support and rejoice with them.
It was interesting to hear the two youngest students from the class duetting with one of the many works written for Baryton by Haydn. Mariano Fusco contrasted with Leonardo Sanchez,a real Florestan and Eusebius duo , with the charm of Leonardo and the more down to earth reply of Mariano.
Always interesting to learn about instruments that inspired composers to such heights but are now obsolete.
Would we have ever had Schubert ‘s inspired ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata without an instrument that was just a whistle in the wind? It was a complete performance of this genial outpouring that closed the concert. Joël Geniet,a very youthful looking cellist, who I had noted playing Trios with the masters the other day.
He was here given full reign to show his remarkable sensitivity and artistry with playing of real give and take with his superb partner Alexandra Dicariu.
Ravishingly sensitive piano sounds just inspired this young man to greater poetic heights .
But before this we had heard a remarkably profound performance of the Moderato from Shostakovich’s first concerto .Written for Rostropovich who was probably the same age as Alina Holender today, who played it with great weight and searing authority. It is amazing to think that the dedicatee after just one play through, with the ink still wet in the page, could play it from memory with the composer the following day. A very complex sound world that Alina played with conviction and extraordinary concentration
This was after Allegra Britton gave a beautiful account of Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro . Initially conceived for horn, but has long become part of the standard cello repertoire.
The long lines of the Adagio were played with poetic beauty and there was remarkable technical finesse to the knotty twine of the Allegro.
The final work on the programme was dedicated to two movements of the most famous work of César Franck . The Sonata in A was a wedding present for Ysaÿe and one that has been shared with the cello ever since.
Francesco Barosi played it with passion and weight with a deeply felt intensity and a real interplay between the piano and cello. Nowhere more than in the notorious second movement with its whirlwind of notes shared between the instruments with dynamic drive and transcendental mastery.
Another exhilarating evening of music making played with mastery and the ‘joie di vivre’ that Maestro Gnocchi injects into his infectious music making with unbounded love and generosity.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 