Fabizio Meloni and Antonello D'Onofrio offer a clarinet and piano duo in Denia

 

The programme had to be revised following the fatal rail crash this week. We did not get the Khachaturian, but we did get two encores, one of Oblivion of Piazzolla and the other, I think, was the first part only of Seress’s Last Gloomy Sunday, but I could be wrong.

Sebastiani’s Paraphrase on Bellini’s Norma was a first for me. In over fifty years of concert going and the same time collecting recordings, this was the first example of the composer’s work that I have ever heard. Ferdinando Sebastiani was and Italian clarinettist to whom the Neapolitan style of playing is attributed. I could only fid one recording of the piece on the internet, which shows it is something of a rarity.

Fabrizio Meloni chose to open the concert with the clarinet beginning offstage. The familiar strains of Casta Diva emerged slowly from the wings.  The work’s second section is an allegro and this provided a showcase for Sebastiani’s clarinet writing.

The Haydn Sonata that followed was both witty and elegant. After many years of listening, I generally can’t find anything more to say about Franz Josef Haydn’s music, but its playing often does not bring out these essential elements. Antonello D’Onofrio’s playing did.

The next work was a complete rarity. It was an arrangement of a sonata by Poulenc for clarinet and piano, the more well-known Clarinet Sonata coming later. The work was billed as a World Premiere, which it undoubtedly was. The success of the piece was obvious.

Antonello D’Onofrio then played Rachmaninov’s 4 pieces Opus 3. The second of these pieces is the composition that made Rachmaninov’s name, the famous Prelude in C sharp minor. Here, embedded in the four pieces it was originally published alongside, it took its place elegantly and expressively, but without the overstatement that usually comes with it.

In another arrangement by Antonello D’Onofrio, we then heard Schnittke’s Suite The Clown and the Children. Now Alfred Schnittke’s output was massive. It also covered, as was his intention, many forms of music, from the most popular to the most esoteric. His First Symphony in the 1970s was heard some years ago on London’s South Bank under the baton of Vladimir Jurowsky, a concert I heard and will never forget. The elements are all there. Russian folk music, popular forms, jazz, pop, propaganda and dissonance. Schnittke wanted always to illustrate how we modern people are bombarded with content and that it is up to us to make sense of it. This suite was a case in point, marrying folk themes with pop and jazz with just a touch of the contemporary. Schnittke’s music, like the man and his age, remains an enigma.

The performers cut the Khachaturian that was on the programme and went straight to The Clarinet Sonata by Poulenc. We tend to forget that Francis Polenc was more like Alfred Schnittke in his age than we tend to admit. Fabrizio Meloni brought out all the stresses and strains of the piece as well as its lyricism.

The duo played Piazzolla’s Oblivion as an encore, with Fabrizio Meloni starting the clarinet pointed at the piano strings to engender extra resonance. Piazzolla’s theme emerged from there effortlessly. The last piece was offered in recognition of the loss of life in the recent train crash and the music was fitting.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Interpretation perfected by presentation – the Berlin Mendelssohn Trio in Palau Altea, Altea, Spain

One of the great, even reassuring, things about what the CD shops ignorantly label “Classical Music” is its freedom, its liberality, its democratic principles. Yes, it has its stars. Yes, it has its forms and conventions. But in “Classical Music” these aspects never dominate. The music is always the prime focus. Anyone can learn any piece, anyone can play it, and anyone is free to interpret the composer’s intentions – as long as those intentions are respected, of course. And all of this is done unencumbered by wires, microphones or amplification, since real sound and real experience are always the goal. 

Performance, therefore, becomes a form of communication, a presentation of the music, itself, plus often much more. Contrast that with some other genres where commerce and celebrity are the raisons d’être, where the music is merely a secondary, often irrelevant accompaniment. Never mind the quality of the lip-sync, feel the width of the show. Critics of “Classical Music” often cite a lack of bravura on behalf of the performers. This, of course, is to misunderstand both the medium and the content, since the passion is always in the music and good performances should always highlight the music, not themselves. 

Not all performers perform well, of course, but then that is true of every staged activity, not least of other genres of music than “Classical”. So when a performer is exceptional both in terms of interpretation and delivery, an occasional flaw or inaccuracy passes by unnoticed. So it was with the Berlin Mendelssohn Trio in Palau Altea, not that there were many flaws to pass by. They offered their audience seven pieces, including an encore, one of which did indeed happen to be “classical” and four of which were presented as a single item, not really because the composer necessarily intended it, but because it made musical sense. The commitment and energy that the group displayed was quite remarkable. 

They opened with Beethoven’s Opus 11 trio. If Schubert always sings, then Beethoven usually dances, and this trio hopped and pranced with energy, always, of course, with Beethoven’s musical tension showing through. The trio became a duo for Grieg’s Op36 Cello Sonata, with cellist Ramon Jaffė playing a work to which he is clearly and utterly committed. It’s a well-known sonata but, perhaps, not as well-known as it ought to be, since it is nothing less than a masterpiece. It’s a big, hefty work, which moves from tender to tough, pulsating to pensive, sardonic to sombre and back again throughout its full thirty minutes. To describe Ramon Jaffė’s playing of this hugely demanding piece as both exciting and committed would be stretching under-statement to its limits. But at the end, it seemed that the audience, not the performer, bore the exhaustion, since the cellist’s complete mastery of the piece and his instrument had led everyone up and down every path through the music. Absolute and undiluted magic. 

 And then the Berlin Mendelssohn Trio actually played a piece of classical music, Haydn’s trio number 45. See Haydn on a concert programme and the mind automatically thinks elegance, wit, proportion – at least when the performers are sufficiently aware of these things, themselves. Too often, I have to admit, one sees Haydn on a programme and thinks “a loosener”. Not so if it’s played third and not so if it’s offered by the Berlin Mendelssohn Trio. Indeed these performers found an edge or two on which to balance, harmonies to stress for surprise and occasional idiosyncratic rhythms to highlight. Quite revelatory. 

Their final work was the four seasons, not of Vivaldi, but of Piazzolla. Now I have never before heard these offered as a group in performance and wondered whether their stylistic and melodic similarities might prove repetitive. Not so. The faster tempo parts of these tangos were performed as true allegros, the slower sections as adagios, and so the pieces became, in effect, four twentieth century concerti grossi to emulate their more famous late baroque cousins, though via a tougher, grittier musical language. 

And they brought the house down. To say that these three guys were exhausted by this time is no under-statement. Their audience offered an immediate and prolonged standing ovation and the Berlin Mendelssohn Trio responded with a single, sad, gentle encore in the form of Piazzolla’s Oblivion. Prior to this, the pianist actually apologised, saying that that piano provided had really been too small for such a large auditorium. No-one, of course, had noticed, since the group’s music had more than filled the place.