Music
Steven Osborne and Alban Gerhardt
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce
five stars
WHEN I first heard German cellist Alban Gerhardt in the company of pianist Steven Osborne at Orkney’s St Magnus Festival, we were all much younger men. That recital partnership of more than 20 years – so evident in the instinctive communication between the two for the duration of a brilliantly-conceived programme – made this a perfect celebration of the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Queen’s Hall as a performance venue by Her Majesty.
As is illustrated by a specially-commissioned Marco Bevilacqua mural in the bar, depicting some of the famous faces who have graced its stage, and as chairman Nigel Griffiths made clear in his welcome, the diversity of the music this “venue for everyone” has hosted is quite startling. For many, however, it is the home of Edinburgh International Festival’s chamber music programme, and this duo are world-class exponents of repertoire both written and arranged for their instruments.
Dating from a period of mental stability and prolific production in Robert Schumann’s life, the Five Pieces in a Folk Style are a perfect example of the former, the cello leading the conversation, before, usually briefly, assuming an accompanying role in the sequence. In every sense they prefaced the much weightier Sonata in F by Brahms of 35 years later, in which Gerhardt demonstrated a wide range of timbre playing pizzicato, and the debt to Schumann in the lovely slow movement is followed by much more forward-looking music.
If the interplay between the musicians was exemplary in that piece, the fireworks came after the interval. Gerhardt has recorded the lullaby from the Seven Popular Spanish Songs by Manuel de Falla on his disc of encore pieces favoured by his hero Pablo Casals, but here was a chance to hear the whole set, originally composed for a soprano but adopted by a range of instrumentalists. De Falla admired the evocation of an Evening in Grenada in the central piece Debussy’s Estampes, which has featured in Osborne’s most recent solo recording and recitals and which gave the cellist a brief respite before a virtuosic trio of works by Maurice Ravel, none of them written for his instrument, culminating in a truly breath-taking Tzigane.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here