Music
James Willshire
Merchants House, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
Four stars
A new season on Westbourne Music chamber music recitals in Glasgow city centre has brought with it a move to Wednesdays to avoid clashing with other similar events, and the immediate evidence is that the change will not diminish the loyal audience that fills the elegant room in the Merchants House at lunchtime.
Admittedly, this was a very fine opening to the new programme. James Willshire is possibly best known in Scotland for his Delphian recordings of the piano music of Rory Boyle and Ronald Stevenson, but here he gave a dynamic performance of the original version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition, taken at a very impressive lick, if perhaps slightly breathless in parts.
The context he gave that performance was also impressive. If the Russian composer could never be described as impressionist, preceding the work with Claude Debussy’s Estampes – which could hardly be more so – set the tone for works inspired by a perambulation among artworks. The precipitation during Jardins sous la pluie was muscular and torrential, serving notice of the powerful playing to come during Pictures.
If you are of the generation who first encountered that suite through the progressive rock version by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, there was a further echo to come with Willshire’s encore. Although announced as a premature acknowledgement of the centenary of composer Alberto Ginastera, which falls next year, ELP fans would also recall that the group also recorded the Argentinian’s music – with his explicit endorsement, as he did not die until ten years later – on the later album Brain Salad Surgery. It is possible, I concede, that I was alone in the room in spotting that connection.
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