Incandescent Brahms (Review by William
Charlton-Perkins)
Left: Shelley Levy (clarinet) and Right: Pavel
Timofeyevsky (piano) in recital for Friends of Music at the Durban Jewish
Centre, May 8, 2018
Tuesday’s recital by the distinguished
London-based duo of clarinetist Shelley Levy and pianist Pavel Timofeyevsky
proved a bonanza for clarinet junkies like myself, and equally so for this
admirer of fine pianism.
Making up for the absence of a printed
programme, the two musicians engaged informally with their audience, introducing
their choice of music from the stage. They opened their programme with the
rousing, seamlessly elided, three-movement Duo in E flat Opus 15 by the
short-lived German composer, Norbert Burgmüller. The lush, lower reaches of
Levy’s clarinet sound evinced limpid grace and liquid tone, before giving way
to vehement flourishes of great brilliancy on high, just occasionally bordering
on stridency, given the intimate acoustics
of the venue, then falling back into the peaceful climes of the second
movement, and rising to an exciting
finish.
Following this, the haunting Canto Notturno by the internationally
acclaimed contemporary South African composer Hendrik Hofmeyr proved a
brilliant choice, as delivered with consummate simplicity by Levy and Timofeyevsky.
The high point of the evening, predictably,
was its centrepiece – Brahms’s incomparable Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in f
minor, opus 120 No 1. Hearing this miraculous offspring of the great German
Romantic composer’s Indian Summer love affair with the clarinet, brought to
life in such a nuanced performance, was an experience to cherish, as each
player offset the other with the perfect accord that is achieved only at the
highest level of music-making.
The second half of the programme opened
with the duo’s virtuoso performance of Chausson’s Andante et Allegro - the
piano writing strongly evocative of Schubert. Timofeyevsky went on to deliver
the wow factor in two solo interludes of Debussy – the exquisitely unadorned Homage a Haydn and the viscerally
flamboyant L’Isle Joyeuse. The Duo
then offered well-paced renditions of contemporary French composer Eugène
Bozza’s contrasting Idylle and Claribel; and the evening closed with a
rare encounter with an early work by Leonard Bernstein, his spikey, jazz-inspired
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano - which bears the historic imprint of the great
Benny Goodman, who inspired its composition. - William Charlton-Perkins
For more information on Friends of Music
visit http://www.friendsofmusic.co.za/
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