|
THE TIMES 6 JANUARY 2004
Murray McLachlan
By
Geoff Brown
Concert Wigmore Hall
HOW MANY fingers does Murray McLachlan have?
Far more than 20. How else could he generate from those orderly
rows of black-and-white
keys the cascades, the whirlwinds, the Amazon forests of counterpoint?
Not only does this pianist come digitally enhanced, he also boasts
a distinct taste for the unusual, the eccentric and neglected — not
a taste that a mainstream career encourages. John Ogdon was another
such explorer, and some of the composers McLachlan favours (Busoni,
Ronald Stevenson) were Ogdon’s people too.
The Scottish-born
composer Erik Chisholm has become a McLachlan specialty. Had
he stayed in Britain teaching, organising ground-breaking concerts
and composing (think Bartók with Scottish knobs on), Chisholm
would probably be more widely regarded; but for most in this
country he fell off the map when he moved to the University of
Cape Town in 1945. The principal exhibit was a 38-minute, four-movement
whopper of a piano sonata, successfully premiered in 1939 but
subsequently lost from sight.
Bagpipe twirls kick the piece into
life, leading into the pibroch melody An Riobain Dearg (The Red
Ribbon), the work’s descriptive title. Chisholm favours
chunky textures, expansive gestures and driving rhythms: no problems
here for McLachlan, though I was glad when the pounding quietened
for the moving third movement, a remembrance of June 1, 1939,
when the submarine HMS Thetis sank during its maiden dive in
Liverpool Bay, leaving 99 dead.
Wrapped around this exhilarating
if ear-battering piece came music from Chisholm’s friends
and peers. Here there were disappointments. Sorabji’s Fantasiettina
of 1961, a birthday tribute to the poet Hugh McDiarmid, clogged
up a couple of minutes with fortissimo snarls and perfumed wanderings;
but since the last Sorabji piece London heard lasted five hours
I suppose we got off lightly.
Stevenson’s A Threepenny
Sonata, meanwhile, spent five minutes proving you could make
ungainly music by combining Threepenny Opera tunes in counterpoint.
The glories lay elsewhere. Less force and more textural clarity
might have polished McLachlan’s account of Busoni’s
extraordinary Bach spin-off, the Fantasia Contrappunistica, though
the performance remained exemplary for raw vigour. More memorable
still was the Janácek sonata From the Street, commemorating
a student protester’s death, in which McLachlan let the
pain in the sounds reverberate.
It would be tough if every piano
recital were like this, but you couldn’t ask for a more
bracing musical start to the new year.
THE TIMES 6 JANUARY 2004
Murray McLachlan
By Geoff Brown
Concert
Wigmore Hall
|
