31. Main Evening Concert

From one to eight
The great Latvian composer, Pēteris Vasks, is 80 this year and we hope he will join us for some performances of his works. Nuala McKenna jumped at the opportunity to play his early solo cello work ‘Gramata’ dating from 1978. It is in two vividly contrasted movements marked ‘Fortissimo’ and ‘Pianissimo’! The ferocious anger of the challenging first movement is gradually mollified by one of Vasks’ gorgeous chant-like melodies partly accompanied by the cellist’s wordless singing. Next Delta Trio is joined by viola, clarinet and horn for Penderecki’s superb Sextet. Dating from 2000 it immediately laid claim to be the 21st Century’s first masterpiece. It is set in two large-scale movements that sounds at times like a mini-orchestra. The second half of this concert is given over to Schubert’s massive Octet with NOVO Quartet at the heart of the strings with the trio of wind players and Rick Stotijn on bass holding the bottom line together. Schubert took Beethoven’s ever-popular Septet as a model and proceeded to outdo him in every way. Visually the Octet is a tremendous sight arrayed in a huge semi-circle taking up the entire stage and the sound magnified by the resonant church acoustic. There are six movements and after each movement you think he cannot keep this up, but he does. Despite the occasional tinge of Schubertian melancholy, he gives us an overwhelming impression of joie de vivre.