"a recital of remarkable refinement and subtlety" — Paul Conway
An afternoon solo piano recital at St Andrew’s, Presteigne given by Clare Hammond was elevated by this artist’s exceptional technical skill and interpretative insight. She began with three pieces from Mel Bonis’s Femmes de Légende. ‘Desdémona’ (1913) was endowed with a wistful elegance, Phoebé (1909) unfolded spaciously with a crepuscular lassitude, while ‘Mélisande’ (1898) was marked by a fragile beauty.
There followed the concert debut of Michael Zev Gordon’s Diary Pieces 2021, Set 2, a series of stylistically broad, well-crafted miniatures that often explored a single mood. Thoughtful and searching readings conveyed the essence of these vividly characterised vignettes, some of whose elegiac, leave-taking qualities left an emotional impression that resonated well beyond their brief span.
A detailed and poised interpretation of Doreen Carwithen’s Sonatina (1946) contrasted crisply rhythmic outer movements with the hushed melancholy of the lavishly ornamented central Molto adagio. The work’s parting glissando on the black notes of the keyboard was rendered with bold and thrilling assertiveness.
Premiered in 2019, Soliloquy by Adrian Williams was a rhapsodic, heterogeneous piece that unfurled an absorbing sequence of disparate and sharply defined ideas. In this meticulous, fluently poetic account, every tonal shift, from the delicacy of the opening gestures via playful and rhetorically powerful episodes to the fading sonorities of the closing bars, was ideally realised. Among many virtues, the performance gained from a precise and convincing observance of the music’s wide-ranging dynamics.
Co-commissioned by the festival and receiving their first performance, Three Études by Emma-Ruth Richards derived from the composer’s lovingly detailed observation of the flight patterns of English songbirds. Each of the three pieces, which conjured up, in turn, starling murmurations, the alternating wingbeats and silent gliding of finches and the night journeys of swifts, offered supple and buoyant emulations in sound of these birds’ ever-changing patterns.
Preserving beautiful, fleeting moments, the three Études created and inhabited their own unique soundscape with the unmistakable integrity of music of immediate and lasting value. A vivid memory of the impeccable performance by Clare Hammond of these fragile, exquisite and finely drawn scores remains with me still.
Ravel’s 1905 Sonatine was blessed with a lucid, sophisticated account, ending a recital of remarkable refinement and subtlety that complemented much of the featured music’s nuanced elegance. This special event shone very brightly indeed amid a festival brimming with highlights.