Making beautiful music together
MUSICA VIVA TASMANIA Nicholas Alstaedt and Aleksandar Madzar Hobart Town Hall September 25 GERMAN/FRENCH cellist Nicholas Alstaedt and Serbian-born pianist Aleksandar Madzar began with Claude Debussy’s brief and concentrated Cello Sonata (1915).
The declamatory opening at once presented a big-toned but superbly co-ordinated response from both performers. The subsequent interplay and subtlety of the playing made for a memorable interpretation of the sonata.
Nadia Boulanger’s Three Pieces for cello and piano (1914) provided the duo with an opportunity to display a gentler, more elegant side.
Passion and amazing control of dynamics marked Samuel Barber’s neo-romantic Cello Sonata, Op 6 (1932), a gloriously phrased account of the soulful “Adagio” the highlight.
Young Adelaide-based composer Jakub Jankowski’s Aspects of Return for cello and piano (2017) was commissioned for this tour. Its unusual structure and vivid contrasts between the energetic and the idyllic were allied to virtuosic demands on the players, as well as the inclusion of novel features such as the cellist whistling, and piano keys brushed with a card to produce fascinatingly original textures.
Finally, Dmitry Shostakovich’s magnificent Cello Sonata, Op 40 (1934) provided a fitting climax to the concert, the work largely classical in structure with that hauntingly memorable second theme in the first movement.