A fine way to bring down curtain on Piano Sundays
A new photographic exhibition by Perth-born photographer David Paterson – Nature and Landscape in Breadalbane – will run in Pitlochry’s John Muir Trust Wild Space until the end of May.
His beautiful images capture the ever-changing character of Breadalbane’s soaring mountains, mysterious forests, sparkling rivers and haunted glens.
David was a successful commercial photographer in London for many years, and worked closely on a number of projects with the acclaimed artist Iain Hamilton Finlay.
Now based in Killin, he says of Breadalbane: “I urge everyone to get out and explore this fine and historic region. It is all here – landscape and nature of the highest quality and as pristine as you will find anywhere.
“My intention is to help visitors towards an understanding, not just of how beautiful our wild land is, but how essential.”
The images are on display in the Allan Reece Gallery of the Wild Space visitor centre on Atholl Road. Entry is free. The final visitor to the Piano Sunday season in Perth Concert Hall over the weekend was frequent and welcome visitor to East Neuk, Christian Zacharias.
His programme was a classic of very different German composers: Schubert, Beethoven and Schumann.
He began the earliest of Schubert’s great piano sonatas, that in a minor D537, explosively, yet he had the flexibility to encompass both the passionate opening and the lyrical second theme, the inspiration of dance and the Lied god-parent to both.
The Allegretto second movement, a mixture of rondo and variations, had an accented limping figure giving it a gawky feel.
Nor did the Allegro vivace come over as convincingly as it can. Starting stormily it calmed, yet went on to a few passages which seemed not quite Schubert’s best.
The first of the Beethoven Sonatas, in e minor Op90, is little only in length.
Christian Zacharias helped end the season in style at Perth Concert Hall
The first movement thundered and was quiet, both a little extreme for the feeling and expression Beethoven’s headings require.
Nor did the second movement follow Beethoven’s indications: the return of the theme should be a balm, each time recognized with a smile by the listener. It was too fast and not lyrical enough.
Only in the second sonata Op109 in E Major did Christian Zacharias
Loch Tay by Perth-born photographer David Paterson really settle and produce the fine performances he is known for.
The opening movement was by turn improvisatory and otherworldly, the Prestissimo had strength and, Beethoven’s words, the third movement was indeed full of song and inner feeling with fine decoration and a most serene end.
The master performance came after the interval in Schumann’s early Davidsbündler Tänze.
Played almost continuously these eighteen miniatures, the longest no more than four and a half minutes, had the impulsiveness of Florestan and the tenderness of Eusebius, Schumann’s alter-egos and supposed dedicatees of the individual pieces, though they are really all audible love letters to Clara Wieck.
Here was the true mastery of mood: celebratory, exciting, passionate, gravely confiding and adoring.
An achievement much applauded by a well filled Perth Concert Hall.
Ian Stuart-Hunter