KEY POINTS:
Cellist Ashley Brown and pianist Michael Houstoun are musicians of unimpeachable artistry and it was inspiring to experience them in tandem on Wednesday evening playing Beethoven and Brahms sonatas.
This was a model concert, offering an hour of exceptional music-making in just the right, intimate venue. Both works were substantial and how nice it was to leave the hall without the distraction of an irrelevant encore.
Beethoven's A major Sonata is a vibrant, searching composition, just a few opus numbers away from the composer's Fifth Symphony. Brown hinted that we could be in for mighty things; Houstoun joined him and the momentous journey began.
It has been suggested that Beethoven used his five cello sonatas to explore the sonic potential of the two instruments. You can hear this as the A major Sonata progresses; Brown attacked powerful chords and furious pizzicati with verve, and both musicians discovered much to delight in the ever-fascinating textural play.
There was a sense of space and emphasis in the Scherzo which lent it more thrust, although its final lines were delivered with a winning nonchalance, the perfect preparation for a Finale that started with the two men in heavenly song before bursting into almost rustic tunefulness.
The heroic sweeps and swooning sighs that launch Brahms' Second Sonata can catch players and listeners unaware. But not this partnership, with its talent for faultless dovetail. The emphasis was always on the immense possibilities of colour Brahms draws out of the two instruments in duet.
The Adagio affetuoso was a piece of dark, burnished lyricism, underscored at first by almost brutal plucking. A stoic beauty was caught here.
The two really got into the swing of the Scherzo, with its playful reminiscences of an earlier Brahms Rhapsody, and the world of the Finale was event-filled enough to encompass restless passages which were realised with a confrontational energy usually reserved for Bartok or Shostakovich.
