Music at Paxton: Mullova and Beatson
Paxton House, 19/7/24
Music at Paxton 2024: Viktoria Mullova, violin, and Alasdair Beatson, piano
In the middle of a dreary summer, Music at Paxton’s 2024 season begins on a balmy evening, with cheerful summer dresses and linen jackets on display. There’s a full house in the Gallery at Paxton House, which tonight’s pianist, Alasdair Beatson describes as a venue which “permits a perfect marriage of music and occasion.”
Angus Smith, Paxton’s Artistic Director since 2018 has cannily steered the Festival through the Covid years and their constrained aftermath to an expanded programme this year. There are more daytime concerts, a Festival walk, and music with roots in Mexico, North Africa, jazz, tango and blue-grass. All this sits alongside outstanding chamber music and song recitals which are guaranteed to appeal to the festival’s loyal core audience.
Viktoria Mullova, whose musical career began - astonishingly – in 1980 and Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson, both regularly play music from the baroque to the contemporary, and have made recordings together in which Alasdair plays forte piano “one a lot less shiny than this” he says patting the Paxton concert grand. Their programme begins with the early Beethoven Violin Sonata in A, Opus 12 No 2, which was dedicated to his composition teacher, Salieri. The sonata wasn’t well-received initially, and the mischievous and restless first movement may have seemed too daring to its first audiences, despite its Mozartian sparkle. The striking opening features rapid light staccato chords on the violin over a teasing piano motif. Echoing phrases are exchanged between the instruments before a longer more serious development, Mullova’s vigorous playing on her gut-stringed violin emphasising the emphatic rhythms of the exchanges. In contrast the second movement andante “with a touch of allegretto” presents longer melodic passages for violin and piano in the minor key, before the piacevole allegro of the cheerful third movement.
I listened to recordings of tonight’s Beethoven before the concert, but lazily assumed that the Schubert would be a light tuneful lead-up to the interval. Alasdair’s description of Schubert’s Rondo in B Minor as “substantial” proves something of an understatement. This intense fifteen-minute work requires virtuosic paying from both participants, and it certainly receives it. The Andante opens and closes sternly, though it has a lyrical middle section, but then as we reach the Allegro the piano and violin seem to chase each other in speedy twists and turns, with playful echoing followed by scampering notes. Alasdair has also mentioned that the rondo form with its recapitulations of the main theme lends itself to some astonishing imaginative journeys as the work progresses. Both players enjoy the grit of the Gypsy-like flourishes with stamping chords, as well as the delicate ornamentations in the lyrical passages. The Rondo’s restless energy compels attention, and they make the most of its breathtaking daring. The audience listen entranced and applaud vociferously.
Alasdair Beatson and Viktoria Mullova are currently recording the Beethoven Sonatas and after the interval we hear one of his later works, the Violin Sonata in G Major Opus 96. Written in 1812-1813 for the French violinist Pierre Rode, the work, Beethoven noted, was not as full of the “rushing and roaring passages” that Beethoven liked to include, as Rode no longer enjoyed playing fast music. Alasdair describes it as a work “showing the wisdom of old age.” This is especially so in the adagio expressivo second movement in which the piano begins and the violin then shares one of Beethoven’s loveliest melodies. The short third movement which follows without a break bounces into an explosive scherzo, briefly interrupted by a gentle trio. The fourth movement is a theme and variations, which, not unlike the Schubert Rondo, sets the challenge of several rapid shifts of mood and tempo, with some dazzling playing from both players in the allegro sections and the presto conclusion.
The prolonged ovation is rewarded by an encore, and the slow movement of Beethoven’s Spring Sonata brings the evening to a serene close.
