EIF: Noa Wildschut and Lauma Skride
Old College Quad
The Dutch answer to Nicola Benedetti?
This was my thought at the end of this delightful violin and piano recital on Tuesday in the Old Quad. Noa Wildschut was, like our Nicola Benedetti, a child prodigy having made her concert debut at the Concertgebouw at the age of 7. Since then she has been winning competitions all over the world and guesting with many of the major orchestras in Europe, and she is still a student in Berlin! Her very accomplished pianist was Lauma Skride a Latvian musician who has spent most of her musical life in Germany. She had very little rehearsal time with Noa, but this didn’t show as she was a perfect accompanist.
Noa began her programme with Faure’s youthful first violin Sonata, written in 1887. This is full of vivid melody which allowed Noa to show her mastery of the violin. It was a perfect opening work. This was followed by a selection of 9 preludes from 24 which Shostakovich wrote straight after completing his controversial opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk ‘, which Stalin hated and had banned. Perhaps because of this the Preludes are gentler and more melodic and unlikely to provoke the wrath of the Soviet socialist realist censors or Uncle Joe himself! This was followed by ‘Two Humoresques’ by Sibelius, not normally thought of as a humorous composer these were indeed quite jolly. Finally Noa gave us a real virtuosic work Saint~Saēns’ ‘Danse Macabre’, a work which allowed Noa to show off all her skills running up and down the scales. It was warmly received by the big crowd and she rewarded us with another exciting encore. Nicola Benedetti has won the hearts of Scotland and the world with her music and I’m sure Noa has done the same in Holland and soon in the wider musical world, it was a perfect mid-morning concert and it’s available on Radio 3, thankfully without some of the off stage noises, but with the learned commentary of Donald Macleod, looking resplendent in his yellow trousers today.
