EIF: Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Joonas Ahonen
Old College Quad
‘Pitter, patter, raindrops!’
“My first teacher was the rain. I listened to the drops. They were the first short, round notes in my childhood imagination”.
The opening words of Patricia Kapatchinskaja’s personal website may well have come back to haunt her today, though hopefully they also made her more comfortable in the unusual circumstances she faced. This whole concert was performed to the accompaniment of the sound of steady rain on the roof of the temporary structure in Old College Quad which hosts many of this season’s Edinburgh Festival concerts. It was huge credit to the skill and professionalism of the violinist and of pianist Joonas Ahonen that the music for the most part outshone the weather and the concert was a great success. Although it does have to be said that the downpour we experienced in the first 20 minutes of the programme did significantly impact on the music and had it continued throughout the concert would have damaged the musical experience for the audience. This was a risk which the Festival organisers were no doubt aware of and one they had accepted as part of the cost of providing a Festival under Covid-proof conditions. Let us hope that these twenty minutes was the only price we have to pay for what promises to be an enterprising and exciting Festival.
Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No 7 would have been an inspired opening piece, and indeed for the first opening Allegro con brio movement Ms Kopatchinskaja’ s warm, vivacious, dramatic playing did triumph over its unplanned ‘percussion’ accompaniment. However, in the later quieter and gentler passages the noise from the rain was troublesome, as indeed was the breeze that ruffled the musical score. Nonetheless the piece was well appreciated by the audience. Kopatchinskaja and Ahonen are frequent collaborators and performed a very similar concert to this one in Gstaad a year ago. The Gstaad performance is one that’s easy to access on-line, something that underlines just how much of the quieter passages we lost in Edinburgh as well as the triumphant musicality of this duo.
By the beginning of Schoenberg’s Fantasy for Violin and Piano the force of the rain had abated. I’m no Schoenberg enthusiast, and had anticipated something loud and discordant. But this was relatively quiet and played with great finesse, the intricacy of the music was absorbing. It was a performance well able to rise above the distraction of the rain, and a great deal more enjoyable than anticipated.
The triumph of the concert however was Beethoven’s notoriously difficult Kreutzer Sonata. Played with verve and huge technical accomplishment, the contrasting styles of the two performers complemented each other beautifully – Ahonen precise and clear and melodic and Kapatchinskaja flamboyant and passionate, unflaggingly accurate. Within moments the music grasped this listener’s attention, and nothing at all was able to distract, one of those times when music can be intoxicating.
The Kreutzer carries a considerable weight of music history with it, one of the turning points in Beethoven’s musical career. Tolstoy wrote of the work, “How can that first presto be played in a drawing room among ladies in low-necked dresses? To hear that played, to clap a little, and then eat ices and talk of the latest scandal? Such things should only be played on certain important significant occasions...” Well quite – and equally can it be played in a tent to the sound of steady rain on the roof, with performers and audience cold, and those on the edge, as I was, spattered by rain, and a bit too aware of the breeze? The answer is “Yes, but…” It would be a real privilege to hear this concert performed by these two exciting musicians in a concert hall, or indeed in many churches, as in Gstaad last year. This Edinburgh offering was a tantalising taster of better things to look forward to.
