Lammermuir Festival: Coffee Concert III: Jonian Ilias Kadesha
Holy Trinity Church, Haddington - 11/09/23
Albanian/Greek violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha occupied the morning Coffee Concert slot in Haddington’s Holy Trinity Church on Tuesday 11th September with a programme of Telemann, Enescu, Winkelman and Schnittke, interspersed with Kurtág miniatures from his ‘Signs, Games and Messages’, and culminating in Bach’s monumental Solo Partita No.2 in D minor, the one that concludes with the famous Chaconne. The Kurtág pieces, characterful though they are and delivered with consummate skill though they were, served a metaphorical ‘scenery-changing’ role and I’ll devote no more space to them, in favour of the principal repertoire pieces.
Telemann’s Fantasia No.1 in B flat major was very Bachlike, yet inventive and optimistic, with lovely cantabile elements and lots of typically Baroque features, as well as more meditative moments. By all accounts, Telemann was quite a virtuoso violinist and Jonian brought his full skillset to the realisation.
Romanian composer Enescu was also a prodigious violinist and ‘The Fiddler’ from his ‘Impressions d’Enfance’ is fiendishly difficult. Lovely rhapsodic melody ranges freely over the tonal range of the instrument, with capricious, chromatic and dancelike elements. The influence of Romanian folk music is very evident, though Enescu himself was reluctant to accept being pigeonholed by that association. Jonian’s playing was agile, expressive and characterful and the piece received the fullest advocacy.
Basel-based Swiss composer, Helena Winkelman is a friend of Jonian’s and her ‘Ciaccona’ does certainly start and end with the characteristic ground bass of a chaconne, though it is suppressed by more rhapsodic elements in the middle. The piece is virtuosic, multi-stranded and at times fragmentary, but very enjoyable, not least because of the subtle neo-classical allusions. All disparate elements are tied together at the end in a peaceful sequence of magical harmonics. Super piece, very well presented.
Alfred Schnittke’s 1953 teenage composition, ‘Fugue’, is an extraordinary piece. The fugue subject is neo-classical yet very modern. The musical logic and rhetoric are both compelling and unfamiliar. There are numerous impossibly virtuosic elements, including agile pizzicato, a fast and furious episode, an even faster and furioser stretto, and a coda that accelerates to a big finish. It was mind-blowingly good.
But we were there for the Bach, and nobody could deny that the D-minor Partita was exactly what the other pieces were leading to. “Ah, Bach!” (Only M.A.S.H. fans of a certain age will get the reference). It was, in a word, glorious. The Allemande was lyrical, introverted and meditative, with subtle additional ornamentation in the repeated sections. The Courante was agile and lilting and very satisfying. The Sarabande benefitted from the same ornamentation and phrasing as the Allemande, individual but natural. The Gigue was brisk and joyful, rhythmic and thrilling. But the Chaconne – wow! Played attacca to the Gigue, it benefited from a wide dynamic range, from sotto voce to a declarative fortissimo. The fast runs were impossibly agile and accurate, as were the extended string-crossing passages. It was a journey through the mind of Bach. Fabulous.
Cover photo: Andre Grilc