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Classical Music - Julie
Bevan and John Walker
The main piece in this concert, performed by the visiting
American cellist Julie Bevan and the local pianist John Walker,
will be Brahms’ famous Sonata for Cello and Piano in
E Minor. The German composer completed the third movement
of this work in Baden-Baden in 1865, three years after writing
the first two. It is a glorious piece, which nods a fugal
head heavily towards Bach while also displaying a Mahler-esque
tinge of dark-hearted exuberance. The cello and the piano
act like a couple of love, sometimes tiffing, sometimes moving
in harmony. It is a notoriously difficult piece to perform.
Bevan is one of three American musicians who are visiting
Europe (they are also playing in Brighton and Germany) to
promote the work of women composers. Also on tonight’s
bill will be works by Peta Crompton, Pamela Harrison, Edith
Swepstone and Elizabeth Maconchy. Crompton, part of the New
Music Brighton group, is a contemporary local composer. Maconchy
the regularly commissioned and broadcast elder stateswoman
of British classical music until her death in 1994. After
a period in which she was virtually ignored by the classical
music establishment there has recently been something of a
revival of interest in her work: now she is being hailed as
perhaps Britain’s first great female composer. If you
have never been to a classical concert in the Westgate Chapel,
this is a good time to start. |
