REVIEW: Autumn Thoughts at Kempe Studios
Alex Austin reviews Autumn Thoughts with Karen Drury and Trio Poetico at Kempe Studio, 16th October
Wind Trios are something of a rarity, so it was a particular pleasure to hear the superb playing of Trio Poetico in Cordula Kempe’s excellent programme entitled ‘Autumn Thoughts’, wonderfully read by Karen Drury. The trio, all former colleagues of Rudolf Kempe in the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, consists of Hans Martin Ulbrich, oboe and cor anglais, Heinz Hofer, clarinet and basset horn and Florenz Jenny, bassoon.
They performed music by Bohuslav Martinu, John Stanley and Mozart, and the lesser known composers Darius Milhaud, Antoine Dornel and Alexandre Tansman - all executed with remarkable precision and expression. Their timing was quite exceptional, particularly in the complex rhythms and syncopations of the fiendishly difficult Martinu ‘Madrigaux’. Their years of experience as orchestral players and ten years playing together in ensemble shone through every note and phrase. They played as one voice.
The well-known Mozart Divertimento K439b was performed with real warmth and maturity and the Stanley with great charm and vitality. The Milhaud ‘Pastorale’, the Dornel ‘Sonate’ and the Tansman ‘Suite’ were a revelation. All these composers deserve to be much better known, particularly Tansman whose exquisite music was the most autumnal of all.
Karen Drury recited the poetry with her usual intelligence, profound insight, beauty of expression and humanity. The readings were rich and varied from classics such as Shelley, Goethe and Keats to contemporary local writers Jenna Plewes, Susan Davies and Hazell Hills, a great mix of melancholy, joy and humour. Karen’s rendition of Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’ was simply stupendous – the best reading of any poem I’ve ever heard, and she finished the concert with an exquisite reading of Shakespeare’s great autumn Sonnet 73.
The literature was full of memorable phrases and images, like Plewes ‘rain on shrink-wrapped skin’, Blake’s ‘lusty song of fruits and flowers’, Thomas’s ‘robin’s sad song of autumn mirth’ and Dunbar’s wonderful summary of autumn – “Why, it’s the climax of the year, The highest time of living, Till naturally it’s bursting cheer Just melts into thanksgiving”.
There was a great deal of the latter amongst the appreciative audience as the Kempe Society gave us, to quote one of the evening’s poem’s, ‘something to wear against the heart in the long cold’.
