Nottingham

Clare Hammond

Lakeside, Nottingham

June 15 2023

5*****

Review: William Ruff

@ReviewsGate

Fascinating repertoire and playing of irresistible refinement

Clare Hammond grew up in Nottingham, first appearing at Lakeside as a child 30 years ago.  Many in Thursday evening’s audience will have followed her career with keen interest, watching and listening as she has grown into one of the UK’s finest pianists.  Most aspects of her latest recital won’t have come as a surprise: the poise and grace of her performance; the super-refinement of her playing; her astonishing technical mastery – and her knack of constructing a really fascinating programme.

What will have come as a surprise is the music which started her Lakeside recital: eight short Etudes by French composer Hélène de Montgeroult, born in 1764 – a fact which seems scarcely credible as the sound-world she inhabits has much more in common with Chopin than with Mozart.  Hélène’s life-story seems ripe for the Hollywood treatment: an aristocrat in the French Revolution, kidnapped, imprisoned (husband dying whilst incarcerated), put on trial for her life.  Her defence?  A piano was wheeled into the courtroom and she improvised such a wonderful set of Variations on La Marseillaise that she was acquitted.  Listening to this set of Etudes, you can see why the court was impressed.  They make an instant impact: strong song-like melodies played by the right hand whilst the left plays inventive, adventurous accompaniments.  The harmony is bold and daring, the textures complex.  They belong to a romantic culture decades in advance of the age in which she wrote them.  Clare has recorded many of them: so buy her CD to embark on a fascinating voyage of discovery.

Ravel’s Miroirs came next, a series of images reflected through the composer’s musical personality.  The first Noctuelles (‘Night Moths’) flits and flutters in ways which suggest  flight patterns seemingly unpredicatable yet captured with astonishing precision.  In the second Oiseaux Tristes (‘Sad Birds’) Clare vividly presented its restless harmonies, creating an uneasy, richly oppressive atmosphere of birds lost in the torpor of a sombre forest on a hot summer day.  Similarly vivid was Alborada del Gracioso, Clare conjuring up strumming Spanish guitars, clicking castanets and unrestrained melodic sensuality.

The recital’s second half started with Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata with its highly dramatic outer movements and its famously song-like slow movement, Clare making its oscillating inner parts sound even warmer than usual.  This was highly poised playing, with crystal-clear textural clarity and much charm.

To conclude: two composers much influenced by folk music.  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote a set of 24 African-American Melodies, Clare choosing three to illustrate the composer’s skill at taking poignantly beautiful tunes and weaving from them a deeply expressive set of variations.  ‘Deep River’ is probably the best-known and Clare really did make it sing.

The other folk-inspired composer was Spain’s Isaac Albéniz whose Iberia seems to express the very soul of his native country.  It’s a series of intricate tone poems, of which Clare played three: Cádiz, Evocación and Triana.  It says much about her musical stamina that she was able to negotiate this music’s demands at the end of an already demanding programme.  Albéniz calls for an extreme dynamic range, cross-rhythms, much interweaving and crossing of hands, difficult leaps and treacherous chords.  It is irresistible, deeply evocative music, sounding authentically Spanish in Clare’s hands. 

An encore was as welcome as it was inevitable, one more Hélène de Montgeroult Etude restating for the audience what a remarkable recital this had been.

Clare Hammond, piano