Music

Maya Iwabuchi & Susan Tomes

Merchant’s House, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

THE new season of Westbourne Music Wednesday-at-One fortnightly lunchtime chamber music recitals began with a concert which the faithful patrons might describe as “core activity”: a well-known Scottish pianist and the leader of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing sonatas by composers who provide the building blocks of the classical repertoire. And yet. . .

Here was a rare opportunity to hear pianist Susan Tomes in an unfamiliar context as well as the RSNO first violin Maya Iwabuchi up close, the latter on the eve of a high-profile London Proms concert with Scotland’s national orchestra. Of the three works they chose to perform, arguably the best known was the last: Brahms at the peak of his powers, with the Sonata No2 for piano and violin in A. It was on that work that the expert communication between the two was most evident, Tomes particularly attentive to Iwabuchi in full Romantic flow.

The real joy of the programme, however, was that this came as a third, contrasting, demonstration of stylistic diversity. It was immediately preceded by the turbulent little E Minor Sonata No21 of Mozart from 1778, which has a startlingly modern conclusion, some arresting unison passages, and a distinctly “Baroque” opening to its second movement. That last detail made it an appropriate work to follow the opening Debussy, from 140 years later, and planned by the composer, as Tomes explained at the start, as a celebration of his French predecessors of that earlier era. How much of that intention survives in the resulting work is debatable (the composer embarked on many unrealised projects, particularly in his latter years) but the approach the duo brought to this performance of the piece - which is a wonderful example of the music of its own time regardless of its inspiration - was precisely appropriate and quite distinct from everything else that followed. As an hour of quality music-making to set up a season of diverse delights, the Westbourne team could have scheduled nothing better.