Robert Bridge will play Scriabin and Rachmaninoff
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On Sunday 16 June at 4pm, Robert Bridge on piano, will take the audience to Russia with miniatures written by a highly precocious teenager pitted against one of the great landmarks of the romantic piano repertoire.
Alexander Scriabin began writing occasional short pieces in his late teens, gradually, as with his hero Chopin, fashioning them into a set of 24 Preludes that, like Chopin's Op.28 Preludes, work their way through every major and minor key. For a man whose life, both spiritually and musically would become so very complicated by the end of his life, with secret esoteric musical codes and megalomaniac visions, these early pieces have an innocent and uncluttered beauty that is quite breathtaking.
Rachmaninoff completed the first version of his Second Sonata in 1913 but just couldn't leave it be and, in 1931, revised it from top to toe, pruning about 5 minutes and several hundred notes off the original. But even in its leaner, keener reincarnation it remains a significant challenge to any pianist who is charged with navigating both themselves and their audience through a complex but luscious landscape with big tunes to die for and virtuoso writing that comes with health and safety warnings.
As ever the concert is free with appropriately Russian-themed refreshments - and if you want to enter into the full spirit of Russia we'll roll you out the door with a shot of vodka in your hand.
The concert will raise funds through a retiring collection for Music and Memory, a rather new charity that creates personalised playlists for people in care homes with dementia and other cognitive disorders with often startling and powerful results. Please have a look at their website and see for yourself what they are up to. Music so often is like a lost perfume, the smell of a remembered rose, the feel of a much loved book, a hotline to a memory bank that seems otherwise inaccessible.
And by all means bring something quiet to do whilst you listen if you want to.
June 11, 2019
