THE JOHN WILSON PIANO SPECTACULAR V
Royal Northern College of Music ****
Having managed to assemble eight grand pianos onto one stage I suppose it is inevitable that one would want to wring as much out of the behemoth as possible. This was certainly the case with John Wilson’s joyous 85th birthday event attracting an overflowing and enthusiastic audience of ex-students and well-wishers to the RNCM Concert Hall.
Wilson inaugurated these five-yearly events in 2005, raising funds for the John Wilson Junior Fellowship in Accompaniment at the College where he has been such a respected presence as student and subsequently teacher; his association with the establishment now goes back 60 years. Eight colleagues and past students each man one of the instruments, generously donating their services to the cause, as does Timothy Reynish, directing from the podium.
This year’s complement comprised Harvey Davies, Peter Donohoe, Julian Evans, Peter Lawson, Nicholas Rimmer, Martin Roscoe, Graham Scott and John Wilson himself, all performing with heartwarming attentiveness, concentration and stamina over an evening lasting well over three hours (and with a rehearsal of the same length ending just before the performance itself). Nick Bailey was the engaging compere, and the phalanx of student pager-turners, one assigned to each pianist, rising in regular unison to do their vital duties, was something to behold.
And it was the very length of this programme which proved problematical, with some obvious tiredness creeping in towards the end, a monotony of timbre from these eight keyboards dulling the ear, and some audience members unwillingly having to leave because of late-night transport considerations.
One sympathises with John Wilson’s infectious enthusiasm, but I feel the programme could have been pruned and presented in a different order. Though his mighty Carmen Fantasie made a striking opener, it has been heard before, and could have made way for the crisply-delivered Rachmaninov Tarantelle which in fact came at the end. Two solo items – a somewhat lightweight selection from Schumann’s Fantasisestucke played by Nicholas Rimmer, heroically making it in from Germany just before the concert started, and some clever but strident pastiches by Harry the Piano making a strange ending to the first half – might have been dispensed with.
Two contributions from reduced forces made an unmissable impact however, an urbane and empathetic account of Saint-Saens’ Variations on a Theme by Beethoven from Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe, and, both excitingly and disappointingly, Julian Evans’ triumph as soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for Piano Left Hand. This was a brilliant realisation of Ravel’s almost otherworldly demands, the hand scudding across the entire keyboard and delivering three layers of texture at once, but it was clouded by a lack of differentiation with the second piano playing the rehearsal reduction of Ravel’s imaginative orchestral scoring (no fault at all of John Wilson, accompanying assiduously).
Wilson’s renowned 8-piano arrangement of Sibelius’ Finlandia was awkwardly-placed in the programme, stealing the thunder after what would have made a magnificent climax to the evening, the premiere of Wilson’s fabulous reworking for eight pianos of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
One marvelled at how these illustrious pianists had been able to cancel from their intellectual and muscle-memories the composer’s own solo piano original. But then we rejoiced at the sonorities Wilson created, from the sturdy statement of the Promenade theme, through the juggernaut awesomeness of Bydlo, the flickering spookiness of Catacombs, and finally the clangorous exaltations of the Great Gate of Kyiv.
Some imprecisions of ensemble had crept in by this time, but it was lovely to see Reynish conducting with a Ukrainian flag for this defiant finale, and indeed using a Finnish flag for Finlandia, both countries victims of Russian predatoriness.
Yesterday’s encore would certainly have stood in my suggested revised programme-order, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee, stingingly scintillating from these eight matchless pianists.
Two suggestions for Wilson’s next extravaganza when he turns 90, the first tongue-in-cheek: Erik Satie’s Vexations, in which an enigmatic chord sequence has to be played 840 times (it would take 105 circuits of these eight pianists to get through it); and, more realistically, how about Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries?
Christopher Morley