“Two performers at the very pinnacle of their game”
“Encore” is the better-bred version of screeching “one more song” while drunk at a concert. Yet to be treated by the “greatest living string player” Maxim Vengerov and the piano spectacular Polina Osetinskaya to four of them seems to be sheer gluttony.
It’s a chance to throw a curveball, a break from the classics so perfectly expected and printed in the programme. Encore one is Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 17, a crowd favourite among the bejewelled Russians and Eastern Europeans. Viennese March by Fritz Kreisler adds some much-needed music-hall comedy. Sergei Prokofiev’s March from The Love for Three Oranges, which once you hear the title does indeed sound like oranges rolling downhill. Finally, a memory-soaked Mélodie by Tchaikovsky. “We would love to play more, but we have to eat, and in London the restaurants do close early,” quips Vengerov after the third encore to his sweetly smiling, silent duet partner, and off we go again.
Of course, the billed programme is spotless. I mean, how could it not be? Vengerov has a Grammy and a Gramophone Artist of the Year award, selling out the Albert Hall for his celebration of forty years on stage. Osetinskaya likewise has played with the best and brightest, as well as penning a bestselling autobiography. She seems, and plays, like a woman of intrigue in a feather-crowned black velvet dress with a train that almost trips her twice, and hands that swoop like swans rather than bash like seagulls.
The evening can be concluded like so: Franz Schubert’s Sonatina in G minor, D 408 is a flirt, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata an argument, and Johannes Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in D minor (my favourite) a conversation. There you are, stop reading and get yourself a nice biscuit, put your feet up.
Brahms, premiering in Budapest in 1888 and written in the Swiss Alps (these being late stage masterpieces for both composers), is racingly romantic. With jumpy scales from the string, we circle up into clouds and airy alpine breezes. Flecked with some D minor darkness, there is more to hear than originally meets the ear. We race along helter skelter to an uncertain end, with violin and piano tumbling over one another.
Shostakovich, of course, brings the storm clouds. A gift for his friend David Oistrakh (knocks socks out of the park, doesn’t it?), it begins creepingly: mournful, tortured, complex – any violinist’s dream. Like a twisted folk tune, broken up with slices on the instrument like surgery, building higher and higher to a fever of sound. Almost lifting Vengerov off his feet with exertion, unusual for a normally unshowy and precise performer. Even Osetinskaya’s calm is tested as she swings her layered bob this way and that, hands flying maniacally, lips pursed with concentration. In subtle rebellion against the Soviet authorities in 1969, the use of a twelve note row keeps the surrealism, dreamlike tension and discordant feel throughout. Bringing us the more modern part of the evening in its epic and uncompromising completion, both heave a quick sigh of relief.
The Schubert was composed (annoyingly) when he was a teenager in 1816 and is filled with charming thrills and some sadder chills. Playful and coquettish, it is unbelievable that someone so young could craft something so rounded. It echoes his favourite composer, Mozart, and finishes on a sunny and triumphant major close.
Two performers at the very pinnacle of their game take on composers beloved by history and taste – a treat enough. To have four little macarons almost brings some of us in the audience to tears. We leaved stuffed with talent and sweet music, ready for a little lie down.