Continuing their successful 75th Anniversary season Perth Chamber Music gave a concert on Saturday in St. John’s Kirk, Perth fostering two more of their aims: to further Scottish artists and to further young artists at the start of their careers.
Winners of this 2023/2024 TunnelL Trust Award the violin and piano duo of Scottish-born Daniel Stroud and pianist Hanzi Zhang gave a recital stretching from Mozart to MacMillan.
They began with James MacMillan’s 1993 Kiss on Wood, an intense piece which moved from troubled dissonance, through plaintive and keening to a serene sadness. They followed this by Mozart’s Sonata for Piano and Violin No.27 in G, K379. Mozart’s title showing that it was still the piano that was most important. Longer than just an introduction, Hanzi Zhang gave the Adagio a beautifully fluid line before the more nervous and pressured Allegro. The theme and variations were bright innocence itself.
Full emancipation for the violin had come by Brahms: Sonata No.2 in A Major. ‘Amabile’ is the qualifier for Allegro and it was indeed that. Warming to an eloquent reading of the second theme, they included epic moments and repose before the strong end. A calmly lyrical Andante had its contrasting skittish scherzo-like sections, before Daniel Stroud’s warm projection on the G-string of the most definitely ‘grazioso’ of the Allegretto.
A bonus to end the first half was Donald Grant’s Bha la eile ann (There was a different day) written as a wedding gift with grand harmonization and genuinely heartfelt.
Aiming much bigger than its actual effect, Richard Strauss’ Violin Sonata had a performance which lit up its youthful ardour. With a brilliantly played piano part, which often sounded as an entire orchestra, Hanz Zhang set up Daniel Stroud’s bravura and virtuoso performance. Between these two ‘concerto’ movements was the heart, the love song without words of the Improvisation, with its stormy middle section.
Technique was there aplenty in Daniel Stroud’s fiery performance of Ravel’s Tzigane: all the refinement and tricks of the violin virtuoso’s trade were colourfully brought out, and touches of humour, too. “Something a little calmer” Daniel Stroud announced as Edith Piaf’s La Vie en rose was played as an encore.
Ian Stuart-Hunter