Adelaide Reviews

When two artists perform together for the first time, it makes sense for their program to contain some solos for each of them. That way, not only do the audience get some variety in sonorities, but the performers need to practise less together. So the program that violinist Anthony Marwood and pianist Olli Mustonen put together for a lunchtime concert in the Elder Hall for the Adelaide Festival consisted of three works: Prokofiev’s Music for Children, op. 65, for piano solo, his sonata for solo violin, op. 115, and Shostakovich’s sonata for violin and piano in G major, op. 134.

Prokofiev’s Music for Children is a cross between Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Mussorgsky’s song cycle In the Nursery. It is a set of 12 miniatures which include a toy soldier’s march, a grasshopper’s parade, some dreamy moments (like Schumann’s Träumerei), some rushing around the room, and a touching lullaby as the child falls asleep.

When Mustonen began the Prokofiev cycle, I was reminded of the particular mannerisms of his piano playing that I spoke of in my review of a concert of Beethoven sonatas he gave a few days earlier. These include violent sforzandi, very strong differentiation between tune and accompaniment, and occasional blurring with the pedal. All these mannerisms seemed to me to be more in place playing Prokofiev’s children’s pieces than playing Beethoven. They added to the charming sense of child-like immediacy in his portrayal of the scenes in Prokoviev’s pieces.

Then Marwood played the late solo violin sonata, which displays a very different side of Prokofiev’s character. Neoclassical in shape, it is nonetheless much more reflective and serene than his music of the 1920s. Marwood played with great clarity, the central movement, a set of variations, being my favourite. His sound is in general sweet and caressing, with a great variety of bow-strokes. However, the acoustic of the Elder Hall, so kind to the piano, did not support the violin as well, and I was already a little worried about what would happen in the Shostakovich sonata.

Shostakovich’s Violin sonata in G major is a bleak work, even by Shostakovich’s standards. The first movement surveys a scene of inner and outer desolation. It begins with a passage, almost a tone-row, which rises out of the depths of the piano and finishes in the extreme upper register, and form the basic musical material for the whole work. Violin and piano utter seemingly disconnected phrases, occasionally tussling for space, but more often both mournful. The second movement is a mighty, frantic, even manic struggle between the two instruments, which in this performance the piano decisively won, Mustonen’s violent triple- fortes easily overpowering Marwood’s frenzy.

The finale returns to the scene of the first movement, and created for me a picture of snow falling on a battlefield of thousands of corpses which were gradually being covered up, until only a few rusty bayonets poked through the blanket of snow. The whole work is a testament to Shostakovich’s constant battle with the thought police of the Soviet regime which dogged him throughout his life.

Let us not forget that in an environment where advocates for the Palestinian cause are censored, by the previous board of the Adelaide Writers Festival, and also by Adelaide University, we are in the shadow of a regime in danger of becoming as repressive as the Soviet regime under Stalin. We are still some distance from that (otherwise you would not be reading this), but we need the utmost vigilance, otherwise 1984 will be upon us.