Brighton Year-Round 2024
Simeon Walker Piano Recital St Nicholas
Simeon Walker
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Simeon Walker is a Leeds-based pianist who’s appeared extensively on Radio 3, Radio 4, BBC 6 and Classic FM amongst many other outlets and festivals. He’s currently touring.
Rapt and consummately realised. Walker also offers gifts of beer mats with a QR code and merchandise. A singular and enchanting hour.
Review
Simeon Walker is a Leeds-based pianist who’s appeared extensively on Radio 3, Radio 4, BBC 6 and Classic FM amongst many other outlets and festivals. He’s currently touring.
Though known for performing from the classical canon, today he’s concentrating on his own output, which he terms Sad Piano Music. It’s a unique genre that emerged for him during lockdown. He introduced himself and each of his 11 pieces
Though closely aligned to the best kind of film music, it shares nothing in common with say Michael Nyman’s The Piano.
It is however romantic in the way Fazil Say is: to a degree. That is, if you know Say’s melding jazz post-classical and national elements it only resembles Say’s plangent tones of grief in the great ‘Black Earth’ but not its specificity. It is however gently melancholic and often strikes deeper.
If ‘Nocturne’ rolled more than some Nocturnes, and is more fleet in its genre melodic riffles, ‘Gleam’ recalls the filigree glass delicacy of middle-late Frank Bridge. Pieces like ‘The Hour Glass’. It’s far slower than that or ‘Nocturne’ and more exploratory.
‘Chiaroscuro’ emerges from Walker’s study of film, particularly black and white. This as its title suggests explores even captures the feel of black and white cinematography. There’s a small rapid piano figuration Walker trails though in the right hand that adds a patina and individuality to the main theme. Indeed this piece heavier in rubato and I creased tempo is altogether more turbulent than it’d predecessors rising to a climax again not so far away from Say; and falling back on those trilling right-hand arabesques.
Walker’s deviating from his programme to add brand new pieces. These are all influenced by Chopin in the Ballade No 1 and particularly by John Cage, Morton Feldman and Howard Skempton in three Impromptus. Then a Lullaby cycle to his baby son: six circling in fifths, and this is No 4.
The Ballade No 1 certainly involves more chromatic notes and a tacit narrative drive. Not least in a chord sequence of gentle dissonance slowly building I. Intensity then falling away. There’s not the ferocity of Chopin’s Ballades. This is very much Walker’s quietly stated universe.
The Impromptus which follow straight on certainly breathe the hypnotically spare sonance of Feldman. But there’s a Skempton-like warmth and tonality too.
‘Paean’ is based in a trip to Saddleworth Moor above Manchester realised in a glow of heather. It sounds like a prelude. A melodic statement played maestoso is restated and developed in chord sequences. But these are kept separate, and though tempo fluctuates the rapt spell is never fluttered with development till the end. Then a rhapsodic paragraph breaks out, still honouring the original theme though rising to a climax that perhaps inevitably dissolves.
‘Inside/Out’ broaches ambiguity and reflects on the turbulence in the world over the past decade, and the need for conversation and ambiguity.
‘Saturnine’ ‘a dark gloomy and stormy’ personal signature ends the programme. Perhaps this piece though sounds more rhapsodic passionate and consolatory than angry. A fine conclusion to the concert.
Give the people what they didn’t ask for quips Walker with his encore ‘Compline’. A conclusion as the final prayer of the office of prayer, it ideally rounds off Walker’s offering. It’s 10 years old and one of Walker’s first pieces. The TSP litany: Thank You Sorry and Please. It’s pellucid, already recognisably Walker’s voice. Simple progressions from spare material, it certainly offers the numinous and prayer-like motif its title suggests.
Rapt and consummately realised. If you enjoy that stretch between classical and crossover (it’s neither exactly) then this can scarcely be improved on. Walker also offers gifts of beer mats with a QR code and merchandise. A singular and enchanting hour.
