Browse reviews

FringeReview UK 2018

Johan de Cock Piano Recital

Johan de Cock

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: All Saints, Hove

Festival:


Low Down

Pianist composer Johan de Cock performs at All Saints.

Review

The South-African born composer Johan de Cock pursues a remarkable career as pianist and music producer as well as his creative output. He’s one of those musicians who’ve increasingly brought film and other musics to the mainstream as these genres gain their rightful place at the heart of some classic recitals. This is one of them.

 

It’s a mainly French and even more American programme. Philip Glass’s score for the 2003 film The Hours is here condensed into one of its memorable stretches and de Cock ensures the effect’s mesmeric. It’s not the old minimalism or even the more developed operatic Glass of the 1970s and ‘80s but it’s closer to that idiom: a hypnotic rocking rhythm and melodic sweep with a streak of genius in it.

 

Satie’s saucy ‘La Diva de L’Empire’ is out of the same stables as his frankly sexual ‘Je Te Veux’ with the same café waltz feel to it: memorable, perky, in his apparently light vein, not his soulful core till the middle stretch.

 

There’s a diversity agenda in de Cock’s selecting two Debussy pieces with African-America roots, just as we encounter Scott Joplin between. ‘Le Petite Negre’ is an attractive again lightly syncopated piece, and the now unfortunately named ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ is the most memorable piece from his 1908 Children’s Corner Suite. Again hints of ragtime pulsate through this waltz-time hybrid.

 

In between Joplin’s three ragtime pieces intrigue and expand our reach into his world. ‘The Easy Winners’ lopes like a cantering horse across the keyboard with relaxed long lines. The ‘Ragtime Waltz Pleasant Moments’ is more inward in some ways but still an extrovert piece. I wonder if the really fine ‘Pineapple Rag’ isn’t a kind of great lyric tune slightly caged in its brilliant rag guise. It’s a great melody almost in disguise, long, lyrical and unlike the normal fit of Joplin’s typical pieces. but then that’s typical about Joplin? There’s so much unexplored in his output, particularly his opera.

 

The Brazilian Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934) was the most famous composer there till Villa-Lobos. He possesses a strong profile, and his two tango ‘Nove de julho – tang argentino’ with tis recognizable tango rhythms is succeeded by the ‘Escovado – tango brasilieiro’ (‘Escovado’ means ‘smart’) which takes its neighbouring country’s dance and modifies it in a more nuanced, complex way. This isn’t Piazzola, but it’s remarkable to hear this music inflected with tango at the start of the last century.

 

R A Moulds born in 1958 contributes a piece ‘Under the Leaves of Neldoreth’ Op 72 drenched in classic film scores with a scintillating middle section full of rapid passagework. It’s a remarkable discovery and one of those things that make his recitals so worthwhile.

 

Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ is famous enough to stand treatment by de Cock and this is given a stunning workout. Frist, the main theme is augmented by seconds, which mean the tune sounds of-key but recognizable at the same time. Then after this introduction we get the main tune almost straight, though augmented, and then some almost symphonic treatment. It’s a gem of an arrangement.

 

De Cock then gives us straight three of the Gershwin Songbook versions of his own songs. ‘Oh, Lady Be Good’ is cheery syncopated coquetry, whilst ‘That Certain Feeling’ seems warm and almost conversational. Finally ‘S’Wonderful’ with its ecstatic confession and erotic promise rounds off   de Cock’s selection with a silvery glamour. De Cock’s wholly at home in this repertoire.

 

It shows too in a final flourish in another film composer’s own reductions of three pieces from EUSA. ‘Porz Goret’, ‘Yuzin’ and ‘Penn Ar Roc’h’ are attractive with the middle movement the most reflective but all three warm and shaded; they evoke slow lyric episodes in whatever scenario they come from. As for the title, it suggests someone spending their waking hours online. Time to go. De Cock’s a revelatory player, with a capacity to shade and edge fresh interpretations through classic pieces, as with the Debussy, Nazareth and more raucous Satie; he can reinvent Gershwin sounds and most of all bring gold in from the silver screen.

Published