Brighton Year-Round 2025

Sussex Musicians SMC Chapel Royal, Brighton

Sussex Musicians Club

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: Chapel Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

An almost completely baroque evening with a modernist tail!

Soprano Daria Robertson with baritone and pianist Jason Pimblett began a set with Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-36) whose fame and brief life had him loaded with compositions not his. One that probably is, is ‘Se tu m’ami, se tu sospiri’ an almost folk-like Cavatina art-song set by several composers. It basically says “if you fancy me, great, but I’m not going to be exclusively yours.” Pithy and memorable, Robertson has the Pithy and dispatch as well as a gloriously strong voice to dispatch this

With Henry Purcell (1659-95) a mid-baroque composer after all, with characteristic shadows and enharmonics, more subtlety is required. Three arias from Dido and Aeneas Sung by Dido frame the tragedy. ‘Ah! Belinda’s is a riposte to her very Restoration-named maid about finding love again after early widowhood. It’s a melancholic piece. Robertson is clear though less command is needed at subtler moments.

Command’s certainly needed in the duet that follows with Pimblett. Both singers rise magnificently in Dido’s dismissal of the skulking Aeneas; who then reversed his decision (based on a witch disguised as Mercury telling him to go). That he should once think of leaving is enough for Dido though. This is thrilling and Pimblett negotiating the piano perfectly too. Robertson managed some sensitive rounding out.

Finally Dido’s last aria to Belinda, featuring a recitative addressing her before the ‘When I am laid in earth’ and the great descending bass line of the passacaglia. Robertson sings this with tragic ardour that’s natural and clear. She clears the top notes and arches their tragedy, shading down nicely at the end.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) started the baroque and we encounter him at the end of his career in his third surviving opera The Coronation of Poppea from 1643. But was this duet “pur ti miro, our to godo’ actually written by him? Or was it added to complete his opera after his death by some gifted composer far younger? It’s the entwining of two thoroughly vicious people as they sing orgasmically of their love. They manage to get there strewn with a body or two. Robertson and Pimblett ensure Poppea and Nero shade in and out of each other. Superb too.

There’s a pendant. Francesco Durante (1684-1755) is underrated but wrote in several genres, mainly instrumental. His brief ‘Danza, danza fanciulla gentile’ is a pithy memorable rondo in dance rhythm. An exhilarating end to a fine set

Oboist Alex Pearson and pianist Stephen Engelhard present two items each by Handel and Bach. Handel’s Oboe Sonata in G minor Op 1 No. 2 is a plaintive aria-riven piece that might date from his time at Cannons, residing with the Duke of Chandos 1717-19. Or earlier. The movements are typically slow-fast-slow-fast here telescoped into two. It’s like two early Italian arias yoked together, full of wintry resolve.

Before the next Handel Oboe Sonata, Engelhard plays two Bach Preludes in the keys of the Handel: G minor and A minor respectively. The G minor BWV 885 is famed for its tragic measure and tread in a two-note tied fashion. The A minor BWV 889 despite its equally steady tempo this is a spikier more harmonically challenging work. A fantastic spiral of false notes unwinds and cascades out. Quietly gripping.

Handel’s Oboe Sonata in A minor Op 1 No.4 is a more pastoral affair than the G minor. We leave grieving, G minor’s baroque key for the subject, into the melancholy pastoral of A minor. It’s more instrumental in feel with a more complex slow movement and a resolute fast section. Again tunefully insistent it takes on the character of a heroic aria. The gentler aria that follows is a little bit “parlando”, that is as if speaking. Finally a more upbeat finale still wedded to the minor. Again bold and resolved. Immensely satisfying.

Kevin Allen returns to play Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). He’s an inspired exponent of Schoenberg and modernism, as well as Brahms.

First the ‘Massige Achtel’  Op11/2 from 1909 is still just tonally rooted. It’s an elegiac piece reflecting personal turmoil. Its rocking rhythm on a two-note introduction is stressed by an overarching right hand melody that crossed over into Purr expressionism. Ewartung wasn’t far away and Pierrot Lunaire too looms. It’s still a recognisable struggle with the bounds of what might be said. It’s moody and powerful. Were it not associated with Schoenberg people wouldn’t be so afraid of Op.11. It ends on a crisis and a dissolve. Several times. Just after Allen finished a bell chimed eight. It recalled the bells heard in the last of the six Op 19 piano pieces.

The five Op 23 pieces from 1923 break a creative impasse and the last really managed to move into the 12-note system. Not as celebrated as Op 11, 19 and 25, they’re more interesting, Allen suggests than the latter, with their more skeletal material, if with a more thorough-going 12-tone system. Op 23 is more transitional, more engaged and troubled with the sheer material of music and its extra-musical gestures.

The first ‘Sehr langsam’ quite slow, is a more complicated world than Op 11. It fleets by as an introduction of several unsettled themes and we’re into ‘Sehr rasch’ a spikier match like theme. After a pause, there’s a crazed jack in the box of leaping themes splintering time. It finally winds down.

‘Langsam’ isn’t as slow as its title suggest. It’s more a waltz. keeps the pulse while subverting it with cross rhythms and various themes entering a variants of their predecessors. Oddly Hindemith’s Waltz finale from his ‘1922 Suite’ came to mind. Otherwise this is a world that takes additive rhythms and themes and rejects then into space. It’s a haunted territory.

The ‘Schwungvoll’ is more capricious and less consistent with an artic thrust that just suddenly stops.

The 12 tone Walzer’ is less waltz-like than the ‘Langsam’ with more cross rhythms and details that flicker in and out. Recognisable tone rows introduce themselves but this extraordinary piece is unclassifiable to the naked ear. You need to hear it and the subsequent pieces  the Suite Op 25, more celebrated but Allen suggests “more skeletal, less interesting” and the gnomic brief Op 33) over and over. Stunning.

Published October 13, 2025 by Simon Jenner