Skillington And Plagge, Impressive

The Age

Tuesday February 7, 2006

CLIVE O'CONNELL, REVIEWER

MUSIC REVIEW: BACH CANTATA SERVICE St John's Southgate, February 5 RIGG BEQUEST RECITAL 3 German Lutheran Church, Melbourne, February 5

CONTINUING his excellent initiative of Bach cantatas performed in context, Graham Lieschke and his Bach Choir and Orchestra performed Wo soll ich fliehen hin as part of the St John's Southgate 9am service. Not a particularly taxing work for the choral forces, it requires two instrumental soloists with high technical skill and gives two of its required four soloists a thorough work-out.

Guest violist Nicole Forsyth negotiated the non-stop obbligato for Ben Martin's tenor aria, Ergiesse dich, with calm fluency, a rippling counterpoint to the jagged demands of the vocal line. Bass Jerzy Kozlowski powered through his substantial recitative and the vehement Verstumme, Hollenherr aria, making the most of the work's dramatic word-paintings.

Trumpeter Mark Skillington deserves special mention for his clean obbligato to Kozlowski's aria, playing a valveless B flat Baroque instrument and adding his instrumental timbre both here and in the choruses with a minimum of fuss and remarkably few intonational errors.

But the performance succeeded as a composite and for the orchestra's briskness and pitch uniformity.

AT THE city's other Lutheran church, the Team of Pianists presented German guest Rolf Plagge in a solid program of Mozart, Schubert and Schumann. Plagge, now in his mid-40s, has taught for the past 15 years at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg; when he gives an account of the stand-alone A minor Rondo, you are assured of an informed reading straight from the Mozartian mainstream.

In fact, the pianist treated this melancholy piece with a refreshing lack of rigidity, varying his dynamic and touch at each return of the work's main theme. For the large A minor Sonata by Schubert, Plagge showed a sensible and considerate manner with which to treat the first movement's heavy chords, infusing the pages with a power drawn from harmonic side-steps and inbuilt declamation rather than hammered out through thumping ferocity.

This work with four very different movements asks a good deal from its interpreter, but Plagge had enough energy in reserve for the final whirling rondo.

After a substantial interval, he gave an involving interpretation of Schumann's Carnaval, one of the repertoire's great challenges.

While the Preambule and Davidsbundler March tail-ended the work with energetic enthusiasm, the central pages came across to even finer effect, the pianist building up a propulsive energy - a powerful if draining experience in this church's close acoustic.

© 2006 The Age

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