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Melvyn Tan, St Leonards Church, Shoreditch, London, review: Tan played with consummate ease and grace

A specially curated programme to mark Melvyn Tan's 60th birthday and the 40th anniversary of Spitalfields Music, included the London premiere of 'Catching Fire' by Jonathan Dove

Michael Church
Wednesday 14 December 2016 12:50 GMT
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The programme was curated to celebrate the pianist Tan's sixtieth birthday
The programme was curated to celebrate the pianist Tan's sixtieth birthday

Melvyn Tan made his name as a period-performance fortepianist. He’s since reverted to the piano and its mainstream Romantic repertoire: to celebrate both his 60th birthday and the 40th anniversary of the founding of Spitalfields Music, he chose to give a recital tailormade to honour that institution’s former executive director Judith Serota, in the 18th-century church where many of its concerts are held.

“Variations for Judith: Reflections on Bist du bei mir” is a collection of very short pieces on an aria which Bach originally adapted for his wife Anna Magdalena. The composers are one-time artistic directors of the Spitalfields Festival, along with Richard Rodney Bennett, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Thea Musgrave. What was striking in many of them was the near-homogeneity of style – they could have been one extended piece. A few stood out: Maxwell Davies’s bore the imprint of his unmistakable voice; Thea Musgrave’s was deceptively ingenious in its simultaneous departure from and adherence to the theme, while Richard Rodney Bennett’s had an unexpectedly Chopinesque expressiveness.

Then came three tours de force: Judith Weir’s I’ve turned the page, dazzling in its liberated invention; Jonathan Dove’s tumultuously exhilarating Catching Fire, getting its London premiere; and Liszt’s Three Concert Etudes, delivered by Tan with consummate ease and grace.

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