Concert review: Adrian Brendel (cello) Dénes Várjon (piano)

Looking relaxed and genial as he walked on to the stage of the hall he recently described as a home from home, Adrian Brendel, together with his duo partner Dénes Várjon, treated the Sunday evening audience to a totally engaging programme.

The pair went deep into the opening of Beethoven’s G minor Cello Sonata op.5 no.2, making every note count, lending intense expression to its lyrical phrases and characterising the forte and piano phrases so that they sounded like two different characters. Both players basked in the joy of the Allegro, though a few off-centre notes in the middle range were audible. This was a masterly partnership and the audience was suitably captivated.

Brahms’s E minor Sonata followed, played with sensitivity and refinement, its opening theme nostalgic in mood, with a burry tone. A graceful Minuetto and dreamlike Trio gave way to the last movement’s inexorable fugue, riding headlong to the end.

The pair had priceless personal memories to share of György Kurtág after the interval before their inspired alternating between two collections – Signs, Games and Messages and Playthings. Particularly effective was the wonderful ‘Shadows’ – chromatic wanderings on the lower strings, placed between two solo piano ‘Hommages’.

In Dohnányi’s Cello Sonata the wide-ranging and turbulent Romantic flowing lines of the Allegro were followed by a feather-light Scherzo, all fizzing tremolo, some fine sustained bowing in the Adagio and the engaging and virtuosic variations of the finale, ending in a radiant blaze of B flat major.

Janet Banks