Charlotte Gardner reports from the Hatfield House Festival in Hertfordshire, UK, on 9 October 2025 where Saint-Saëns, Strauss, Chopin and Matthew Kaner were on the menu
It would take some doing for a concert in Hatfield House’s Jacobean Marble Hall to be a disappointment. With just 140 seats, and Queen Elizabeth I peeking over the musicians’ shoulders from her Rainbow Portrait, it’s a wonderfully intimate setting for a class act, and that was certainly the vibe at this, the opening concert of its 2025 Music Festival.
Artistic director Guy Johnston took to the stage with Melvyn Tan for cello sonatas by Saint-Saëns (no.1), Strauss and Chopin, plus the world premiere of Matthew Kaner’s Sonata scordatura for solo cello.
The Saint-Saëns and Strauss kicked things off with tight, convivial dialogue, Tan sparkily alert to Johnston, and his bright touch a lovely foil to the cellist’s gentle-toned songfulness.
Kaner’s Sonata scordatura was conceptually interesting. With the cello re-tuned into the unfamiliar sound world of B–G#–C#–A, it offered a Prelude looking ahead to a Sicilienne, then a ‘Bach Daydream’ (referencing Bach’s cello suites), before a consolidatory Postlude. Architecturally, it felt rock-solid, but the actual effect was fragmented and slightly meandering, mitigated somewhat by the lyrical beauty Johnston spun from its otherworldly high-register writing and special effects.
The Chopin, though, made for a stylish climax, Johnston drawing wonderfully on his Stradivari’s darkest resonances in its first movement, while the duo’s hushed Largo was a masterclass in deferential melody-sharing.
CHARLOTTE GARDNER
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