Review of David Nettle and Richard Markham
(28 Jun 07 | Victoria Concert Hall)

Marking the thirtieth anniversary of their music career together in the Singapore International Piano Festival were David Nettle and Richard Markham, celebrated pianists from the United Kingdom.

Before they started, there was a comic mix-up in piano benches, when one pianist had to switch seats with the other. Following which, Nettle and Markham unleashed their years of experience and synergy into Max Bruch's Fantasy in D minor, Op. 11. Not known for his piano compositions, Bruch’s Bach-inspired Fantasy felt slightly lethargic as an opening piece to the concert, in spite of its many moments of sonorous grandeur and expressive lyricism.

Robert Schumann’s Four Canonic Studies from Op. 56, composed initially for pedal-piano, was a buoyant display in counterpoint. At the hands of Nettle and Markham, the Studies sparkled with their recurring cascades of notes and subtle shifts in moods. As with the earlier piece, the duo revealed their miraculous ability to push and pull a musical line together, as if it were truly a single mind behind all the fingers on the keys.

During Franz Liszt’s Concerto Pathétique, both pianists demonstrated again how seamlessly a phrase could be passed from one to another without variation in tone or dynamic. This unusual work is in keeping with Liszt’s love for incorporating orchestral styles and maximising the piano’s possibilities. This is because although a concerto usually involves orchestral accompaniment, this lesser-known work by Liszt was written for just two pianos

Like in a concerto, one piano would launch into a melody while the other created a rich, orchestral-sounding accompaniment to the former. Nettle and Markham took turns to play one and the other with great sensitivity to the music’s spectrum of moods. In one moment, the chords moaned or crashed like rolling thunder, particularly when the concerto’s appassionato theme was played. In another moment, the theme was played with unexpected lightness and joy.

The last two pieces of the evening were the clear crowd-pleasers. Rachmaninov’s Suite No. 2, Op. 17, with its bombastic and rapid chord progressions and sense of melodrama, showed the audience what the duo was made of in terms of sheer virtuosity and musical range. From sections of impossible synchronicity to later occasions for playful or high romanticism, they played with persuasive dexterity. However, there were also times when their sound lacked clarity.

Their sound was most transparent in Scenes from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, a work arranged by the pianists themselves. In fact, it was only in this part of the concert when an electric current seemed to pass through the duo when they performed. A familiar tune like A Boy Like That sizzled with a drag-queen’s ferocity, while another famous song, Tonight, was played with haunting restraint.

Moreover, the multiple mambo and cha-cha rhythms were so exhilaratingly articulated that I was left to wonder what the earlier pieces could have sounded like if both performers had played them with the same glee, passionate intensity and dynamism, as they surely showed by the end of their concert.

Published in The Straits Times, Life! on 30 Jun 2007