Festival director George Vass and composer in residence David Matthews

Ralph Kirshbaum and Carole Presland
ST JOHN-AT-HAMPSTEAD

LIKE those super-magnified images of pollen grains, the Debussy Cello Sonata is as weird as it is beautiful.
Although not especially melodic, the work is always intriguing, especially when in the second movement the cello sounds like the strummed guitar of a lovesick troubadour.
And it was a defiantly highbrow kick-off to the Hampstead and Highgate Festival, which, according to festival director George Vass, prizes the music above the blondeness or legginess of the performers.
In both the Debussy and Beethoven’s Op 69 Cello Sonata, the differences between the two soloists were plain to hear. Ralph Kirshbaum’s cello had a keening quality, like it desperately wanted to be friends with Carole Presland’s carefree piano, but the latter was far too busy to even notice. The result was an enjoyable double-act.
After the interval came the premiere of David Matthews’ Journeying Songs for solo cello. The steady-paced first part was a fairly mournful assortment of shard-like melodic phrases, and notable not least for its echoes of Benjamin Britten, with whom Matthews worked in the 1960s.
The second, faster part was more toccata-like, exploring the entire tonal range of the instrument, from wholesome vibrato through to a scratchy sound as if Kirshbaum was playing down a mobile telephone.
After this enjoyable workout, the piece suddenly burned up all its energy and fizzled out with a few uncertain closing plucks.
Presland returned for a pleasingly deranged account of the Shostakovich Cello Sonata.
When they weren’t playing loony fairground tunes, they were playing at that deliberate tempo at which madmen rock back and forth in their chair. It was an interesting foray into the more unnerving end of the repertoire.