It was Swedish cellist night at the Wigmore yesterday. Mats Lidström and Claes Gunnarsson, along with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips (who’s not Swedish, just plain English) dished up one of the most varied programmes in recent memory, working their way from Bach to Milhaud via Menotti and John Ireland, who, incidentally, wasn’t Swedish either. Particularly interesting about the night was that all the tunes save for Menotti’s Suite from 1973 were transcribed for two cellos and a piano by Lidström. Though Lidström’s a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and lists himself as performer-composer-transcriber, his efforts were more pragmatic than academic. As he told the audience in one of his three talks from the pulpit, there just aren’t that many pieces for two cellos and a piano. In fact, the only one he was able to find was a Handel prelude for cello and continuo, and he chose to save that pretty little number for the encore.
Most of the pieces were written for two pianos, a fact that was readily apparent in Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor KV.546. The Adagio’s insistent opening bars weren’t intended to be played on a cello, let alone on two cellos, but man alive, they should have been. It sounded terrific. The fugue, interesting enough with two pianos, was lent a wholly new dynamic by the two cellos, whose sibling relationship enriched the piece by heightening both the musical accord and discord as the fugue carefully unfurled.
Moving from Mozart to Menotti represented a considerable leap, especially given the feel of the latter’s Suite. Menotti is perhaps best known as an opera composer, and a remarkably successful one at that. This Suite, however, hardly sounds operatic at all. It doesn’t sound Italian either, but rather like something that might have emerged from a Czech composer around the time of the First World War. I’ve accordingly dubbed it the Svejk Suite, but don’t really expect the name to catch on. It’s first movement is a sombre, driving march, played remarkably well by the cellists, Lidström in particular (Gunnarsson had pitch problems for most of the night, and frequently had to rely on a huge vibrato to correct his sharpness on the A string). The Scherzo movement is a slightly more jolly affair, but only by a matter of degree, and any present sunlight soon gives way to the inimical. The onset of jazzy punctuated rhythms segue nicely into an entrancing cello dialogue, which gradually builds the head of steam necessary to drive the movement to its frenetic ending. 
The Arioso movement brings about a marked change in the music. We’re suddenly transported to a more operatic landscape, where a sentimental opening theme – far better suited to the violin; the cello has to try too hard with it – is interrupted by a quick dance and a hugely dramatic ending. From there it’s off to the modern sounds of the Finale, in which we’re treated to off-beat rhythms, a final, short-lived, key change, and a frantic dash to the finish, which feels four decades, and at least two time zones away from where we began.
The same could be said for the second half of the concert. The thing took on the feel of the last night of the Proms, where hugely talented, unmistakably classical, musicians let down their hair and suck on smiles as they work their way through old favourites like the Liberty Bell March (a.k.a. the theme from Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat. Unlike the Proms finale, where a high-spirited, highly-inebriated crowd overcomes the musicians with its cheers, whistles, and low-grade explosives, last night’s concert attracted a more subdued lot, the obvious benefit being the ability to hear what was played. Frank Bridge’s Valse Russe, whose harmonies sounded amazing on the cellos, rich and timbry, somehow fed into the otherworldly cello rendition of Arthur Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba, in which the harmonies typically played by a horn section are bowed with great aplomb by Lidström and Gunnarsson.
R.R. Bennett’s Four Piece Suite is a musical hotch-potch in which the movements are titled according to genre – Samba Triste, Country Blues, Ragtime, Tempo di Hard Rock. In listening to the piece, I was reminded of Michael Hedges’ wonderful generic shape-shifter, Pachelbel’s Loose Cannon, which is, unless I’m sorely mistaken, is the sole recorded instance of Foggy Mountain Breakdown leading into the Canon in D major. I was also reminded of Josh Roseman’s propensity for assigning familiar pieces to seemingly inappropriate instruments, like in his trombone rendition of Elvis’ Don’t be Cruel.
Unfortunately, unlike Hedges’ and Roseman’s work, Bennet’s piece was a bit of a flop in that it managed to neuter four highly emotive musical styles within twenty minutes. The Samba Triste was awful, and not helped any by Crawford-Phillips playing; the Country Blues was bland where the score was concerned, but goddam if you can’t play the blues on a cello; the Ragtime movement sounded like something Scott Joplin might have written at three in the afternoon while on vacation in Vienna, though, again, the cellists at least made it interesting; and finally, Tempo di Hard Rock seemed a worrisome blend of Oklahoma! the Black Crowes’ version of Hard to Handle, and the theme from Facts of Life. Still, Lidström and Gunnarsson made a respectable show of it all, and Lidström managed the hugely admirable feat of moving from playing Bach exquisitely to really grinding it out in the idiom of an old blues man with the Bennett. He used the cello’s vocal qualities to full advantage, executing his glisses as though he were playing the slide guitar, and bowing just above the ferrule to imitate the sound of a picked string. It was really very impressive.
Lidström’s currently working on Rigoletto Fantasy, a divertimento for cello and orchestra based on Verdi’s opera, and if all goes according to plan, it’ll be premiered on April 6th.
Ravel described La Valse as "a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz which is mingled with the impression of a fantastic and fatal wild circling movement which leads to death [...] Through rifts in the eddying clouds are glimpsed waltzing couples. Gradually the clouds disperse and one sees an immense hall thronged with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chendeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo."
