WHAT A PERFORMANCE!

Normally the task of dissecting a lunchtime recital is a straightforward task.  Ordinarily I am able to take notes during the performance, and scrutinize the performers as the concert ensues.  But this was no normal lunchtime recital.  And this was no ordinary performer.

When eighteen year old Savitri Grier graced the stage with her flowing dark hair, all smiles, charm and quiet allure, she had the audience gripped.  And this was before she even started playing. 

The recital began with Mozart’s Violin Sonata in Bb K454, which features a notable equality between violin and piano.  With her father, Francis, on piano, they demonstrated a formidable unity in their playing.  The two both displayed incredible chemistry with their instruments: Savitri’s brow furrowed as her fingers glided over the neck of her violin, breathing deeply as she moved with the music; Francis’ head leant back, eyes darting between the sheet music and his daughter, caught between a flux of pride and musical elation.

During the recital I was overwhelmed by the musicality of Savitri’s playing:  her lightness of touch, her melodic lyricism, her sweeping vibrato, and the tonal colour that shone in her music throughout.

The duo moved on from the Classical Sonata, to the Impressionism of Debussy’s final composition, his Violin Sonata in G minor.  The varying style of composition gave the opportunity for Savitri to display previously concealed strengths.  The work presented bitonality in certain passages, unsuspected modulations, and a peculiar juxtaposition of melancholy and humour that demanded a fiercer, yet simultaneously subtler style of playing.

Spawned from the French aesthetic of Debussy and Satie, Ravel’s “Tzigane” utilises melodies that are built around modal constructs, rather than conventional major and minor scales.  The opening few minutes of the piece are solo violin.  Inspired by gypsy melodies, the opening is an experimental outburst of improvisational motifs.  Savitri’s playing was explosive.  Although the passage was irregular, and to the listener the metre seemed undecipherable, the key indiscernible, Savitri attacked it undaunted, as comfortable in the discordant faux-gypsy modal experimentation as in Mozart’s conventional Classical form.

But words can never do justice to the performance I witnessed this lunch time.  To quote Sinatra, ‘[it was] much too much, and just too very, to ever be in Webster’s Dictionary’... I am unable to articulate the musicality I witnessed in words.  All I can say is, check Savitri and her family out the next opportunity you can!