WORLD CLASS DUO OPEN LLAN DEILO MUSIC FESTIVAL
St. Teilo's Church, festooned with flowers and packed to capacity was the venue for the opening of the first Llan Deilo music festival last Monday evening. Things got off to a flying start with the world class duo of Marat Bisengaliev, violin, and Benjamin Frith, piano. This is without doubt the most dynamically attuned duo I have ever encountered in terms of live musical performance. Both Frith and Bisengaliev are one in the adoption of a boldly antirational approach in the expression of their music as much by heart as by brain. Their instruments were made to thunder or weep by turns with a tremendous spiritual confidence as well as technical expertise. Their six years of partnership yields a wealth of success in the way in which they seem to live and breathe each other's musical moves as much as their own.
They opened their concert with Tommaso Vitali's Chaconne. This work is something of a hybrid, having been originally written in the renaissance, then reworked during the nineteenth century. The opening chords on the well-tuned Steinway grand were unforgettably grave, mighty and tender.
In fact there was a relentless element of highly energised emotional charge throughout the whole concert. Nothing about their playing seemed in any way casually matter-of-fact or purely business like. Every note and phrase was superbly well judged in being so tastefully apt. There was nothing forced or unnatural about the way the duo seemed to run like wild fire through the gamut of human emotions from awesome gravitas to cheeky humour in JS Bach's second Sonata and more especially the frolicsome and witty work by Tartini, The Devil's Trill. This was not the devil's tune, an Archbishop in Russia once pointed out to Bisengaliev, but just simply devilishly difficult.
Then came four pieces by Elgar played by Bisengaliev and Frith with a thoughtful and sensitive reverence before the devilishly difficult trail was hit once more during the second half of the concert. Bisengaliev tackled an arrangement of Tarega's Alhambra, popularly known as a piece for the guitar. His solo performance was certainly technically impressive here; though the work itself is more naturally suited to the guitar. But is Bisengaliev, as some suggest, a latter-day Ysaye or even, it might be conjectured, a reincarnation of Jeannette Neveu? Well...
Bisengaliev and Frith gave us two generous encores, and eventually we all left the church, rather stunned and exhausted, but replete with joy. Let's hope the whole week of the festival mirrors something of the success of this first brilliant night.
David Reid
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