Avi Avital (mandolin), Ksenija Sidorova (accordion)
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
***
Bartók – Romanian Folk Dances. Falla – Seven Popular Spanish Songs (exc). Bach – Chaconne in D minor. Kreisler – Praeludium and Allegro. Ian Wilson – Spilliaert’s Beach. Schnittke – Revis Fairy Tale. Piazzolla – Histoire du Tango (exc). Nikolai Budashkin – Concerto in A minor.
Here are fringe classical instruments in the hands of two highly charismatic young musicians who have been championing them with growing international success both independently and as a duo.
Israeli mandolin-player Avi Avital has been out there a little bit longer and just released Vivaldi, his third CD with Deutsche Grammophon, while Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova, who made her Wigmore Hall debut aged 21, in 2009, has quickly made up ground.
Individually, both are extremely persuasive, virtuosic, and deeply expressive. Performing as a duo, they enjoy a lively musical chemistry that communicates their engagement – both with the music and with each other – appealingly to the audience.
So the question becomes, how much do performances such as these remain about the music itself and how much about the less familiar sounds of these particular instruments? The answers are on a spectrum well catered for by a widely mixed programme.
What places this spectrum in the sharpest focus is the Bach D minor Chaconne for solo violin, which Avital plays in transcription. It is intense and emotional, as staggeringly impressive on mandolin as it is in the original and in other transcriptions. It does sacrifice a degree of nobility in exchange for earthiness. This is not inherently bad, just very different.
Elsewhere in the programme there is music that actually lends itself to this earthiness because of its folk origins. Both Bartók’s Romanian dances and Falla’s Spanish songs sound like they could well have been originally composed for this instrumental pairing, likewise for the two extracts (“Café 1930”; “Night-Club 1960”) from Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango. The two do not confine themselves to folk-based repertoire: they bring a fresh but valid and distinctly non-earthy perspective to Ian Wilson’s coolly atmospheric Spilliaert’s Beach from 1999.
Sidorova shines in her solo turn, Schnittke’s Revis Fairy Tale, adapted from his ballet inspired by Gogol stories. In particular, the biting, anti-bureaucrat humour of the second movement is delicious.
