Simone Tavoni in Perivale
‘A musician of poetic insight and curiosity’
A fascinating and varied programme of ‘something old and something new’. The works of Mendelssohn have been unjustly neglected these days and I remember Murray Perahia playing the Sonata op 106 as part of the programme that brought him to victory and world wide recognition in one of the first Leeds Piano Competitions. Rudolf Serkin too used to regularly include the Preludes and Fugues in his programmes. So it was refreshing too be able to hear the Fantasy in F sharp minor that the 25 year old Mendelssohn penned obviously for his own concerts. It is a work of scintillating brilliance contrasted with a mellifluous outpouring of the sentiment of its time and one that made Mendelssohn a favourite at the court of Queen Victoria. A work in one movement, sometimes known as ‘Sonata Écossaise’, but divided into three episodes like a sonata .The central episode was of a simplicity and charm and the last with a dynamic drive and noble brilliance of beauty and exhilaration. Simone played it with delicacy and subtlety with a jeux perlé of sparkling exuberance and ‘joie se vivre’ as he delved deep into the heartstrings for the melancholic outpourings of Mendelssohn’s genial melodic invention..
