Review Music Opinion April-June 2024

Recital by Madeleine Mitchell and Nigel Clayton. St Andrew’s Church, Sheffield

A highlight of the 2023 St Andrew’s Music Festival was a concert given by violinist Madeleine Mitchell and pianist Nigel Clayton on 25 November which took place in St Andrew’s Church, Sheffield. The enticing programme consisted of two major violin sonatas from the late nineteenth century framing works by contemporary, Sheffield-based composers.

A tautly dramatic account of Brahms’s Violin Sonata in D minor, Op.108 benefitted from an instinctive, close collaboration between two players who have been performing together for more than three decades. The opening Allegro suggested immense power held in check, the strikingly static development section unfolding enigmatically over the piano’s persistent, tolling pedal note. After a lyrically expressive Adagio came a delicate, airy reading of the intermezzo-like third movement, followed by a fierce, but controlled finale, with a satisfying contrast achieved between the main subject’s vigorous, galloping rhythms and the serene, chorale-like secondary theme introduced by the piano. This searching performance was notable for its clarity and fluency, the disparate elements in Brahms’s music drawn convincingly together.  

Madeleine Mitchell then took centre stage to play George Nicholson’s Spindrift, a substantial piece for solo violin in seven interrelated, but stylistically diverse movements, the last three of which were receiving their first public performance, according to the programme note. Taking its title from sea spray, Spindrift was written for Madeleine Mitchell between Autumn 2021 the end of 2022 and the music suited admirably the violinist’s impressively broad expressive range, from intimate musing to bold, sweeping gestures. Each movement offered different challenges for the player, from the second’s furtive opening in very high register to the third’s extreme dynamic contrasts and the fifth’s relaxed, hushed series of harmonics to the sixth’s carefully placed pizzicato statements. Forming an impassioned central climactic point, the fourth movement presented imposing chordal sequences enclosing a softly eloquent, directly expressive episode. The final seventh movement was the most extended and varied, encapsulating all the previous material in a deeply considered summation. In the closing bars, the solo line faded away with an illimitable, ever-ascending glissando, the last of several inventive effects in the score, imaginatively interpreted by Madeleine Mitchell. It is a tribute to the refinement and subtlety of her artistry that this often demanding and intricate music was able to unfold with a feeling of exploration and interpretative freedom within the context of a cogent, carefully planned framework.

Nigel Cayton joined Madeline Mitchell in the Waltz No.5, for violin and piano by Ray Kohn. This delightful, harmonically restless miniature made a virtue of its own lyrical directness and lucidity of utterance, the violin’s ascending scale rounding off the score with a gesture of heart-stopping simplicity and tenderness.

After the interval there was just one work, the Sonata in A major for violin and piano by César Franck. The palpable reciprocity and sense of unity between both players enhanced their closely argued, convincingly paced performance. There was grace and elegance as well as passion and rapture, the last quality most evident in the radiant finale’s canonic writing. The interpretation found a satisfying balance between improvisatory licence and adherence to the score’s almost classical restraint. In other words, the artists presented a reading in which head and heart were ideally combined.

In this satisfying and enjoyable recital, consummate musicianship was placed entirely at the service of wide-ranging and stimulating repertoire.          

Paul Conway