Lászlo Rózsa, John Butt and Jonathan Manson. Lakeside, Nottingham. 30 January 2025. 5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Ruff

Photo credit: Lakeside

Lászlo Rózsa, John Butt and Jonathan Manson.  Lakeside, Nottingham. 30 January 2025.

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Ruff

“An ear-opening concert which turned expectations upside down”

This was a concert that opened ears and eyes to new musical experiences.  On paper a concert featuring a trio made up of recorder, harpsichord and cello might look a tad limited in scope.  Musical wallpaper perhaps, the background against which early eighteenth century aristocrats gorged, guzzled and generally entertained their rich friends?  Or (much worse) memories of primary school music lessons.

Such expectations were turned upside down by a revelatory programme and virtuoso playing by Lászlo Rózsa (Director of Performance at Nottingham University) and his distinguished colleagues John Butt (harpsichord) and Jonathan Manson (cello).  Just in case the audience should lose their bearings on this musical voyage of exploration, expert guidance was on hand with introductions that were succinct and wore their learning lightly.

The programme’s title “Waves of Temper” prepared listeners for music which swung between moods, often quite abruptly.  This was seen at its most startling in a piece by 20th century Japanese composer Maki Ishii called Black Intention for one recorder player.  It’s safe to say that no one present will ever have heard anything quite like it.  It starts off with a simple melody (played one-handed) and then becomes progressively more turbulent until, driven to the furthest reaches of intensity, it explodes (via a gong) before a long conclusion of serene calm.  Along the way various recorders are played in ways that seem impossible, even to the ears and eyes experiencing them.  Two recorders are played at once; there is much flutter-tonguing; the recorder pulsates with vocal vibrations.

There were other modern pieces as well.  Leonard Bernstein is one of the 20th century’s most celebrated musicians but I wager that no one knew of his Variations on an Octatonic Scale for recorder and cello before this Lakeside concert.  And there was more Japanese music: Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Dreaming for solo harpsichord.  Both pieces shed new light on the musical potential of the instruments used.

Unsurprisingly, much of the programme was devoted to music of the Baroque period.  Corelli’s Follia is a set of ingenious variations on a familiar theme, full of tricky rhythms and virtuoso surprises.  Geminiani’s Sonata in A minor displayed the composer’s delight in veering from one emotional extreme to the other in the blink of an eye, setting up expectations only to subvert them.  There was Vitali’s Ciaconna too, another showpiece which keeps both performers and listeners on their toes.  And no concert with this combination of instruments would be complete without Handel.  His Sonata in D minor is a classic of the genre, combining beauty, turbulence and agility in movements which include a Furioso, a serenely calm Adagio and a strongly confident fugue.

Throughout the programme Lászlo Rózsa worked miracles on a variety of recorders, his tone always beautiful, his virtuosity revealing the astonishing potential of this family of instruments.  His colleagues John Butt and Jonathan Marson shone brightly too.  If the combination of recorder, harpsichord and cello suggests exhibits in a musical museum, then the dust was well and truly blown off them on Thursday evening at Lakeside.

Lászlo Rózsa (recorder) , John Butt (harpsichord) and Jonathan Manson (cello)