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Details
The Forum - Malvern Theatres
Grange Road
Great Malvern
Malvern
Worcestershire
WR14 3HB
England
Programme
Johann Sebastian Bach – Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor, BWV 883 (Well-Tempered Clavier II)
Nikolay Medtner – Piano Sonata no.9 in A minor, Op.30
Maurice Ravel – Le tombeau de Couperin: Prélude, Rigaudon, Menuet, Toccata
Sergei Rachmaninov – Etude-tableau in A minor, Op.39 no.2
Johann Sebastian Bach – French Suite no.5 in G major, BWV 816
Johann Sebastian Bach – Partita no.1 in B flat major for keyboard, BWV 825
Performers
Danny Driver – piano
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Danny Driver first played at Malvern Concert Club in January 2016 and quickly became a firm favourite with our audience. His reputation has been steadily rising in recent years, and he is now quite rightly regarded as one of the finest players in the UK. ‘There is never anything ostensibly showy about Driver’s playing, though he has a formidable technique at his disposal. His was an ultra-sensitive, classically restrained yet highly expressive response to the first movement’s opening mood of serenity, with superb articulation and a lovely tone quality. As the emotion of the music deepened, so did Driver’s range of expression expand, though in the most natural, sympathetic manner’, [Alan Sanders, Seen & Heard International, in a recent concert review].
Tonight’s programme is in two contrasting halves. The first is devoted to Bach’s keyboard music, somewhat neglected by the Club in recent years. ‘J S Bach’s Fifth French Suite was full of personality, with ornamentation daringly abundant. There was a palpable sense of enjoyment of the physicality of Bach’s writing’, [Harriet Smith, Financial Times, on Danny Driver’s performance at St John’s, Smith Square].
The second half brings together pieces composed during the first world war. In Le Tombeau de CouperinRavel dedicated each movement to a friend who died in the conflict. Nikolai Medtner’s compact single-movement sonata is untitled, but was given a footnote, ‘During the War 1914-1917’: its disjointed rhythms and hyperactive virtuosity might have been somehow inspired by the conflict. Medtner’s much better-known contemporary Rachmaninov (they were students together) wrote the Études-Tableaux of Op.39 just before leaving Russia for good in 1917.
