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Pelléas Ensemble delight Peak Music audience

The eclectic combination of viola, flute and harp that is the Pelléas Ensemble gave a rich and expressive performance at the Cavendish Hall on 28th November, with a repertoire spanning three centuries. The ensemble was formed in 2011 when Guildhall School of Drama students Luba Tunnicliffe (viola) and Henry Roberts (flute) approached a third, Oliver Wass (harp) to see if he was interested in learning Debussy’s Sonata with them. It took them a year to master it, such is the ethereal nature of this late piece that explores less familiar tonalities, but it forged a bond between them that has continued ever since. Their moniker is a nod to Debussy’s only complete opera Pelléas et Mélisandre.

Debussy’s sonata has become the Pelléas Ensemble’s signature piece. Easier than a lot of his late work to listen to (it was written three years before his death), it has harmonic echos of earlier compositions such as La mer and Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Debussy himself wrote of it “The sound of it is not bad…it is the music of a Debussy whom I no longer know. It is frightfully mournful and I don’t know whether one should laugh or cry – perhaps both?”  By this time, he was seeking comfort in morphine, which could account for this rather bipolar reaction. The Pelléas treated us to a mesmerically sensitive rendering, effortlessly seguing between the changes in mood, tempo and harmonies in this introspective piece.

Although Debussy’s sonata inspired trios from later composers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as the prolific French Romantic composer, Mel Bonis, the ensemble have had to come up with their own arrangements to explore a wider repertoire from the seventeenth century onwards,  Luba being responsible for versions of Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances and Rameau’s Les Boréade Suite.

In the second half, Luba showed her versatility by swapping her viola for a violin, starting with an arrangement by Henry of three Irish tunes, and followed with Mel Bonis’ Suite, about one of whose works Saint-Saëns said “he couldn’t believe such a beautiful piece was written by a woman”. The concert ended with a stirring rendition of four pieces from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, from a skillful arrangement by the Jewish composer, Gilad Cohen, that loses nothing from the original very full orchestral score. It included the Montagues and Capulets – Dance of the Knights, now associated by a wider audience with the opening music to the TV series The Apprentice. One subliminally expected Lord Sugar to appear at the back of the stage to pronounce “You’re Hired!”.

Altogether an enchanted evening.

 

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