The Four Elements, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick

The last of Splash Classics’ enterprising concerts, organised around the theme of The Four Elements’, was a multimedia presentation of the fourth element in the series, Earth, perhaps the most traditional of the four concerts organised by Splash Classics’ artistic director, Andrew Lucas. Of the two works on the programme, Gustav Mahler’s great Song of the Earth was presented in a two-piano version, played by the renowned pianists Martin Roscoe and Peter Donohoe with singers Wendy Dawn Thompson, alto, and Christopher Diffey, tenor.

The two vocal soloists alternated throughout in this gigantic six-movement piece, an arrangement which worked well. What was missing, not withstanding the two pianists amazing ability to reproduce Mahler’s complicated score on two pianos and the singers’ highly-polished performance, was the composer’s orchestral colours which are so integral to this work.

The second half of the programme was given over to a two-piano version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in which the pianists were joined in part two by four members of the Undiscovered Dance Company led by Kelly McClelland. This was a tour de force which received an enthusiastic response from a spellbound audience.

Clive Walkley