Concerto Cristofori, Kendal Town Hall

ROBERT Burns, the national poet of Scotland, was born on January 25, 1759, and on that date, 258 years later, Kendal Midday Concert Club added its own celebration to the countless thousands of other events being held around the world. It was, for the club, an unusual, interestingly different venture and Concerto Cristofori was invited to host the occasion. This is an ensemble dedicated to period performance using period instruments and for this recital the musicians - the Reverend Cantor David Rome (tenor), George Clifford (violin), Ibrahim Aziz (cello) and Sharona Joshua (fortepiano) - proffered a programme of Auld Scottish Songs set by Haydn and Beethoven together with a small selection of instrumental works by those two composers.

David Rome introduced the 13 songs, many of which had texts by Burns: he outlined their contents quite clearly with humour and much useful information. But when he came to sing them his problems were manifold. I found, for instance, a number of phrases in most of the songs to be outside his comfort zone - his tone became inhibited, his word projection impaired. I felt, too, that there was insufficient Scottish ‘folksy’ flavour about them; were they sometimes too refined?

His accompanying partners had mixed fortunes. Maybe the hall was too large for this kind of music-making; perhaps the traditional arrangement of instruments on stage was not quite right…because very occasionally the cello was too dominant, frequently the fortepiano was barely audible, a pity, because obviously there was first-class, sensitive music-making going on there.

The purely instrumental pieces fared much better. Movements from a Haydn Piano Trio and a Beethoven Violin Sonata and a solo fortepiano set of 5 variations by Beethoven received musicianly, clean-cut, classical interpretations. How remarkable is the difference between the tonal characteristics of the fortepiano and those of the modern piano! It is not easy to adjust to that difference - but so rewarding if it can be made.

Brian Paynes