Stockbridge Music Hub 13/3/26
Steven Osborne piano, Martin Kershaw, saxophone
It’s some time since I was last in Stockbridge Church, the successful venue for the Stockbridge Music Hub, which Clea Friend founded three years ago and still runs. The lunchtime concerts on the first Friday of most months attract well-known and up-and- coming musicians as guests and have built up a regular audience of local people and those in the know elsewhere. Evening concerts are often at the user-friendly time of time of 6pm, and thanks to sponsorship, prices for all concerts are kept low, while Clea’s musical contacts ensure high standards – all of these help to maintain good-size audiences such as tonight’s.
Steven Osborne’s concert here of French music is enlivened by his witty and informative commentary, a successful method of making difficult music seem approachable. Tonight we’re promised classical waltzes in the first half and jazz in the second. Instead of the Chopin we might have expected, the pianist introduces Schumann’s ‘Papillons’ Suite, a set of piano pieces telling the story of a ball. Waltzes, Osborne says, were always associated with scandal because of the “close hold” involved in the dance steps, and “scandals are good for longevity”. The main characters – brothers fighting for the hand of the same woman – are differentiated by musical motifs, as are the key plot points, such as the clothes swapping. Viennese waltzes, and a more stately variety, as well as mazurka-like dances make their appearances, as Schumann and Osborne celebrate the brilliance of the ball as well as the heightened emotions of those dancing.
The necessity to count ‘one, two three’ with the stress on the ‘one’ is, we gather, only part of what it’s all about. The four short works that follow begin with the “deconstructed” waltz of Satie’s quiet and exploratory Gymnopédie No 5, through Lili Boulanger’s delicate ‘In a bright garden’ and ending with Rachmaninov’s transcription of Kreisler’s ‘Liebesleid’’, a sweeping dance which demands virtuosic playing, but retains, Osborne says, a sense of understatement. Two jazzy waltzes follow, Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debbie, and his own transcription of Gershwin’s ‘I loves you Porgy’.
The last piece in this half is a complete surprise. It’s a work whose title is better known as protest song by Pete Seeger, ‘Winnsboro Cotton House Blues’ in Frederic Rzewski’s ten minute piano version, which Osborne describes as ‘man versus the machine and the machine wins.” A brutal assault on the piano keys starts with the insistent repetitive beat in the lowest notes, played at times with flat hand and even elbows. Eventually a blues theme intervenes which seems firm and human and provides reassurance as it moves into Seeger’s simpler song. It’s replaced by quieter notes at the top of the keyboard but gradually they too pick up the unceasing beat of the machine. Astonishing music which brought cheers before half-time. (You can find videos of this work online)
“My mum hates jazz,” Steven Osborne tells us, and with that in mind says that he and saxophonist Martin Kershaw will attempt to clarify some of more puzzling aspects of jazz. Among other things we learn about the development of the 12-bar blues, why jazz musicians count in – one, two, three four – before the band begins, and why they improvise, and are reminded that classical musicians up to Beethoven’s time also thought they could and should improvise. To illustrate these points we hear a variety of jazz music from Duke Ellington to modern composers. Will Stratton’s ‘Tokens’, written in 2021 for singer and acoustic guitar, is slowly voiced, low on the saxophone with Osborne’s minimalist-plus piano, while Rob Hall, a composer from the Scottish Borders wrote ‘Across the Sands’ for a soprano sax – it needs a while to warm up. Another lovely piece which dispels fears that recently composed jazz will be incomprehensible.
The players finish with their own arrangements of two jazz standards. Martin Kershaw says he found Frank Churchill’s original version of ‘Someday My Prince will Come’ too schmaltzy and so he decided to slow it right down – the lovely lengthened saxophone notes change the mood of the piece altogether. Steven Osborne adapts George Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’ to emphasis the “polyrhythms’ in the score – one beat set against another, as seen in his own fast polyrhythmic opening. An display of brilliance from both musicians. The quiet encore ‘Danny Boy/Londonderry Air’ was appreciated by all – apart from one gentlemen who on the way out wondered if it wasn’t ‘a bad omen for tomorrow’…