Music

Catherine Manson/Alasdair Beatson, Cottier's Theatre, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

Five stars

IT still amazes me, after decades of focused listening to live music, what a difference a second consecutive night of listening to the same sympathetic artists can make to an experience. It's almost as though on the first night they've established their credentials, and demonstrated, convincingly, the purpose and the direction in which they want to lead and present their music. And then, on the second night, you open yourself and hand over to them your absolute trust in what they are doing: your guard is down, your radar is up, and you are completely receptive to the experience they will offer.

And so it was on the second and final night of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas, magically-played on Wednesday by Catherine Manson and pianist Alasdair Beatson in a concert that rounded off their two-year survey for the Cottier Chamber Project of Beethoven's 10 Violin Sonatas.

It was a series that re-defined the magnificence of these works, and the fact they should be higher up the league, as it were, in frequency of performances. But, in the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Sonatas, Manson and Beatson also re-defined the character of the music through the sublime lightness of their playing and the unshakeable homogeneity of their instrumental partnership, whether in the interplay of contrapuntal lines or in the simple, yet so elusive, simultaneity of a shared chord or gesture. Their characterisation of the music was profound, whether in the darker corners of the C minor Sonata or in the sheer cheek and cartoon-like antics elsewhere. You know what? These performances, in this light and enlightening style, by these two players, should be enshrined on CD.