Murray McLachlan
Murray McLachlan
Glasgow University Concert Hall
Michael Tumelty
JOHN McLeod's Fifth Piano Sonata, commissioned by pianist Murray McLachlan to mark the composer's 80th birthday, reached Glasgow yesterday as the next step in a marathon 28-concert tour of the new work.
I'll go in at the deep end and assert that the Sonata, awesomely played by McLachlan, is fantastically effective on numerous levels. There is, as in one of McLeod's earlier sonatas, a link with Liszt's epochal B Minor Sonata, in its virtuosity and its interlinking of small cells that unify the piece.
But there is much more to it. It's a wonderful character piece, the characters being two very different musical figures. The first is a quirky, angular, jumpy, probably neurotic bloke, who I might describe, generously, as Puckish, in fact a complete irritant - the type of bloke who always pushes his face noisily into other folks' business. Rhythmically and harmonically, Mcleod's musical characterisation of this pest was brilliant, in its insistence and persistence.
On the other side of the stage was a more languid, Romantic figure - reflective, philosophical, laid back, calm and unflappable, portrayed with gorgeous music, and clearly trying to placate the neurotic one who, needless to say, returns with yet more of the same stuff. These people never shut up. At best, at the end, there is an uneasy peace, though I sensed that Puck chap glowering away, waiting for another chance to butt in. It's a great piece, and a short piece: an exemplar of the principle of less being more. The dazzling McLachlan, who heads off to Lanzarote today with the Sonata, set it up beautifully with some expressive Bach and dreamy Chopin.
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