Perth Festival
Pascal and Ami Roge
Perth Concert Hall
Keith Bruce
four stars
THE 150th birthday aural biography of Erik Satie on Radio Three's Composer of the Week – still available online – showed just how little of this individual talent's work we ever hear. Pascal and Ami Roge not only helped address that on Monday evening, they also played music by each of his disciples in "Les Six" and set all them in the wider context of French music of the era by including Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel as well.
If that sounds like a weighty evening, the reality was anything but. In fact there was something charmingly domestique about the way the couple went about the task, arriving and leaving the stage hand in hand to share the intimacy of four hands on Perth's fine Steinway. Satie's ballet score, Parade, set the template, her powerful stride left hand and his Monk-like chords making clear the cross-genre traffic of the 20th century. The more familiar Gnossienne No2, 1st Gymnopedie and song Je te veux, Pascal played solo, but Satie's wryly-named six-part Trois morceaux en forme de poire was a duo delight.
Elsewhere the couple swapped roles, Ami supplying the melodic flourishes on Ravel's Mother Goose suite and having the upper hand again for the funky finish of Poulenc's duet Sonata. Hearing the more familiar melodies of Debussy's Petite Suite in this form, or the modernist Orientalism of Germaine Tailleferre, the only female and longest-lived of the group, were other highlights of a superbly constructed and beautifully played programme.
Perth's festival may now be broader in scope, but this return visit by an old friend – with his partner this time – proved that classical music is still at its heart.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here