It was a pleasant experience indeed to be sitting in the intimate yet generous space of fortyfivedownstairs, glass of rosé in hand, attending to a charming chamber music program directed by Coady Green.
For this occasion, Coady Green invited pianist Glenn Riddle and mezzo-soprano Sally-Anne Russell for an intriguing concert of works by Beethoven, Carl Czerny, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt. The linking factor was music for piano for four hands. The performers are all at the top of their game and introduced their works in a relaxed manner, perhaps Coady Green less so, as he was getting towards the end of directing a remarkable celebration of chamber music at fortyfivedownstairs that runs from the 6th to the 18th of May.
Another linking factor for the program is that Carl Czerny was one of Beethoven’s favourite pupils and, in turn, taught Franz Liszt. So the program was a splendid mix of Coady Green and Glenn Riddle performing some very intricate hand interweaving, and each of them accompanying Sally-Anne Russell in lieder from all composers.
The concert opened with Beethoven’s Six Variations on “Ich denke dein”, WoO 74 for four hands, easily despatched by Green and Riddle. Sally-Anne Russell then treated us to six lieder on the poems of Gellert Op 48 by Beethoven, accompanied by Coady Green.
It’s easy to forget that Beethoven was entirely at home writing songs. Sally-Anne Russell introduced the songs to welcome us into them, creating a feeling of being at a private salon. She continued to do this with all the songs she gave and, more so, delivered all with a strong dramatic impact that often can feel a bit embarrassing when a singer is not fully engaged with the text. Sally-Anne Russell wanted the audience to get the full impact of her songs with her quite daring delivery. It worked magnificently.
Staying with the songs in the program, Russell sang 5 Unvergängliche Blümen, Op. 109 by Carl Czerny. For anyone expecting Czerny to sound like the Czerny all pianists slog through as students, the accompaniments were, well, very Czerny. Interestingly, each brief song seguéd neatly into the next, with a fond delivery by Russell. Coady Green’s accompaniment was more than up to the Czerny scales and arpeggios.
Sally-Anne Russell’s next offering was Fanny Mendelssohn’s Lieder Op. 7, numbers 1, 4 and 5. She gave us a generous translation of the Eichendorf texts before each song and they were delicious, with a mature accompaniment (in comparison with the Czerny). This time Glenn Riddle performed the honours on piano.
After an interval Russell returned with three songs from Clara Schumann’s Op 13 that were, perhaps indistinguishable from Robert Schumann’s work, and no bad thing for that. She then sang two settings by Franz Liszt: “Es war ein König in Thule”, and a quite operatic telling of Die Lorelei.
The piano works for four hands moved from Czerny to Fanny Mendelssohn’s Three Pieces for Piano Four Hands. They were delightful, intelligent and technically demanding, and the four hands of Green and Riddle acquitted them well. The last of the pieces H 409 ended very abruptly, curiously so.
Their next four-hand work was Czerny’s Variations brillantes sur “Dépêchons, Travaillons” de l’opéra “Le Maçon”, Op. 132. Glenn Riddle explained the opera, alerting us to its deserved obscurity and, though Riddle and Green had no trouble with the variations, they barely rose above the original tune in interest. At times it was hard to tell whose hands belonged to whom at the piano = fun, but the music was pretty pedestrian. The last variation sounded like a soundtrack to a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but Czerny can hardly be blamed for that (though it does make one wonder if music can be a cliché the moment it is born).
Coady Green and Glenn Riddle’s final offering was Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 3 in D major, S621/3. Riddle explained it was an arrangement Liszt made of someone else’s orchestral arrangement of Liszt’s original, so it had been through the wash a few times. It was a whizz-bang ending to an evening with a trio of outstanding performers who clearly enjoyed sharing their music with us.
Image supplied.
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Nick Tolhurst reviewed “Beethoven, Czerny and Liszt Piano Duets and Songs”, presented as part of the fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival 2025 at fortyfivedownstairs on May 15, 2025.
