London Piano Trio - Beethoven Cycle

Robert Atchison

London Piano Trio
Robert Atchison - violin
Olga Dudnik - piano
David Jones - cello

Date - 29th November 2015
Venue - St John's Smith Square
Current Album - Oleg Komarnitsky

Olga Dudnik

Next concert - 17th January 2016, St John's Smith Square

The cries of protestors echoed in the Whitehall streets just beyond the shadow cast by St John's Smith Square imposing bulk. There was a decadence, like Rome was burning outside and we sat there gorging ourselves on fine wine and good music.
A storm was being stoked, we could see the dark branches swaying through the leached glass.

Beethoven Piano Trio No.5 in D Op.70 No.1 'Ghost'.
(ii) Largo assai ed espressivo
Jagged spires and jagged light, long thin architectural glass. The piano of Olga Dudnik is the raindrops. It is a changing day, we think beyond the inconsequential passages in light and temperature, we are beyond this. The small cycles of life on earth are seen as though through glass, through the 'wrong' end of a telescope. We are the witnesses, we are the children of a higher being, with our pathetic stumbles and downcast eyes.
Olga Dudnik doesn't play by the same rules as us mortals. Robert Atchison and David Jones have the fineness and lightness of the panes we touch with our hands, we see through their eyes.


Robert Atchison

(iii) Presto
Zipped up and down.
Thousands of shoppers in Oxford Street just a few metres away.
Closing and opening coats and jumpers, joy and folly. Wafts of perfume gush into the air, hanging ready for noses. A ballet of zips and wallets. Arms linked into arms, synchronising their collars up against the wind . Pennies spilling out from pockets.

It is some time since I had seen Mr Rich Rainlore and yet there he was as though nothing had changed. Mr Rainlore had taken me under his wing many years ago, he is still going strong despite there being no new entries to his website Rainlore's World.

David Jones

Beethoven Paino Trio No.2 in G Op.1 No.2
(i) Adagio - Allegro vivace
Layers of pastry, fine filo. Mille feuille.
Indecision, neither one theme nor another. Robert Atchison's music is the beauty that flits through the party, moving from one face to another, never lingering long but always making an impression. Atchison chatters, to left, to the right, bubbling over.

AL.

London Piano Trio - Music under Stalin

Robert Atchison - Violin

It was the strangest of days in London town last Sunday (09/11/2014). Middle-age soldiers in uniform walked the streets with sweethearts on their arms. Behind these, a second wave of wizened veterans brought up the rear, a little slower but still with chests puffed out. Poppies rested beside brightly coloured campaign strips as people swarmed away from the nearby Cenotaph.

Personal emotions, like many other around me, are confused during the red tinted days between Remembrance Sunday and the eleventh hour of the eleventh month. Just as confusing and enlightening was the sentiments stirred up by the London Piano Trio as they celebrated Music under Stalin. For this day marked the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. On the night of November 9, 1989, the most potent symbol of the Cold War division in Europe tumbled. Earlier that day, the communist authorities of the German Democratic Republic had announced the removal of travel restrictions to democratic West Berlin.

David Jones - Cello

The London Piano Trio of Robert Atchison (violin), Olga Dudnik (piano) and David Jones (cello) split the afternoon into two halves. The first belonged to Georgy Sviridov's stunning Piano Trio in A minor, Op.6. After the interval we were treated to Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Trio in E Minor, Op.67.

The first movement of Sviridov's masterpiece, quickly highlights Robert Atchison's versatility. With bow tapping on string he gives us a tip-toeing tension. It is a peck of a bird, a drip of a gutter and with the cello of David Jones joining too it has a sinister Hitchcockesque edge. You hear the folk influences of Sviridov's early tuition in the second movement, Sherzo. As you would imagine it was vigorous and playful but it also talked of power and strength. There was a sparse modernity during the third that built the tension once again between violin and cello. The pulse was so strong in the fourth, marked Idyll, you almost believed there was a drummer behind St John's mammoth pillars. It had an incredible vocabulary that left us hanging between the height of the strings and depths of Olga Dudnik's piano.

Olga Dudnik - piano

The second half of the day's concert was equally inspirational as cellist David Jones cast a gossamer trance over all of us who sat in St John's Smith Square. You felt the chill and the ethereal qualities of his playing. It was almost suffocating, such was his grip on our attention during the first movement of Shostakovich's Piano Trio in E Minor, Op.67. This was short lived and Robert Atchison was released like a sling shot on subsequent movements. The London Piano Trio gave us everything in this second set, from sprigs of humour to full bloodied devotion to the motherland.

The pounding of proud breasts wasn't the only sound we heard on this day of double meanings. Juxtaposed beside the poetic fantasies we also heard the strings of Atchison and Jones under pressure, notes of pain and tension tempered those of patriotic fervour.

AL.


ps. regular readers will know I started my apprenticeship under Rich Rainlore of Rainlore's World. I was lucky enough to see him at the concert and spend some time with him and his beautiful PA Chetna Kapacee. I hope this means a return to London's live music circuit. We all miss him.

London Piano Trio - Robert Caesar Atchison

Robert Atchison - violin

It is the third time I have sketched the London Piano Trio at St John's Smith Square, but my first opportunity (05/04/2014) to put words on paper. This is because I have spent the past 18 months happily serving my apprenticeship under the nurturing eye of critic Mr Rich Rainlore.

The venue is one of the most dramatic for a lowly artist like myself, who is more used to the low ceilinged burrows of the jazz world. The huge pillars that adorn the back of the stage dwarf the performers, and the long drape of the plush red curtains rain down behind the musicians, I always expect James Mason to stride in and herald the fall of the Roman Empire.

Our Caesar for the night is the London Piano Trio's violinist and leader Robert Atchison. A man with an infinite desire it seems to serve us a silver platter of violin/piano/cello themed nights, and I greedily gobble them up as he dangles his grapes into my mouth. Alongside Olga Dudnik and David Jones it was Atchison's turn to conquer the Czech musical culture with a foray of Suk, flanked by Smetana and a breaching finale of Dvorak.



Olga Dudnik (Piano) and the page-turner 

Within seconds of Suk's Trio in C Minor glistening diamonds of sweat dotted Robert Atchison's brow but it his stance that always catches my attention. Just like Caesar, Atchison sits in a confident and heroic pose upon the stage, or maybe even a tribal chieftain with his legs akimbo in an open display of fertility. The Andante was playful in his hands, like a childhood game that had been filmed on a cine camera by a enthusiastic uncle and slowed down to half-speed upon projection. The Vivace was a game of speed chess between 2 older gentlemen, their wooden pieced battle striking them alive. It ebbed from aggression to camaraderie. The piano gave us a lightness while Atchison's violin signalled the endgame, all 3 instruments dramatically  came together for the inevitable checkmate.

Smetana's Trio in G Minor saw my pen linger over the stoic beauty of Olga Dudnik, her deeply lashed eyes and rich red flash over the shoulder gave her the untouchable air of an empress. There was power here too and during the Moderato Assai you could feel the pathos, see the tremble in her chiffon petticoat as her head whipped back and she struck. Although the whole piece was poetic, even tragic in its themes there were several moment of frustration or comedy that caught my eye. Despite there being 3 performers on stage there is also the page-turner who must do his job too. Apologies for my ignorance in not knowing his name, I have seen his exemplary performance many times and never seen him falter, this was not one of those nights. Once or twice he missed the subtle nod of Olga Dudnik's head and I saw two pages get stuck together in a mad scramble of hands and blushes.



David Jones - Cello

In comparison not a bead of sweat or coloured cheek blemished David Jones' demeanour. Apart from the sweet music from his cello the only indicator of expression comes from his left eyebrow which wrinkles like the contours of the Lusatian Mountains. The Andante - Vivace non troppo during Dvorak's Trio in E Minor gave us a quick energetic Jones who cascaded into the laps of the audience beside me while Dudnik's piano danced around us. This was matched by the verve of Atchison in the final Lento maestoso - Vivace and supported by the rich folding waves of the cello once again.

Never one to rest on his laurels, Robert Atchison is already teasing us with another classical offering, this time a trip to the cinema. Join us as we celebrate three composers who successfully wrote music for both the concert hall and the screen. Starting with Sakamoto’s music to the movie ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’, then an exciting new commission by Christopher Gunning (most famous for writing the music for the hit series ‘Poirot’) and finally Korngold’s score to ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood'.

I can never remember whether the Roman emperor's appreciation was shown by a thumbs up or down in the Colosseum so I played safe and clapped as hard as I could.

AL.

The Stars of the Silver Screen by the London Piano Trio
5th July 2014 at St John's Smith Square
http://www.sjss.org.uk/events/london-piano-trio-0