Lisa Ueda and Daniele Rinaldo at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 17 July 2012

On Tuesday 17th July, we were treated to a fantastic performance at St Martin-in-the-Fields by the brilliant Ueda/Rinaldo duo. Lisa Ueda is a Japanese violinist who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music with a First Class Honours. The opening piece, Janacek’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano” was dramatic and heartfelt, and effectively conveyed the feelings of the composer. Janacek wrote this piece during the beginning of World War I, when the Moravian people were waiting for the arrival of Russian forces to free them. Janacek later wrote, “In the 1914 sonata… I could just about hear the sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head.” This feeling is quite evident in the first movement, with shifting tonality and juxtaposition of long, soulful sections on the violin, with quick and staccato interjections from the piano. The second movement is much more slow and sombre, and conveys a real feeling of unbreakable hope against all odds. The third movement is frantic, with the violin playing quick, descending glissandos, which produces a desperate atmosphere. Finally, the fourth movement, while sounding very disturbed with the flowing piano melody often interrupted with jarring violin phrases, really demonstrated Lisa Ueda’s versatility in the rapid changes of mood – changing from romantic, tuneful sections, to 20th century harmony and style in a matter of bars. This was truly an exceptional performance.

The next piece was for solo piano – Liszt’s transcription of Verdi’s “Miserere” from “Il Trovatore.” Liszt set himself quite a task with this piece, as he had to successfully capture the essence from the scene from the opera in which Manrico, who has been condemned to death, is imprisoned in a tower, with his lover Leonara’s heartbroken cries mixing with his own lyrical theme. In the opera scene, there is a sombre backing of priests, which perhaps explains why the piece starts so low in the piano’s register. The themes of the opera have been reconstructed by Liszt’s virtuosic writing, which demonstrates itself with the wide-ranging flourishes up and down the piano throughout. Daniele Rinaldo gave an incredibly confident and emotional performance of this piece, highlighting the contrasts between the slow and sombre and the fast and frantic.

The final piece of the three was Franck’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano.” This piece uses cyclic form, in which themes from one movement are transferred over to the next. As this piece was written as a wedding gift for a Belgian violinist, it could be interpreted that this was intentional, so symbolise eternal love. The rubato throughout this piece is characteristic of the romantic era, as is the shifting of key signature and the tone colour. This piece’s premiere was performed in the Museum of Modern Painting in Brussels where artificial light was forbidden to protect the paintings. While it was mid-afternoon during the first movements, the day drew in as the piece went on – to the point where the final movement was performed from memory in darkness. The passion with which the performers played was deemed “astounding” then – and the performance by the duo of Lisa Ueda and Daniele Rinaldo was astounding today. All in all, they demonstrated how incredibly skilled, how professional, and how connected they are with the music they play.

Text by Dan Stanyon