SHEKU & ISATA KANNEH-MASON IN RECITAL / Review

SHEKU & ISATA KANNEH-MASON

IN RECITAL

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Cello

Isata Kanneh-Mason, Piano

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (14 December 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 December 2023 with the title "Kanneh-Mason siblings turn in enthralling performance".

 

In a year when notable cellists, including Mischa Maisky, Jan Vogler and Chen Yibai, paid a visit to Singapore, it was perhaps Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s appearance that was most anticipated. Winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2016, he garnered worldwide attention performing at the 2018 royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Partnered by elder sister Isata, the British duo of African-Caribbean parentage, presented by Altenburg Arts, offered very enjoyable programme of three Romantic sonatas.  

This is the Kanneh-Masons'
first visit to Singapore.

 

Opening with underrated British composer Frank Bridge’s Cello Sonata in D minor, Sheku wasted no time in establishing a lush singing tone that extended through its twenty-odd minutes in two movements. Despite being modernist Benjamin Britten’s most important composition teacher and living well into the twentieth century, Bridge was a Romantic at heart.

 

His music bristled with passion, and even if melodic material seemed elusive, its intent was delivered by the duo with a single-mindedness, raising the slow second movement’s emotional quotient to past boiling point. By no means an undercard, this made for a satisfying curtain-raiser.

 

The recital’s main body comprised two substantial works by composers better known as music history’s greatest pianists. There was also a pleasing symmetry as both sonatas were in the same key of G minor and comprising four movements in a similar fast-fast-slow-fast configuration.

 

It could have been all too easy for Isata’s many notes, such was the writing, to overwhelm Sheku’s string voice in Frederic Chopin’s late Cello Sonata (Op.65). However the sibs found a happy medium with a kind of chemistry that resembled alchemy, turning base metal into gold.

 

Some call it telepathy, as keyboard filigree and big stentorian chords never got in the way of the cello’s lyrical muse. The third movement’s Largo provided a brief semblance of respite, with much fewer notes but each made to resound with ringing truth. The finale was a return to prestidigitation, with a breathless close to the recital’s first half.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

   

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata (Op.19), marking his recuperation from depression and severe writer’s block, was possibly modelled after Chopin, but piled on ever more notes. The tasks at hand were more onerous for Isata but she never flinched, especially in the sabre-rattling Scherzo, where Sheku seemed content to play mere accompanist.

 

However that was merely a ploy, as it ushered one of the Russian’s more memorable cello tunes. That was milked for all its worth, and the ensuing Andante with the gushiest melody of all, was treated with the respect it deserved. There was to be absolutely no triteness or vulgarity in the Kanneh-Masons’ locker room, before the tarantella-rhythm of the finale swept the board to loud prolonged applause and bravos.   

 

The first encore was the duo’s delightful arrangement of the Christmas hymn In The Bleak Midwinter in the form of variations, very appropriate for the season. The overall feeling in the clearly-enthralled audience was embodied in their second encore, by Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah.