"One composer – one performer" promised the Radio 3 announcer before Nigel Kennedy's late-night Bach recital, though a glance at the extra stools and instruments on the candlelit stage suggested something else was afoot.
In the event, we got the transfixing Bach recital we hoped for, albeit – at 45 minutes – all too short. Then came what were, in effect, four jazz encores, Kennedy joined by three of his band partners, beginning with a riff around Bach's Air on a G string and Double Violin Concerto, and moving on to Fats Waller.
In an article in the programme, Kennedy laid out with candour his thoughts on Bach performance today, appearing to dismiss any Russian violinist since David Oistrakh and the entire early-music movement. He saved his plaudits for such unassuming performers as the late cellist Pablo Casals, and when he began to play we could hear why.
Kennedy's approach is essentially unaffected, too; like Casals, his playing was not always beautiful, but it was always vital, and made us wish we could hear far more than just the E major Preludio and the whole D minor Partita, which was masterfully paced. Towards the end of the Giga, the music seemed to rush, but this was part of an underlying crescendo into the colossal Ciaccona. Kennedy conjured a magical sense of airy stillness in the fastest arpeggios, and when he emphasised the bass notes as the opening material prepared to make its triumphant return, the music seemed to come back to ground in every sense.
And the jazz? Kennedy's Bach Double take is not perhaps up to Stéphane Grapelli's, but it created a party atmosphere the audience seemed happy to accept. If you want a gig that does exactly what it says on the tin, you need another violinist.
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