Perk up! St James still sparks joy

a review by Julia Meredith

After the gloom of darker evenings and dismal news, a lively injection of delight is much to be welcomed. The Perks Ensemble provided this in quantity – with a programme of such beauty and energy as to make good some of the joie de vivre missing in a sombre Autumn evening.
The evening felt especially precious, a flickering candle threatened by cold winds. Behind it all loomed the spectre of St James’s enforced closure if the States refuses funding to keep the lights on – or this unique concert hall viable. Somehow forty years after it was originally saved from being knocked down to put up a police station (philistines!) one doesn’t expect to have to fight the battle all over again.

But for that evening, we lived in the moment-by-moment pleasure of some of the most beautiful music ever created, played by four exceptional musicians. The three string players, Oscar Perks on violin, his brother Elliot on viola and Sebastian Kolin, cellist, all have lustrous histories of prizewinning and performing in different ensembles (you may remember Elliot with the spirited Maxwell Quartet in March this year). Each is a star in their own right, as is their pianist, Ayaka Shigeno who also performs in a duo with her husband Oscar.
All these connections, familial and professional, make for a very tight-knit sound; a coherence of expression and timing that seemed as much gut as brain-reliant.

From the opening Allegro of Mozart’s exquisite Piano Quartet no 2 in Eb major, you could see the dynamic that would give the Perks its particular character. The diminutive pianist, half-hidden at the great black Steinway, felt like an anchor; the reliable base from which three headstrong, exultant instruments could weave their interacting harmonies , picking up one another’s thoughts and finishing each other’s sentences. The delicate sensitivity in Ayaka’s shadowing beneath the to-and-fro of the strings gave us a glorious mix of the purposeful and the capricious, and throughout, the piano singing, sweetly, unimposing, unignorable.
In the lyrical Larghetto that followed, it seemed as though you could see the gracious phrases spooling out into the gilded heights of St James, as if waiting only for such beauty as this to occupy its empty air. The piano’s restrained cantabile shaped the melodious framework, and it was embellished by the caresses of the strings.

The joyful dance of the final Allegretto was led by the piano, but with such eagerness amongst the strings to skip to her tune… I thought of an ethereal game of soap-bubble catch-as-catch-can, each note shimmering in the first brilliance of creation. They captured the exuberant simplicity of this most perfectly innocent of composers.
It was pure musical charisma.

To shake us out of our comfort zone, we were told, the next work was to be Paul Hindemith’s String Trio no 1, Op 34, dating from 1924. I read that at that stage he was gaining a name as an ‘enfant terrible’ composer, and this Trio feels as if he was working hard to achieve that reputation. Post-WW1 there was a move to create a ‘neo-classical’ style, a ‘melding of musical tradition with the avant-garde’, to quote the programme.
Forgive my philistinism, but for me it sounded as if the aim was to rush madly off in all directions and break every previous rule. It scrambled the ears after the accessible charm of Mozart; but after a while I could pick out a weird parallel route to comprehension. I just wish the musicians looked less pained as they played, in contrast to the previous work. I suppose when you are describing existential angst, merriment would be inappropriate. There was certainly no lack of virtuosity in this work amongst the three string players, notably the viola. It must have been vastly challenging to learn. And amongst its virtues was, I read, that Joseph Goebbels publicly denounced Hindemith as an ‘atonal noisemaker’. Nothing like a bit of perspective.

Interval, as it so often does at St James, felt like a gathering of friends, eager to share their pleasure and opinions with those they knew – and those they’d just met. Yet again St James’s demonstrated its role as ‘community glue’ in Guernsey.
We returned to the assured satisfaction of Brahms’ Piano Quartet no 1 in G minor, Op 25. This work reminds me again why Brahms is so affecting a composer: his emotional intelligence shines out from every phrase.
The gravely beautiful Allegro is powerful example of Romantic chamber music, eloquent and dramatic. This is big, purposeful music for four individuals to contain: it could easily occupy a Symphony. That sense of a heroic mission was wonderfully put across, as above the measured confidence of the piano, each voice stepped forward to plead its case with persuasive fervency.
The quickening of the Intermezzo feels like a new life-form. Darting forward, hesitating, impatient, Brahms’s restless creativity is let loose to explore different scenarios. Small vignettes of perfection flew past, scarcely heard before the next gem emerged into our path… the melancholy I felt was for my inability to pause and peer through each window as it flashed by.

The Andante was a return to weightier matters. Serious and determined, culminating in a grand march, it was given the authority and substance it required. But Brahms’s volatility meant we travelled through much exposed and vulnerable terrain en route to the calm self-control of closure.
The ‘Gypsy’ Rondo a la Zingerese puts paid to all that. It tears a flaming path through all the carefully constructed gravitas preceding it, and the Perks did not spare themselves, or us. It was as though the music was driving the performers, rather than the reverse. Possessed by its passionate urgency, the players deftly kept their footing in the fastmoving current that swept each of them in turn into the path of the theme.
Through the centre of it all these flying, frantic strings, the pianist held her nerve; her fingers were a blur, but our ears knew she had hit every note. The manic grins on the faces of the string players showed how exhilarating this breakneck pursuit must feel; at the top of their game, expressing Brahms as he would have liked to be heard (how could he not!), masters of the universe for those two hours.
It was an adrenaline rush even in the audience. As the last note vanished we sat as though stunned until the cheers and applause broke the startling silence.

This concert was generously brought to St James by the Swallow 2018 Charitable Trust – the last this year. We must hope it will not be the last of all. If this irreplaceable asset – Guernsey’s only concert hall – matters to you, please, please visit https://stjames.gg/save-stj for ways you can help to keep it open. A letter to your deputy wouldn’t go amiss either.

Julia Meredith