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Concert Review – 24/10/20 Ben Hancox, Tom Hancox & Tony Ingham
Bayle Music and Canterbury Music Club
October 24th
St Mary’s and St Eanswythe’s Church, Folkestone
Ben Hancox – Violin
Tom Hancox – Flute
Tony Ingham – Piano
Those who were fortunate to form a limited, socially distanced and masked audience at St Mary and St Eanswythe’s Church on Saturday 24th October will long remember a superb afternoon of intimate, though at times imposingly large scale, music making. They will be immensely grateful to Bayle Music and Canterbury Music Club for the promotion and staging of such an invigorating and joyful event.
The musicians themselves clearly felt a sense of deep gratitude for the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience. To make music with friends (and family!) in an acoustic so different from “one’s bedroom” was clearly a joyful release from artistic confinement. The usual expressions of gratitude and appreciation for behind the scenes efforts went far beyond formality. The concert itself was framed by two works for the three players together, the first by Bach and the final piece a Trio by the Italian composer Nino Rota.
The first of these pieces, a Trio Sonata, somewhat appropriately in the happy key of G Major was played with great clarity, moderate tempi throughout allowing the three musical lines to express themselves with an unforced eloquence. The two works which followed, a flute sonata by Richard Lane and a Sonatina by Eldin Burton were far from needing no introduction, though the latter has become popular with flute players. In his introduction to the two pieces Tom Hancox referred to the influence of American populist music, though to my ears both pieces are indebted to French composers such as Faure, Debussy, and Ravel, rippling, impressionistic accompaniments and a wistful pastoral mood dominating throughout.
If, as Tom pointed out, the Lane middle movement was the nearest approach to a flute sonata by Rachmaninov (almost as if Sinatra had come across Pan and Syrinx in a Sylvan glade) then the Burton was almost pure Ravel, a touching and beautiful reminder of the Concerto in G and of Mother Goose. Both works were played with deep affection and panache, the music bloomed, tellingly and unpretentiously. Throughout, Tony Ingham had been a sensitive and note perfect accompanist, deeply appreciative of the all important balance between reticence and assertiveness.
In his introduction to the central work in this concert, the great Cesar Franck Violin Sonata, Ben Hancox remarked that Mr Ingham was called upon to play many notes to his one! The lesser known works which preceded the Franck seemed to point the way, as it were, to this supreme masterpiece, composed, as Ben informed us, as a wedding gift to the great virtuoso Ysaye. And what a gift! Here both players are required to explore the most reverential of hushed, Cathedral like spaces as well as torrential outpourings of a very human passion. Both of these demands were triumphantly met. The piano part, almost orchestral in its density and sonority was played with total conviction by Tony Ingham but always in such a way that the violin was allowed space to speak its deep eloquences. One of the great beauties of Ben Hancox’s playing is his capacity for understatement, so that when full voltage is applied as in the faster second movement, it is all the more telling. This was a reading of enormous musicality, a dialogue completely at the service of remarkable musical inspiration. It was deeply moving.
A hard act to follow! Yet, triumphantly accomplished by means of a terrific performance of the Nino Rota trio, all frenetic energy and neo classical style and grace, allowing the performers full virtuosic rein. A reminder, too that composers famous for film music have loftier compositional ambitions too, though you couldn’t help relishing the “suspense” of the slow movement. We had been privileged to attend a concert characterised by a profound sense of generosity and hope for the future.