<<  -- 2 --  Bill Newman    'LIGHT SHINING THROUGH'

One of Satie's Sports et Divertissements had intrigued me. On the screen above her piano, the words 'Mazurka by Schubert' flashed across my vision. Surely he meant Chopin? 'But that was his joke ! It's a lovely comment, isn't it? The texts are so gorgeous -- he wrote them himself -- and it was his satirical comment on society at the beginning of the 20th Century. He always found high society amusing, and he would find the same today as it was 80 or 90 years ago.'

I compared him with his colleague Milhaud whose deeply biting satire and occasional ventures into atonality took him in other directions, in a worldly sense making his music astringent. Yet, hearing familiar orchestral scores in chamber settings improves their clarity; one grasped the structure more easily. They sounded new. This brings me on to the subject of repertoire rarities that Tal and Groethysen are involved with at the present time.

'The première of a Reger work -- the Suite Op16 dating from 1895. Written for the organ at the time he was experiencing a crisis -- personally and artistically -- he wasn't capable of writing the way he wanted to, but with this suite achieved a breakthrough. Reger described it as "In the manner of Bach" to whom he expressed his gratitude, and it is his appeal to the good angels to help him.'

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