Suite in C for unaccompanied cello (Bach)- Gerald Peregrine
Sleep on: Refrain (Mark Anthony Turnage) - Gerald Peregrine
Sonata in F, Op. qo (Brahms) - Gerald Peregrine and Patrick Zuk
Before starting postgraduate studies with Janos Starker in the autumn, Gerald Peregrine gave an illuminating recital in the John Field Room, NCH, last Wednesday. It was illuminating in the sense that it cast a clear light on the music he chose to play. Bach's testing Suite in C was played with revelatory clarity; the harmonic structure supported the melodic line with as much grace and poise as a pair of acrobats performing feats of equilibrium. Although the movements of the Suite are named after dances, this was not music to dance to - it was rather a transfigured mathematics.
Mark Anthony Turnage's Refrain, also for solo cello, made much use of double-stopping and displayed a variety of harmony that Bach would probably have considered excessive, especially in a short piece. Peregrine played it with the same quality of attention that he gave to Bach, giving its modernity a sense of being rooted in tradition.
As one might expect, the performance of the Sonata in F by Brahms was distinguished by an avoidance of overt emotion. Both Peregrine and Patrick Zuk at the piano shared a calm comprehension of the music's inwardness but it is possible that Brahms would have liked something that, without straying into the melodramatic, would have been a little more theatrical.
