Winter Sketches Suite - A. Kusyakov
Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky
It would be surprising if some child who was in the audience has not now decided that the accordion is the instrument that he or she wants to play, for Pictures at an Exhibition came across, as played by Dermot Dunne on Sunday, as extremely colourful, packed with a variety of sound effects that almost rivalled the orchestra. Dunne's transcription was particularly impressive in the moments of grotesquerie, as in The Gnome, in the grinding, crushing noises of the heavy Polish cart in Bydlo, and in the witch's lumbering progress in Baba Yaga. The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks was a medley of humorous cheeping, and the visit to the Catacombs had an eerie whistling. The Promenade theme that holds the work together and crowns it with processional majesty in The Great Gate of Kiev did not transfer from piano to accordion with as much success, and in The Great Gate itself one missed the percussive strength of the piano that mimics the city bells so well and fills the final chords with energy.
The Winter Sketches Suite by A. Kusyakov (b. 1932) was a blander work, more in the Rimsky-Korsakov tradition, and its five-tone pictures - frosty window panes, troika, evening gathering, north wind, old tale and festival - were easily identifiable, like a selection of seasonal Christmas cards. Written for the instrument, they never sounded uncomfortable, as the Pictures did at times.
Even on the piano, Pictures is not entirely at ease, and it is hard to see how Dunne's transcription could be improved or how it could have been performed better.
