When James Rhodes
holds court in a soiree billed as “An Unconventional Recital” at the China Club in the Old Bank of China Building in Hong Kong, we are entitled to
expect some fun. And we were not
disappointed last night.
As we
seated ourselves in the dining hall cleared for the evening, Club founder Sir David Tang expounded his views on how concerts should
last no more than an hour, and promised the evening would start promptly at 7
pm and finish at 8 pm.
On the dot
at 7 pm, James strode into the hall and, instead of chatting about what he was
going to perform – a practice which has become his trademark – he went straight
to the piano and started playing a piece by Rachmaninov
(the Prelude in C sharp minor,
I think) – an item not on the
programme – with electric
intensity. He explained that he had “Rachmaninov”
tattooed on his arm in Cyrillic, which could well say “Elton John” for all he
knows. Down-to-earth, charming and your
regular guy next door: that’s what James Rhodes is all about.
Most of us
think of Beethoven as the angry deaf composer.
Yet barely out of his teens he had been nearly beaten to death by his
alcoholic father. He single-handedly
took classical music into the romantic period with a “big R” – for the first
time, here was someone writing not for the church or the state, but for
himself.
Beethoven’s
Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28, “Pastoral”,
is an odd work. Almost halfway through his
32 sonatas, it marks the crucial point at which he became convinced he was
going deaf. Yet the work shows no obvious
depression, nor is it given over to much brooding. The four movements are hardly
distinguishable, running more or less into each other, linked often by material
that keeps re-appearing in different guises.
James
Rhodes’ interpretation was polished, subdued and exploratory; the left hand
gently tapping a persistently repetitive rhythm, while the right scaling the sounds
of nature.
For someone
whose works remain stubbornly in play throughout the world, Chopin was
apparently not a very nice person, ruined by a disastrous relationship with
George Sand. His Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor is the more popular among the four he
wrote. The signature opening of the work
consists of quiet arpeggios followed by emphatic chords. The rest then flows mellifluously in
roller-coaster fashion. In James’ hands,
the Scherzo sounded warm and friendly, but a little staid, as if he was trying
too hard to de-romanticise it. I heard a few extraneous
notes too.
Responding
to our clamour for encores,
James surprised us with what sounded like Beethoven’s Colonel Bogey
Dudley Moore used to mischievously play, except I think he added snippets of
the “Moonlight” Sonata towards the
end. Next up was an excerpt from Gluck’s
Orpheus and Eurydice,
a lilting work that hangs in the air like little water vapours, which he
dedicated to Sir David. To finish off, he served up a piece he
claimed not to have played for a long time, a transcription by Liszt of
Schumann’s Spring Night, one of
160 songs he composed during the year he courted Clara Wieck.
As we
savoured the rapid outcry at
the end of Schumann’s love song, we couldn’t help feeling grateful for Sir
David’s generosity in bringing James to Hong Kong and opening the China Club
specially for him on a Sunday night.
Most of all, we were proud to count James as a friend who happens to be
an excellent pianist, rather than a virtuoso we put on a pedestal.
