EIF reviews: Chilly Gonzales | Chiaroscuro Quartet

Chilly Gonzales ★★★★

Usher Hall

Jason Beck aka Chilly Gonzales aka Gonzo – or you can call him Maestro if you like – is a concert pianist like no other, offering self-styled “bravado in a bathrobe” or Jerry Lee Lewis attacking the works of Chopin, say. He holds the world record for longest concert by a solo artist but confines himself to 100 minutes on his latest visit to the EIF where he makes it clear that the audience are in this with him. Rampaging through the auditorium at the end, high-fiving his delighted, excited fans, it was obvious we had all done our part even if the bravura showman display was all his.

Beck was accompanied by a trio of musicians on violin, bass and drums, kicking in and bolstering the pounding minimalism and propulsive rhythms of his compositions (he did reside in the clubbing capital Berlin for a number of years).

For much of the concert, his band effectively sat at the feet of their bandleader, digging the quasi-baroque-by-way-of-Tom Waits sound as much as any ticket holder. Gonzo semi-rapped too on premieres of tracks from his forthcoming album GONZO featuring a touch of Sparks in his eccentric word pairings (“Gazpacho/Gestapo/honcho/poncho”) and a laugh-out-loud interrogation of the complexities of cancel culture as he took down Richard Wagner on timpani. Fiona Shepherd

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MUSIC

Chiaroscuro Quartet ★★★★ 

Queen’s Hall

Known for performing on period instruments with the burnished sheen of sound that comes from natural gut strings, the charismatic Chiaroscuro Quartet were a little unlucky to be playing at the Queen’s Hall on a morning of exceptional humidity. No matter: retuning between movements of Haydn’s String Quartets Nos 4 and 5 Op 33 – known as the Russian quartets due to their dedicatee – kept intonation in check.

With the three upper string players standing to play, these generally cheerful pieces were infused with affectionate playfulness, led by violinist Alina Ibragimova. While the inner voices of Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux on second violin and Emilie Hörnlund on viola could be overshadowed by Ibragimova’s virtuosity, cellist Claire Thirion brought balance as well as wit to the lower registers with characterful clarity.

Making the most of the music’s silences, unanimity was precise to a nanosecond when all four jumped back in to play. Keeping to the Russian theme, the first of Beethoven’s Op 59 quartets, commissioned by Count Razumovksy and bearing his name, heard the Chiaroscuro in more serious mood, with the third movement’s duet between violin and cello taking on an almost painful poignancy. Carol Main