Tamsin and Cordelia - duo to play music composed for dawn, dusk and night-time at Music at Paxton
Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Cordelia Williams talk to David Kettle about their Music at Paxton concerts
You’ve got to hand it to Angus Smith. Since taking the reins in 2018 as Artistic Director at Music at Paxton in the Scottish Borders, he’s developed what was already a strong and appealing fixture in the classical calendar into something quietly pioneering and really quite exciting, with big-name visitors to the Palladian elegance of Paxton House (this year including violin superstar Viktoria Mullova, legendary tenor Mark Padmore and revered experimental composer Gavin Bryars) as well as a rich roster of Scottish musicians and emerging talent.
One particularly intriguing project for 2024 comes courtesy of the well-established duo of violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and pianist Cordelia Williams. Across a trio of concerts, both together and individually, they offer music conceived for different periods of the day – with performances scheduled at those very times of dusk, night-time and dawn.
It is, after all, mainly for practical reasons that concerts tend to be evening affairs. “Performing at different times feels totally different,” Waley-Cohen admits. “An afternoon concert has a completely different atmosphere to an evening recital, and late at night is really nice because there’s such intense concentration.”
“I think there’s a real intensity, particular with the extremes of the day,” Williams agrees, “where you almost feel a resonance with the magical elements that different times can bring. And since going to a concert is about stopping your normal life for a time of reflection and intensity of experience, that can really be enhanced by the ways that different times feel.”
Some of Waley-Cohen and Williams’s pieces have obvious temporal connections – just take the gloriously colourful sunrise that Belgian composer Eugène Ysaÿe evokes with just a solo violin in his Fifth Sonata, with which Waley-Cohen closes her recital. But with other music, temporal connections are perhaps more oblique. “My late-night concert celebrates the different characters of night – whether that’s the beauty of the night, or in a much darker, more psychologically challenging way,” Williams says. Encapsulating those different perspectives are the sublimely mournful A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times by 16th-century composer Thomas Tomkins, which Williams runs into the gentle consolations of jazz pianist Bill Evans’s Peace Piece from three centuries later. “I was interested in how I was experiencing night just after I’d had my two sons. It’s such a shock to imagine you have no control over when you can sleep. So as I was sitting there on those endless nights, feeding, I was putting together pieces of music that I felt expressed how I was feeling.”
Before Ysaÿe’s vivid evocations of dawn, Waley-Cohen begins her own recital with Bach. “When I was thinking about dawn, I immediately thought of the E major Violin Partita, which to me is like refracted sunlight, very bright.” There’s even a walk scheduled before Waley-Cohen’s morning recital. “It’s a way of connecting with the world,” she says, “and appreciating at first hand the different qualities of different times of the day.”
Waley-Cohen and Williams have forged a strong musical partnership in recent years, but they’re distinctively independent musicians too – as their choice of duo and solo recitals demonstrates. And while both musicians acknowledge the work that goes into forming and maintaining an effective partnership, they also admit that part of its success is about releasing themselves. “Actually, what we’re trying to do,” Waley-Cohen says, “is to challenge ourselves to let go of control. It’s often the opposite of what you might imagine. It’s about listening to each other, and responding in the moment. And it can be psychologically challenging sometimes to let go of that egotistical way of playing.”
Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Cordelia Williams give three recitals on 24 and 25 July as part of Music at Paxton (19-28 July). www.musicatpaxton.co.uk