Rokas Valuntonis in Chichester

Rokas Valuntonis, Chichester Cathedral, July 7

Top marks to Chichester Cathedral and Rokas Valuntonis for being able to fulfil this fixture at late notice. Chichester are unlikely ever to struggle to find artists glad to take up such an opportunity. Meanwhile, my homework on Ravel's La Valse, interesting as it was, will have to wait to come in useful another time. Instead of that, our education was extended to include Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). 

Estimating what Čiurlionis's music is like from his dates wouldn't leave you far wrong- a little bit Chpoin, a little bit Rach. The Little Sonata opens with a panoramic, fairly intense Allegro, the Andante and Scherzo have an uncertain passion before the Finale ends somewhere near where the whole thing began. Certainly a new name to me, he's another who died far too young and could have been a contender.

Four Mazurkas by Chopin were unhurried in these accounts by Rokas except for the D major which was uptempo like a bagatelle of a tarantella but perhaps Robert Schumann's Carnaval was the curious item of most interest. Announcing itself grandly with an outpouring of notes surely more technically demanding than what had come before, it is only op. 9 and thus surely too early for Schumann to have lost his mind. It is cartoonish and ever-changing, in some ways almost as quirky as Erik Satie was later to be. Rokas lingered, expanded and dashed as the piece twisted and turned, evoking Chopin, Clara and Paganini and if personally I'd prefer to linger, he brought great verve to the presto parts, one of which we can take to be Paganini, I dare say. It was a circus of a piece to end Chichester Cathedral's summer season.

They resume on Sept 9 with a highly promising programme of artists and their set lists due to be announced soon.