Mikhail Lezdkan & Béla Hartmann in Petersfield

 Mikhail Lezdkan & Béla Hartmann, St. Peter's, Petersfield, January 31 

One's shortlist of favourite local musicians is long but Mikhail Lezdkan and Béla Hartmann are high on it, both individually and together. The same might be said of favourite composers where Schubert and Mendelssohn make the top dozen. 

Schubert's 229th birthday was marked with a gorgeous performance of his Arpeggione Sonata, its blithe spirit exuding happy times with Mikhail's cavorting fingers making for something to watch as well as listen to. The rapid exchanges of phrases with Béla made for the most good natured of interaction.

Some anxiety in the piano part of the Adagio contrasted with a more serene cello part before the breezy Allegretto finale was full of good cheer. I rarely find Schubert downbeat although he quite clearly could be but art can be its own salvation.

To begin, Janáček had made a convincing case of his own with the gentle Pohádka, a fairy tale told more impressionistically than programmatically. Mikhail's pizzicato motif was mysterious until developing into something more passionate and in the second movement we were as if in half light into which the rich theme was introduced. Hints of dance in the Allegro led to its happy ending.

After an interval, Mendelssohn's Sonata, op. 58, opened in celebratory style with the duet making an abundant sound between them. Béla's quasi-classical part augmented by pizzicato cello in the Allegretto was followed by a continuing series of arpeggios and some homage to Bach in an Adagio which is the least Johann Sebastian owes to Felix without who he might still be lesser known and we'd have launched a piece by Telemann into space. In many ways the most complex piece on the programme, it here went from pensive to ardent before an effervescent, acrobatic Molto allegro e vivace brought to an end a gorgeous set by two musicians we are lucky to have round these parts.

But it was Schubert's birthday and Piers Burton-Page, the godfather of radio announcers, whose homework had been most useful throughout, wondered if there might be one more, short piece ready and prepared. And it turned out there was ! One from the song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin. Graceful and if here without words, regrets he surely had a few, but it's ever consolatory for me with a lightness of touch all of his own or at least comparable to Mozart's.

It was a three-way split today on where to go. I hope it all went well at the Menuhin Room. I probably did well to leave Sandown races alone and if Schubert's birthday doesn't justify such an exquisite memorial then I don't know whose would.