Caroline Clipsham at Chichester

 Caroline Clipsham, Chichester Cathedral, Jan 31

Caroline Clipsham's credits include 'playing for the FA Cup' which is not one I've encountered on a pianist's biographical note before. Today at Chichester she deployed Robert Schumann up front, Rachmaninov in the middle and Samuel Barber at the back.

Schumann's Sonata in G minor, Op. 22 dives straight into the current of its first movement, So rasch wie möglich, which I'm not surprised to find translates as 'as quickly as possible', before the Andantino is tender, redolent of a Mozart slow movement and possibly nocturnal. The short Scherzo was energetic again before the busy Presto made its way through clusters and forests of notes, all of which Caroline delivered with easy confidence.

For me, it was in the quieter and slower passages that she excelled, though. Three of Rachmaninov's Moments Musicaux, Op. 16, of which there are six, were the stand-out part of her programme. No. 1, somewhat more abstracted or even distracted than the Schumann, was inward-looking and, for all its walk around the keyboard, about restraint and calm. I notice that the first symphony, of which the premiere was a 'disaster' is opus 13 and so am tempted into some coarse, impromptu biography and wonder if he was still in re-hab from the distress that caused. Whether or not it was, these gorgeous meditations represent a successful recovery.

No. 4 ruminated below halfway on the keyboard, beautifully paced and judged, prefiguring the mood of Send in the Clowns that I thought I heard in it. The left hand continued its foundation work in the tumbling downward spiral in No. 5 which departs from the piano of no. 4 into forte. I wish we'd had the complete set. I'm always worried about what has been left out of works when only given extracts and, looking at a few recordings, some of them similarly don't do them all. Is No. 2 really so bad. So perhaps Caroline can remedy the situation on a new disc one day.

Samuel Barber doesn't always do it for me beyond the obvious deep sorrow of the famous Adagio and two of the four Excursions, while being entirely harmless and unobjectionable, didn't go beyond the Rachmaninov. We could have more fittingly had the big applause first and the Barber as an extended encore. 

No. 2 was In slow blues tempo, which it was but was all it was, again 'for me', and I'm happy to accept that's my loss. Then No. 1 could have been somewhere that the likes of Steve Reich or Philip Glass based their whole minimalist careers on by reducing the 'snapshots' of noisy American cities to something even more repetitive and hypnotic. 

Music is a wide church - unlike Chichester Cathedral which is narrower than most- and one can't constantly be ever more thrilled by it for fear of being no more than an undiscriminating addict. Barber is not the only composer that isn't quite Bach, Mozart or Josquin des Prez.

Caroline Clipsham is a brilliant pianist. She graced a Chichester lunchtime with her Rachmaninov and I came back as glad as ever that I'd been there, feeling the wiser for it but probably not.