<<  -- 4 --  Keith Bramich    IN MEMORY

The concert's official ending was Schumann's wonderful and well-known Quintet in E flat, Op 44 (1842), with its youthful and natural sounding ideas. Wonderful too was the whole evening's playing, especially from the sensitive and controlled Yoshiko Endo. The Schumann was well received by the audience, who clapped enough to be treated to an encore. This was to be a lullaby by the youngest of the 'Sakura five', Rikura Terashima, again for piano quintet forces, and which also happened to be a première. Somehow it filled the role I had expected of the Sakura Variations -- contemporary Japanese, lyrical and oriental sounding, with, at one point, a piano figure sounding like soft rain, combined with long held string chords. Intriguing in a way that the Sakura piece wasn't, this lullaby left us with hints of the potential riches to be gained from intercultural collaboration, and how tremendous loss can, to some extent, be eased by a sharing of our art.

This concert is repeated at the Rye Festival on Saturday (15 September 2001), and an exhibition of prints and paperworks by Sarah Brayer, also part of Japan 2001, runs from 14-20 September, 2-6pm daily (except Sunday) at Hurlingham Studios, Ranelagh Gardens, London SW6 3PA, UK.