Baroque Hall. 13 Jul 2024
Award-winning and very popular Adelaide pianist Mekhla Kumar returned to her home city to deliver an absorbing recital at Baroque Hall on 13 July. She is currently teaching and undertaking doctoral studies at the renowned Jacobs School of Music at the University of Indiana, and her rare visits here are greatly appreciated.
Her program comprised works by Domenico Scarlatti, Sergei Rachmaninov, Claude Debussy and Philip Glass — four very distinct musical voices emerging from different countries and cultures over a span approaching 300 years — providing the audience with a brief but illuminating overview of the evolution of composition for the keyboard.
Kumar opened with three of Domenico Scarlatti’s many sonatas. The first, his Sonata in C, Hn 395 has a happily dreamy feel. The Sonata in C, K 159 is joyously sprightly and the Sonata in A, K208 is sweetly poignant. These short works are rich in character, and, delivered with crystal clear articulation, they did more than whet the taste buds.
Sharply contrasting the Scarlatti, Kumar then followed with a selection of three of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Moments Musicaux Op. 16. The No 1 in B flat, Andantino, comprises a theme and variations — it’s hauntingly romantic and rather meditative, though she did not overplay the emotional content but found just the right balance.
Next was the sonorous No 3 in B minor, Andante cantabile, a sombre piece that suggests a funeral march which, following a mournful opening, shifts alternately between elegiac meditation and a slow marching rhythm.
The final of the three Rachmaninov pieces was the No 4 in E minor, marked Presto. It has been likened to Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, and her performance of it was spinetingling, leaving the capacity audience quite overwhelmed. These Rachmaninov pieces have the feel of profound stories being told in music.
Mekhla Kumar’s fluent playing and control of dynamics and tempi were superb, and she brought out the characteristically Russian flavour of Rachmaninov’s music in these three works. She seems very much at home with Rachmaninov, and it would be wonderful to hear her perform all six in the set.
She then gave us three of the four movements of Claude Debussy’s Suite bergamasque (L 75). In contrast to the Rachmaninov, Debussy’s music is impressionistic, creating an idiosyncratic musical flavour, with the Prelude marked tempo rubato, and her rendering was firmly expressive while retaining its poetic nature. Her lilting Claire de Lune (Andante très expressif) was enchanting, and her Passepied (a dance) was a jaunty delight.
The recital concluded with three etudes by Philip Glass — Nos 2, 9 and 6 — from Book 1 of a set of 20 he devised to enable him to perfect his own piano technique. Glass rejects the minimalist label attributed to him, and his music is complex and ever-evolving. Though they might be seen as exercises, these etudes are magical pieces of music and characterise his unique musical voice in the era of late modernism. The gently flowing, motoric character of Etude No 2 is mesmerising.
Glass’s Etude No 6 is characterised by repeated phrases and an incessant, driving rhythm, with passages of contrasting dynamics and surges of power, and it ends abruptly, without any resolution as if the composer simply stopped writing, offering a somewhat ironic conclusion to this memorable recital.
In the intimate space of Baroque Hall, with its excellent acoustics, Mekhla Kumar’s performance was outstanding, and she should be heard at every opportunity.
Chris Reid
When: 13 Jul
Where: Baroque Hall
Bookings: Closed
