Originally published in January 31 2024
Classics are classics for a reason: they have withstood the test of time. Pairings like gin & tonic, fish & chips, Florence & the Machine are all tried & true combinations that have risen above the sum of their parts.
It's risky, then, to try to innovate. But sometimes risk-takers are rewarded, as proven today by the Polaris Duo, the successful pairing of musicians that graced the Christ Church earlier today. Their instruments? A saxophone / harp mix that is so rare that there isn't much of a musical repertoire for Ms. Elinor Nicholson and Ms. Gillian Blair to choose from. The absence of duets written for the harp / saxo combo thus created an opportunity the third protagonist to participate passively in a program that almost 300 lucky attendees witnessed: the arrangers, the orchestrators that re-imagined the works of Andy Scott, Tchaikovsky, or George Gershwin to suit the difficult contrast presented by these two instruments. An arrangement of a sonata by Bach (or one of Bach's sons, we'll never know) was particularly impressive, as Ms. Nicholson's left hand responded with deep tones to Ms. Blair's soprano saxophone in ways that took the Sonata to the territory of the fugue, all while showcasing the range and depth of an instrument so ethereal that even the angels prefer it (at least judging by Byzantine art and most cartoons).
The harp's versatility was tested soon after by Gershwin's Three Preludes, which were originally composed for the piano; but going by Ms. Nicholson's precise execution, one could've thought that this piece, so layered with orchestral complexity, was taken right out of the orchestral Porgy and Bess.
Just like last week, the pedagogical was again artfully mixed with the artistic in this presentation, as each musician introduced each piece with an informative interlude; at about the halfway mark of this one-houred affair Ms. Nicholson was kind enough to explain to the audience the workings of the pedals of her harp; I'm ashamed to admit that I had never noticed these pedals before— and I thought the harp was hard enough to play as it was!
At about 13h40, what started promptly with Debussy came to an end with a composition by Dan Whibley— who is perhaps best known for his work with yet another beloved pairing: Wallace & Gromit. While this marked the end of the concert, the questions of what other unusual pairings —musical or otherwise— are yet to be discovered lingered; encouraged by this success, hopefully we will all now be slightly more inclined to take more creative risks— at least for a while.
Imagen de Pérez Armijos