Home

Tommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts

Headshot of David Cusworth
David CusworthThe West Australian
Tommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.
Camera IconTommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.

A fresh and dynamic reading of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata was the heart of a scintillating solo recital by pianist Tommy Seah at the Grove Library on Sunday.

The young WAAPA teacher brought a wealth of knowledge to the stage, but it was his nuanced expression and dazzling dexterity that wowed a cognoscenti audience spiced with students.

An amuse bouche of Bach’s Toccata in D minor had a relaxed, warm ambience aptly suited to a sunny spring Sunday.

Playing without a score, Seah seemed totally absorbed in the music through slow, ruminative passages and many virtuosic runs, confident of his art and technique.

Get in front of tomorrow's news for FREE

Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.

READ NOW

Sprightly phrasing through the fugue was a textbook of Baroque measure, full in tone, clearly articulated, and florid in the cadence.

For Beethoven, Seah was quietly dramatic in the gradual reveal of the Allegro assai first movement, then bursting with energy, rising to a suitably passionate resonance in familiar strains, with matching flourishes and embellishment.

The revolutionary zeal that Beethoven wrote into his lyrical phrases was suitably served by an intensity ever-present but never overdone, the radical Romantic comfortably at home in the library.

Tommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.
Camera IconTommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.

Sedate yet powerful progressions in the Andante con moto to follow were played with the discernment of a jazz maestro, a practised ear applied to each passage, rolling through at an unhurried pace before accelerating into the finale, a controlled explosion of expression making the most of the rousing climax.

A brief interval and a Vasse Felix moment among the native blooms of the library garden was a gentle introduction to Liszt’s Die Lorelei, a siren song for sailors and salons.

The meditative opening had all the fluidity of the legend; rippling waves of music a programmatic change of scene, waxing to a deeper, darker tone, then dramatic with a theatrical touch, sensitive and sure, before fading gracefully to close.

Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin finished the bill, a series of Baroque-era dances written as a memorial amid World War I.

Prelude opened with a teeming whirl of melody and harmony, flurries of notes evocative of nature and life in bloom.

Fugue started simply, one line echoed and redoubled, form yielding to expression yet holding its shape in elegant sufficiency; glimpses of Bach in the linear progression, though ever aware of its 20th century origin.

Tommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.
Camera IconTommy Seah plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel at Grove Library for Cappuccino Concerts.

Forlane brought a touch of dissonance in the modern mode, Gallic to the last gambolling ambit with a quality of light so closely associated with Ravel’s time and place.

Rigaudon raised the tempo in a rural romp with folkloric relish among complex chords and a raw charm to its athletic measure and sudden cadence.

Menuet was smooth in contrast, the precise placement of beat and accent a feature of a more urbane excursion fit for a salon or library, dancing delicately out.

Finally, Toccata connected with the opening piece; rapid pulsing in the upper register unleashing a frenzied duet of left and right hand — a world far from Bach and yet a homage to his heritage in florid fruition, sensational to the last.

The Grove Spring Classics series continues on Sunday, October 24, at 5pm, with WA Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Rod McGrath and A Tale of Two Cellos; one his Duke model, and another patterned on it by WA bass player and luthier Andrew Tait. www.cappuccino-concerts.com.

Tommy Seah returns to Beethoven with violinist Akiko Miyazawa at Perth Concert Hall on November 10, at 7.30pm, for the Cygnus Arioso Beethoven Violin Sonata Cycle. www.perthconcerthall.com.au.

Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.

Sign up for our emails