He paced the development with assurance as well as a certain reserve measuring the climax and holding back adrenalin for
He paced the development with assurance, as well as a certain reserve, measuring the climax, and holding back adrenalin for the coda.
In the cruelly challenging Scherzo, Demidenko booted some grace notes with uncharacteristic clumsiness, and the Funeral March was a bit too slow. But the brief finale was beautifully played, like a feathery whisper, with barely perceptible dabs of the pedal.Maria Joao Pires replaced the Chopin advertised in her City of London Festival recital last Tuesday with Schubert. He launched the first movement splendidly, with urgent directness; but then he got rather coy about the second subject, which was too slow and retiring, and fancily re-voiced to deprive the top line of its due weight. He is one of the very few pianists to slip into the opening straight out of the blue – as daring a way to begin as it is unobtrusive. He’s also one of the few to sustain the bass octave beneath the pianissimo chords preceding the stormy final section, though it’s a traditional, and highly effective, liberty. The programme had the look of a catalogue, for before the interval, Demidenko played the first two sonatas.
The First Sonata, dating from Chopin’s student days, is a courtly piece, whose outer movements can sound doggedly elaborated, and did on this occasion, partly because Demidenko didn’t sustain his tempi firmly The B flat minor Sonata was much more authoritative. John Cage said he disliked recording after he heard a child at a concert complain that a performance “wasn’t like the disc”. Having made such a superlative one of Chopin’s four Ballades, Nikolai Demidenko had a lot to live up to in his Wigmore Hall recital on 6 July. It was a pity the audience only clapped after the first Ballade, for hearing all four in succession is a bit like having lamb, beef, pork and veal – though not necessarily in that order – in one meal. Still, they were remarkable performances even with the disc in mind, and the finest Ballade, the fourth, also drew the most from Demidenko. I don’t know if Dodd quite does that, but he certainly makes people laugh.JAMES RAMPTON. He even committed the cardinal sin in the eyes of the post-Alternative generation: he told a mother-in-law joke.The act revolved around Dodd rattling out gags so quickly that the laughter from one punchline drowned out the next – and he kept up the cracking pace till midnight.
He remains faster off the mark than Linford Christie; the moment he discovered a person in the third row was a bin man, he quipped: “When he married that woman next to him, he carried her over the threshold and dropped half of her down the path.”He punctuated the rapidfire gagging with ritual moments of self-deprecation: “I get paid by the laugh. At the moment, I owe them pounds 7.50.” These became considerably more spicy as he mused about his close encounters of an Inland Revenue kind. “Hello,” he reflected, “is a lovely word – unless you’re saying it to a VAT inspector I get terribly sentimental, I miss the money. We were lovers.” This tack obviously elicited sympathy; when he introduced himself as “Kenneth Arthur Dodd – artist, model and failed accountant”, he received a hearty round of applause.Atop the ornate proscenium arch at the Richmond Theatre is carved a grandiose quotation stating the venue’s noble aim: “to wake the soul by tender strokes of art”. But from the moment he staggered on stage last Wednesday waving not one but two tickling-sticks while simultaneously doing a funny walk and a funny face, you knew you were in no danger of being lacerated by the cutting edge of comedy.
In a touch that dates from music-hall, his punchlines were accompanied by various “boom-boom” sound effects from the dinner-jacketed percussionist at the back of the stage. And so is the act.
Billed as “An Evening of Happiness with Ken Dodd and Friends”, it trades in the universal Carry On virtues of silliness and sauciness (which never, ever, lapses into swearing.) Many in the audience had long since received their bus passes – Dodd bid us welcome to “this magnificent branch of meals on wheels” – but a surprising number of younger faces had appeared to sample this timeless brand of stand-up (and help bump up the profits for the Knotty Ash tickling-sticks on sale in the foyer).He made concessions to topicality with the odd joke about BSE, water board chairmen and road rage. He undoubtedly has a demeanour made for comedy: electric-shock hairdo courtesy of Don King’s barber, ill-matched jacket and trousers, ill-fitting tie, and teeth that endanger the eyesight of those foolhardy to book front- row seats. (His trademark gnashers are said to be insured for pounds 10,000.) The look, in other words, is just as you remembered it from all those early 1970s Saturday night television variety shows.
