Si­mon Lee

Last Sun­day's Pi­ano and Pan Recital at Queen's Hall, rein­tro­duced both pan afi­ciona­dos and those with a clas­si­cal taste to two Tri­ni-born mae­stros, who have suc­cess­ful­ly carved out in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reers in the high­ly com­pet­i­tive field of clas­si­cal mu­sic, from their state­side bases.

Con­duc­tor, pi­anist and choral di­rec­tor Richard Tangyuk joined steel­pan (and some­time vi­o­lin) vir­tu­oso Liam Teague for a recital as eclec­tic as the pro­gramme notes were amus­ing, in­for­ma­tive and just a touch ir­rev­er­ent (a gen­er­ous ges­ture aimed at de­flat­ing any of the pomp some may as­so­ciate with such cir­cum­stances).

It's ob­vi­ous that the same kind of thought which went in­to the joint­ly com­posed pro­gramme notes was al­so em­ployed in se­lect­ing the com­po­si­tions played, which ranged from the Baroque of Vi­val­di and Bach, to the in­tri­ca­cies of Chopin, the im­pres­sion­ism of De­bussy, orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions from Teague and the world pre­miere of a piece for pan and pi­ano, he'd com­mis­sioned from one of his stu­dents at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty.

Un­der cov­er of to­tal dark­ness the recital apt­ly com­menced (it be­ing Epiphany Sun­day) with the Win­ter move­ment of Vi­val­di's Four Sea­sons Con­cer­to, Teague's melod­ic tenor rid­ing over Tangyuk's stac­ca­to pi­ano chords.

While some scep­tics still ques­tion the steel­pan's abil­i­ty to match the sus­tain of the vi­o­lin, the prin­ci­pal in­stru­ment in Vi­val­di's score, Teague's speed with his ebony sticks, matched with his fi­nesse of touch ex­pert­ly cap­tured the shim­mer­ing lights of snow and ice.

Fol­low­ing in the Baroque mode Tangyuk soloed on the mag­nif­i­cent Boe­sendor­fer grand, with a JS Bach French over­ture, the lin­ger­ing notes lan­guid­ly evok­ing an al­most ar­chi­tec­tur­al sound­scape.

Af­ter the or­der of Bach came Teague's de­scent in­to the chaos of Hell, a mu­si­cal in­fer­no in four parts (in­spired by a dream) which matched all the con­trolled com­fort of the Baroque, with sa­tan­i­cal­ly man­ic men­ace.

In de­liv­er­ing his own com­po­si­tion Teague, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the open­ing Fu­ner­al Mu­sic sec­tion, gave a les­son to pan­nists still locked in­to the steel drum mode, who re­strict them­selves to a per­cus­sive, rhyth­mic style, ig­nor­ing the melod­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties of all drums (whether In­di­an tabla, Cuban con­ga or Sene­galese sabar).

It took in­tense lis­ten­ing con­cen­tra­tion to fol­low the mut­ed in­tro be­fore in­fer­nal pomp and scur­ry­ing of imps erupt­ed.

Im­pec­ca­ble pro­gram­ming jux­ta­posed the fre­net­ic pace Of A Vis­it to Hell, with Tangyuk's se­date ren­di­tion of a Chopin noc­turne, be­fore Teague reprised his teenage com­po­si­tion Rain­drops (re­plete with swirling gusts and flur­ries); Tangyuk paused the tem­po with a Schu­bert ser­e­nade and the duo crescen­doed to a first half cur­tain with Pa­gani­ni's tech­ni­cal teas­er for vi­o­lin Mo­to Per­petuo, the pro­gramme notes ad­vis­ing: "...please do not hold your breath for the en­tire piece, you won't make it, and we have no stretch­ers on hand to car­ry you out."

The sec­ond half opened with a poignant ad­dress from Teague, who ad­mit­ted that while "It's a true bless­ing to be play­ing here...it's al­so very in­tim­i­dat­ing."

If his hu­mil­i­ty was as dis­arm­ing as his tal­ent, his grat­i­tude at the help he'd re­ceived 20 years ago when he was at­tempt­ing to fund stud­ies abroad served as in­tro­duc­tion to Jen­ny Lee of the Trinidad Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust, to which part pro­ceeds of the con­cert went.

The Trust will be of­fer­ing two schol­ar­ships for 14-18 year-olds for a three-week in­ten­sive work­shop with Teague in Wis­con­sin lat­er this year.

The first com­po­si­tion, Bach's Con­cer­to for Vi­o­lin in A Mi­nor, per­fect­ly demon­strat­ed how in the hands of a mae­stro, mu­sic orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for quite a dif­fer­ent in­stru­ment, can be suc­cess­ful­ly trans­posed to pan and even of­fer fresh in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

Chopin's Fan­tasie Im­promp­tu, an­oth­er tech­ni­cal teas­er, al­lowed Teague to slip in some im­promp­tu mo­tifs as a nod to Tri­ni mu­si­cal and pan cul­ture: be­sides Rud­der's the Ham­mer, it was pos­si­ble to catch a fleet­ing hint of Kitch's Pan Night and Day and even What a Friend we have in Je­sus.

Then it was Tangyuk's turn to shine on Fritz Kreisler's Liebeslied and Liebesfre­und, the com­pres­sion of these two pieces bal­anced by the mel­low mood of De­bussy's im­pres­sion­is­tic Arabesque, which fol­lowed.

If the duo were un­sure about the re­cep­tion the con­clud­ing piece, the world pre­miere of Ben Wahlund's Grotesque, would re­ceive they need not have not wor­ried.

Spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned by Teague as part of his de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy to ex­pand pan hori­zons be­yond the per­cep­tion that it is still "a nov­el­ty and al­most as­so­ci­at­ed al­most ex­clu­sive­ly with a dat­ed style of in­dige­nous Caribbean mu­sic" Grotesque was in­deed very dif­fer­ent from any­thing else on the pro­gramme.

While some may have ini­tial­ly been un­com­fort­able with the Stravin­sky in­flu­enced rhyth­mic com­plex­i­ty, the mi­nor key, the dis­so­nance, frag­men­tary and even stri­dent de­liv­ery, the ova­tion which fol­lowed, vin­di­cat­ed Teague's com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing "our own orig­i­nal reper­toire."

That young com­posers out­side of Trinidad are try­ing their hand and very dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty with an in­stru­ment which be­gan as in­dus­tri­al waste, must sure­ly be a cause for pride.

That Tangyuk and Teague re­turn home from their re­lent­less in­ter­na­tion­al sched­ules to nur­ture fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of mu­si­cians and en­ter­tain a loy­al lo­cal au­di­ence, stretch­ing their mu­si­cal hori­zons be­yond the com­fort zone of the fa­mil­iar with the gen­uine­ly chal­leng­ing and in­no­v­a­tive, can on­ly be an­oth­er bless­ing we look for­ward to more of.