Saturday afternoons at Wigmore Hall are often quiet and fairly conventional affairs, but not in the hands of violinist Aisha Syed-Castro, who continued the African Series of concerts with a fine selection of works all of which deserve to be heard more often. The composers represented trace their origins to West Africa, but what was striking throughout the programme was the diversity of inspirations and traditions on which they drew – whether visual prompts such as sculptures, or the conventions of a plethora of musical genres, from Baroque to Bebop. To do justice to all of them required mastery of several distinct styles of play and both soloist and accompanist Rebeca Omordia were fully up for the challenge.
We began with William Grant Still’s suite from 1943, inspired by three sculptures by members of the Harlem Renaissance. In each case Still adds a dimension that draws out what is visually implied – so a dancing figure offers a chance for various rhythmic experiments, a mother and child becomes the start of a long, gentle meditation, and the final movement is blues-inflected with syncopations mirroring the antics of a naughty child. Syed-Castro and Omordia shifted gears admirably to capture these various moods.
Florence Price was represented by Adoration, a late work originally written for organ, but here given an intense flowing performance of prayerful dedication and direct simplicity. It was followed by the most interesting work of the concert overall – Fiddle Dance Suite by Wynton Marsalis. The five movements of this solo work are truly virtuosic, appropriate perhaps for a work dedicated to Nicola Benedetti; and Syed-Castro responded vividly to each one, even stamping her foot in the last hoedown number. This suite is a lot more than a series of varied dance numbers – in each of them we slip between jazz and classical genres in the same way Alfred Schnittke mixes everything up to find something excitingly fresh and new. Whether in exacting gigues, fierce pizzicato or intense chordal middle sections the soloist has to dig deep and overcome any number of severe technical challenges. There is a lot going on here and I would have happily have heard some of the movements twice to get a firmer grip on their structure.
The final work in the programme was another suite which is neither purely for the dance floor or salon, nor fully worked through in a symphonic sense. Coleridge-Taylor’s Petite Suite de Concert has four movements, each with charming and catchy melodies that are written gratefully for the instrument, while also offering some attractive moments for the pianist as well. This is well-crafted music of great charm and in the hands of these players you wonder why we are not regularly bracketing the movements with generally similar repertoire favourites such as Elgar’s Chanson de matin, to which they are easily equal in quality. This is another example of how beneficial the focus on recovering black composers has turned out to be – not just in uncovering neglected composers but in opening up the catalogues of composers such as Coleridge-Taylor who wrote far more memorable pieces than are generally performed.
At the end of this fine recital we were treated to a Caribbean encore reflecting the soloist’s origins in the Dominican Republic. The audience would have happily settled down for more.
Aisha Syed-Castro (violin)
Rebeca Omordia (piano)
15 March 2025
1 hr