2024-25 Concert Reviews

The two musicians performing in the Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury

To a dank and flooded Shrewsbury, the guitar and cello of Duo Arpegi brought Catalunyan sunshine and the spirit of Pablo Casals that settled the soul with all the warmth and songful spice of a rare vintage Rioja. Cellist François Ragot and Nathalie Mengual, guitarist and arranger, also conjured vistas of heat-hazed southern Spain and South America in our town’s famous Unitarian Church with a sense of playful connection and poised musicianship that held its audience spellbound. And in the hands of these two masters of their craft, I was struck by how the strings of guitar and cello join in such rich and versatile musical pairing that can give voice to a full spectrum of dance, folksong, lieder and infectiously symphonic, even operatic vim. Impressive and tender music-making was the indelible hallmark.

Mengual’s arrangements sparkled as the duo opened with two greats of the classical Iberian tradition in Manuel de Falla’s Dance Number 1 from his opera La Vida Breve, and two dances by Enrique Granados, ‘Andaluza’ and ‘Oriental’. Song-like cello soared over the undulations of the guitar in knowing balance. The Intermezzo from Granados’ opera, Goyescas, rounded off the set with a beautiful and contrastingly ruminative presentation after the heady emotions of the folk dances. Ragot is an undisputed maestro of the harmonic; the synchronized pizzicato ending was exquisite.
In ‘Asturias’, Isaac Albeniz composed, in the performer’s words, ‘the most famous guitar piece never written for the guitar’. Mengual’s solo handled this piano-turned-guitar-showpiece with virtuosic assurance, the shimmer of the arpeggiated pedal point simmering with quiet, contained passion. The cello joined for another of Albeniz’s star-turns, ‘Cordoba’ where the duo’s ensemble proved profoundly affecting, especially in the softest of dance-like landings at its conclusion.

One of Pablo Casals’ few pupils was fellow Catalonian Gaspar Cassado, who wrote his best-known work ‘Requiebros’ for him. As you’d expect from a musician who hales from a family of luthiers who made cellos for the great man himself, Ragot inhabited the virtuosic brilliance and emotional range of the piece with aplomb.

The concert finished with intoxicating fusions from South America. Ernesto Nazareth’s insistent and rhythmically Brazilian take on a waltz and Piazzolla’s ‘Adios Nonino’ where the duo merged primary colour melody with the autumnal, fugitive shadows of tango with dizzying yet artful affect. They well deserved the clamour for more and as an encore performed Casals’ musical prayer for peace, ‘Song of the Birds’. With another performance on Tuesday [22nd October] in St Mary Magdelene in Bridgnorth, double down on this duo - they are not to be missed.

James Fraser-Andrews

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