Wayne Marshall and Natalie Clein

MICHAEL DRAKE

Wayne Marshall and Natalie Clein, Bury Festival

Yesterday evening, it was down the road to another well-loved festival and renowned artists making their debut as a duo, Wayne Marshall at the keyboards and cellist Natalie Clein, in a very spiritual programme dominated by French music.

And I have no argument with that, for there was an immediate fusion of the two instruments in Saint-Saens' Priere for cello and organ and, with piano, a beautifully sedate Swan.

And completing that composer's contribution, Marshall gave full organistic range to the Fantasie in D Flat, including a delicate flute ending.

Clein, an emotional soloist, was then able to exploit a warm sonority and technique in Prokofiev's Sonata for cello and piano and, in much hanged mood, Tavener's lament followed without a break by the French connection with what the composer notated “inevitably slow”, the fifth movement of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (this, for cello and piano only) which, with the continuous repeated piano chords, was hauntingly meditative.

In complete contrast, the same composer's glorious organ sounds from transports de Jioe, which Wayne Marshall brilliantly built on in the clear bewilderment of styles in improvisation on the can-can theme, before the final jazzy and rhythmic Grand Tango by Piazzolla.

Marshall and Clein are two names to keep together for they are they great musical communicators.