Was she being courageous or foolish? I still can’t decide. But in the Park Lane Group’s annual parade of young musicians, it certainly took nerve for the Chinese pianist Meng Yang Pan, a wisp in bright yellow, to devote two thirds of her showcase slot to complex reverberations, bashing with forearms, and other perils of the high avant-garde. Poised like a cat eyeing its prey before the pounce, she navigated Helmut Lachenmann’s solo epic Serynade (the wonky spelling is deliberate) with a flabbergasting resolve and panache. Her brilliance left no indication, of course, of how she might handle Schubert, but that’s always the unanswered question of the PLG’s new year series.
The past two days featured another promising pianist of clean fingers and ambition, Maria Marchant. Technical feats rather than aural pleasure dominated Kenneth Hesketh’s substantial Poetic Conceits. Perhaps Marchant should have offered in contrast something more playful than Kenneth Leighton’s Six Studies, music with its own grit and muscle. Still, I liked her flair and lack of rampage.
The amount of music from British composers was one of the week’s pleasures, especially for strings. The Finzi String Quartet smartly delivered Cheryl Frances Hoad’s recent, attractive My Day in Hell, inspired by Dante, and Bliss’s well-crafted Quartet No 2, a resurrection from 1950. But the prize for poise, blended tone and general lustre was ultimately won by the Piatti String Quartet, heard in Britten’s inimitable First Quartet and two 21st-century pieces. Crabbed and knotty, Simon Willson’s A Slight Angle to the Universe made a lugubrious impression, unlike Anna Meredith’s typically punchy Songs for the M8, five strongly characterised miniatures — lurching, scuttling, soaring, pounding, hovering — inspired by the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow (and why not?).
Elsewhere in the PLG series the saxophonist Huw Wiggin ambled on with his accompanist Timothy Babel. They wasted time on Giles Swayne’s unrewarding Leonardo’s Dream. Luckily, Michael Berkeley’s sharply etched Keening, Andy Scott’s Three Letter Words (a jazzy world premiere) and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Two Memorials gave a better indications of Wiggin’s liquid gold tones and enviable breath control. The cellist Richard Birchall shone best in Robert Saxton’s solo Sonata on a Theme of Walton. The curtain finally came down with the Prince Regent Brass Soloists, an ensemble of almost frightening sheen.