Jess Gillam

Outside St Andrew’s Hall I noticed a poster listing the festival performers appearing at the venue. While Thomas Ades is sternly labelled “returns only”, Jess Gillam is badged as “young talent”. The festival is promoting a whole host of up-and-coming musicians, and you might be forgiven for assuming she is spearheading that endeavour. However, with her new album breaking all records, and a high profile Radio 3 show on the go, Gillam has become very much the star turn of the festival. Folks were queuing a full hour before the doors opened, just to get the best seats, with many only doing so in the hope of a return for this long sold-out concert, so that when they finally took to their seats, it was a with the air of fevered expectation.

Accompanied by Zeynep Özsuca on piano, Gillam performed in the round within the body of the auditorium, which did much to compensate for what can be a challenging venue. For those of us lucky enough to be close to the action, it made for an intimate and involving performance, quite unlike those I had previously seen at the Hall. From the outset, Gillam threw herself into things, shifting and swaying hypnotically as she eased us into a classical world that included the saxophone. What proved consistent throughout the evening was Gillam’s infectious enthusiasm and commitment to her instrument and the eclectic pieces she had chosen to play, something that shone through her brief chats with the audience, which incidentally revealed a youthful exuberance that was easy to forget, given the astonishing expertise with which she played.

After a spirited introduction that included brief works by Itturalde and Ravel, we got to our first piece of real substance – Britten’s “Temporal Variations”. Özsuca had previously provided fine accompaniment, but this was more like a duet, and while I wasn’t entirely convinced the saxophone was a fitting stand-in for the mellifluous oboe, the piece was the perfect showcase for the performers’ faultless playing. When that musicianship was combined with the great sensitivity required for Michael Nyman’s “If”, we heard just how beautiful the saxophone can sound when playing a piece written for it. Add to that the extraordinary dexterity required the John Harle’s “Rant”– a piece especially written the Gillam – and all the components were in place for an exhilarating concert that zipped along.
Thumbing through the festival brochure during the interval, it became apparent that the programme had been re-organised, with Poulenc and Bartok most noticeably absent, and I started to wonder if this wasn’t a tacit acknowledgement that pieces written for the saxophone are simply more effective than those which are rearrangements of works intended for other instruments. The second half had opened on Marcelo’s accessible “Concerto for Oboe”, and it worked out fine, but it wasn’t nearly as memorable or effective as “Gate”, a deceptively complex work by Graham Fitkin that had been newly introduced.

That said, Dowland’s “Flow my Tears” was written several hundred years before the saxophone was invented, yet its elegiac simplicity was beautifully realised, while Wiedeoft’s vaudevillian “Valse Vanite” (very much written for saxophone) was technically astonishing, but otherwise a slighter work, lacking the vitality and excitement that had so effectively been built in the first half of the evening. Perhaps it is simply a case of judiciously picking and choosing wisely from what is available, while patiently harvesting new material as it is written. In any event, it came as no surprise that Gillam closed on her jaunty version of Milhaud’s “Scaramouche”, given the sensation it caused at the Proms. The effect was much the same in Norwich, leading to a well-deserved standing ovation for a performance that delivered much, while promising so much more to come.