Ashan Pillai and Eshantha Peiris had neither met each other nor performed together before. Yet they seemed surprisingly at ease as they walked on to the stage at the Lionel Wendt on August 6, to face a full auditorium. It was one of those instances of pin-drop silence as the audience waited in anticipation to listen to Ashan whom they had not heard in Sri Lanka since 2002.
“I have played the viola for about 32 years now,” smiles Ashan, immediately after the performance, describing the concert as one of those rare moments in a musician’s career where he or she walks on stage and experiences a certain vibe in the air which indicates everything will turn out well. And in every sense, the performance was flawless.
As the name of the concert declared, the conversations that took place that night were intimate. So intimate in fact, that the impression you would get of the two performers is of two very old friends who have played together countless times.
Considering that the talented duo had roughly two days to practise for their concert - Intimate Conversations for Viola and Piano, neither performer had any feeling of apprehension about the somewhat risky move - of putting together a concert with such a little time to practise together.
“Most of the pieces we performed were selected by Ashan, because of the amount of experience he has had in playing the viola,” says Eshantha and true to his words, the selections -- varying from 17th to 19th century composers like Telemann, Bach, Schubert, Schumann and Weber, to the more contemporary Gavin Bryars -- complemented the talents and styles of Ashan and Eshantha perfectly and gave the concert the intimate feel that its name promised.
It was Ashan who played first. The concert opened with his solo, Telemann’s Fantasia No. 9 in E Minor. It is not often that we hear a viola soloist and not many of us know as much about the instrument as we do about its cousin the violin. Ashan’s control over the instrument and the ease with which he played were as much a pleasure to watch as to listen to.
Eshantha too, with his level of experience, absorbed in the music, delivered a stunning performance.
Many of us felt goose-bumps that night - most probably as a result of the beauty of the music being played. There was an inexplicable something in the music; the way it was played, and the familiarity of the language that was spoken, that made the audience want to sit at the edge of their seats throughout the performance, completely engaged in the music. |
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