Piano Concertos by Candlelight: Rachmaninov 2

St Vincent’s Chapel 29/08/26

Matthew Shiel (piano), Heather Kennedy (violin), Sue Muir (violin), Wendy Gudgin (viola), Chris McVennie (cello).

Stepping into St Vincent’s Chapel in Stockbridge on a late August evening feels like slipping away from the world. For the final performance of their multi-date run – which kicked off mid-month – the historic Edinburgh venue offered an intimate, almost secretive sanctuary for Rachmaninov’s famed second piano concerto. This was preceded by a rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’, and the second of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, ‘Summer’, with the virtuosic lead violin part ably handled by Heather Kennedy.

The atmosphere was set before the first note of the concert was struck. Bathed in the soft, flickering glow of candlelight, the architecture of the chapel cast shadows against the stone walls. It was an environment visually fitting for Sergei Rachmaninov’s deeply romantic, emotionally churning soundscape, here re-arranged for strings – and performed by the newly formed Salon Quartet – by Jun Hyung Kim.

Effervescent pianist Matthew Shiel and the quartet approached the formidable, three movement Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 18 not as an exercise in technical muscle, but as emotional immersion. From the legendary, tolling introductory chords that swell like a gathering storm, Shiel delivered with a mixture of precision and grace. The famous melody of the Adagio sostenuto hung in the hushed chapel air with fragility, drawing the audience into a shared stillness.

Even so, a cut-down performance of this kind, in such a comparatively confined space, comes with compromises. While the Salon Quartet sought to provide a rich, warm tapestry to wrap around the piano’s cascading arpeggios, the usual gravitational pull of Rachmaninov’s orchestration was somewhat lost and clouded in a setting which lacked the aural dryness needed for this kind of chamber intimacy – one which, as a matter of fact, Rachmaninov rarely wrote for himself.

The boxiness of the acoustic worked in two directions at once. On the one hand, it surprisingly preserved some of the grandiosity of the work. On the other, it muffled the piano in particular, dampened the dynamics, and smudged the accents between soloist and quartet.

However, these acoustic challenges did not mask the emotional sincerity and musical commitment of the evening. All involved deserve credit, and the audience of around 60 in the charming St Vincent’s Chapel showed their appreciation. Shiel and the ensemble delivered a lively performance, and the soloist and conductor ended, naturally enough, with an encore of Rachmaninov’s glorious Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2.

It was a fitting close to a charming candlelight concert series – though you can hear the work again, along with the Greig Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16, at the more expansive St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh on Saturday 26th September.