Strathearn Music Society Review – Ryan Corbett
Wed 13th March 2024
If solo accordion concerts are still a bit of a novelty for many music-lovers it’s certainly not for lack of crusading effort on the part of Ryan Corbett. The young Scots player may still be in the early stages of his career but the merest glance at his concert diary (past and future) reveals a busy and highly enterprising artist who confidently stands alongside other more “mainstream” instrumentalists and does a whole lot more than merely add a different bit of local colour. Some may be immediately attracted and impressed by the unfamiliar intricacies of his instrument itself but it takes only a few seconds for the discerning ear to recognise above all the all-embracing musicality which drives him.
Giving the final concert of Strathearn Music Society’s season in Crieff last Wednesday evening, he had his audience captivated from the outset with a piece whose serious credentials have never been in question – Bach wrote his famous D minor Chaconne originally for violin, Busoni made a monumental piano transcription of it a century and a half later, and Ryan Corbett in 2024 is able to transform that further and totally convince us that a modern piano accordion is an equally legitimate channel for the composer’s original inspiration.
Follow that with the Mediterranean passion and lively rhythms of Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord sonatas, the mellow lyricism and elfin playfulness of Mendelssohn, the wistfulness of Mozart and his fascination for that quirky footnote of musical history, the musical clock, not to mention the timeless appeal of Grieg’s Holberg Suite (late-Romantic Scandinavia meets 18th century dances and drama by way of piano and string orchestra), and you’ll begin to appreciate the scope of what is possible with five flying fingers on a vertical keyboard, some powerful bellows and an array of baffling buttons on the other end. Is it an organ? Is it a piano? Is it indeed the ultimate one-man band? Actually, it’s all this and more, offering the potential for raw power, beguiling pianissimo phrasing and everything in between. Let’s even forget the term “transcription” and embrace the whole new dimension which Ryan and his incredible accordion opens up for his listeners by re-imagining and re-presenting the classics they’ve heard before in their “original” guise.
Except – and here’s the truly remarkable thing: there’s another perspective still, because of course, as well as all of the above, he can draw on an immense additional repertoire by composers who have written expressly and specifically for the accordion. Among these Vaclav Trojan, Vyacheslav Semyonov and Vladsilav Zolotaryov featured in this performance alongside the more familiar names previously mentioned, opening a tantalising door onto an intriguing world of musical discovery. If anyone is going to fling that door wide open for us it’s going to be Ryan Corbett.
