Strathearn Music Society Review – Scholfield-Clarke Duo

Wednesday 14 October 2026 A pity that the title here gives so little away. Even their website gets only as far as the word “exciting” but, on the evidence of their recital last Wednesday in Crieff, that doesn’t go far enough at all.

So, to fill in a few gaps, Richard Scholfield is a saxophonist and Iain Clarke is a pianist. They’re both Scottish (of course) and their mission is to ensure that the repertoire for saxophone and piano gains lots of appreciative listeners. Most importantly, they are amazingly good – a musical partnership with almost uncanny communicative skills and the technical mastery to play anything their fingers touch, reaching an audience without any question of mere virtuosity getting in the way of the music.

The combination of sax and piano is fortunate in being able to avail itself of a wide variety of original works as well as a range of transcriptions and arrangements, and their programme had something for everyone, proving along the way that music is simply music, whatever a purist might think about a Bach Flute Sonata played on an instrument which wasn’t invented until a century after the composer’s death.

Choosing to start their concert in exactly this way immediately displayed the expressive credentials of the soprano sax and its exponent (himself born two and a half centuries after Bach; isn’t that a wonderful thought in itself?)

Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite was a piano duet when first written, later emerging as an orchestral piece and finally a ballet score, but proved tailor-made for this set-up, allowing a first glimpse of the pianist’s ability to convey light and shade, subtly merging his colour palette with the saxophone’s seductively graded phrasing.

More French music completed the first half (soprano sax having now been replaced by the richer alto), with the substantial orchestral textures of Debussy’s Rhapsody followed by the giddy brilliance of an extravagant Carmen Fantasy (an arrangement-of-an-arrangement, this one, ornamenting Bizet’s original melodies with more notes than Paganini could have shaken a violin bow at).

After the interval a short but characterful Fantaisie Impromptu by André Jolivet prepared the ground for Erwin Schulhoff’s Hot-Sonate, a true tour-de-force inhabiting a world somewhere between jazz and conventional classicism and which tested every aspect of the consummate musicianship of both players.

Astor Piazzolla to finish, and his elegy on his father’s death, Adiós Nonino, provided a deeply personal and emotional note on which to close…. or so it might have been, had not this remarkable pair had another squillion or two hemi-demi-semiquavers up their sleeves with which to send their listeners happily home. No chance at all of keeping up with the wild and wonderful pace of their wacky ragtime encore, but “exciting”? – the word doesn’t even begin to describe it.

All musical duos share the characteristic of intimate connection, challenging two players to think and perform as one, but Scholfield and Clarke achieve this to perfection – and beyond. If you weren’t there, you really should have been!