Music and more at Kettle’s Yard

Jim Ede was born in 1895, the son of a solicitor in South Wales. As a child he was set on becoming an artist. After time spent at the Newlyn and the Slade Schools of Art and service in the Great War, he joined the Tate Gallery where he sought unsuccessfully to persuade the authorities to buy cutting-edge contemporary art.

Frustrated, he resigned and set up house in Tangier until he moved to Cambridge in 1956. Knocking four cottages together to make a considerable dwelling, Ede made his home there and in distinctively white-walled minimalist style, furnished it with his pictures and sculptures and restrained furnishings. He encouraged young students to come for “open day” teas and to view his collection. This was his vision for “Kettle’s Yard”: “a living place where works of art could be enjoyed… where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery.” Eventually, in 1966, he decided to bequeath the house and holdings to Cambridge University.

While Ede’s old house has been kept as he left it with paintings and furniture still positioned according to his wishes, exhibition and teaching areas have been added alongside, most recently with a new-build this year. The combined effect is a kind of modernist enchantment which lends itself perfectly to the performance of chamber music concerts, a number of which are held in the course of the academic year. In the extension which links Ede’s original building to the new extension, concertgoers assemble and are seated beside walls covered with paintings by the likes of Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson and with sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska settled on side tables and other pieces of furniture deployed by Ede. The space is intimate, almost casual; a long white linen-covered sofa resting alongside a wall near the grand piano serves as a favoured spot to sit and listen; altogether an ideal chamber music venue.

And the intimacy of the venue connects players and listeners together just as admirers would have been at a Schubert recital in Biedermeier Vienna. A carefully curated season mixes established and well known soloists and ensembles with younger players still forging their careers, and marries newer and older music in stimulating programmes. Thus the autumn season opened with stunning performances of a Mozart divertimento (K138), and quartets by Shostakovich (his 8th) and Beethoven (Opus 59) given by the much lauded Van Kuijk Quartet. A few weeks later the more newly-minted Sicilian pianist, Giuseppe Guarrera, gave a full-on recital of Romantic and modernist pieces, including Scriabin (Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand), Ravel (3 Pieces from Miroirs 18) and a piano-crashing rendition of Prokofiev’s Sonata number 7.

Last Thursday we were treated to a French themed recital given by the Anglo-Dutch violinist, Daniel Rowland, accompanied by the pianist, Craig White, of Mozart (his sonata in E Minor written and performed in Paris in 1778), Debussy (preludes subtly arranged by Craig White), Stravinsky (Divertimento for violin and piano after “The Fairy’s Kiss”), an exquisite little Nocturne by Lili Boulanger, Ravel’s piece in the form of a Habanera, and, finally and explosively, Cesar Franck’s  Sonata for violin in A Major. Rowland and White were clearly delighted by the venue (Rowland remarking that the nearby sofa was the cosiest seating he had ever seen at a public concert!) and engaged with the audience by discussing the music and criss-crossing the room to acknowledge the applause.

There are many musical delights still in store for December and in the Spring and Summer. But the concertgoer at Kettle’s Yard gets more than music alone. In addition to the opportunity before and after the recitals to look at the parts of Ede’s collection in the room, there is a chance (as an alternative to a glass of wine at the bar) to look around the current exhibition in the new galleries adjacent. These are small but often quite exquisite. The current exhibition of photos and objects on the theme of migration is quietly stimulating and affecting. “Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan” is restrained and oblique in its composition and effect. There is a generous humanity and some very touching as well as some unsettling images: the photograph of a woman standing barefoot in plastic sandals in the snow of Kashmir, is a case in point. Indeed a visit to see the exhibition without any accompanying concert would be well worthwhile, but why not sample both on the same evening?