THIS was a splendid start to Darlington Piano Society’s new season with a welcome increase in attendance, a piano back in tune and an accomplished and confident musician performing an attractive and thoughtful programme.

For this return visit, Maria Marchant had devised a programme called Conflicts and Memories – the First World War comprising only music written during that dark period.

She opened with two short pieces by Debussy, with Berceuse héroique ominously portraying bugles gradually fading away.

Two contrasting Etudes-Tableaux by Rachmaninov included the complex, multi-layered No. 8 in D minor and a dramatic, even passionate, No. 5 in E flat minor whose soft rippling end came as a welcome relief.

A key part of the programme was a selection by John Ireland whose musically ambitious Rhapsody rather belied its title.

His Ballade of London Nights contained a passionate and intense middle section and Three London Pieces were so vividly portrayed by Miss Marchant it was possible to imagine the varied scenes she described in her introduction.

A selection of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives captured their varying moods very convincingly, with an effective build up to the short but intense No. 19 which was inspired by the February 1917 Revolution in Russia.

Finally, Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, varied as it is with its different dance steps, seemed in its distinctive sound world, generally more soothing and reflective.

The society’s next concert is by Clare Hammond on Sunday, November 9; details at dpiano.co.uk.

Peter Bevan