For their December concert Huddersfield Music Society set aside their staple string quartet format in favour of the less familiar cello and piano duo, writes Chris Robins.

A shrewd idea, because the last weekend of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival had been dominated by the Arditti Quartet – the best in the world celebrating their 40th season – with no fewer than 13 examples of the genre.

The opportunity was taken forthrightly by a duo just starting their career but whose 40th season, I predict, will be celebrated as joyously as the Ardittis!

Twenty-three-year-old cellist Ariana Kashefi graduated from the Royal College of Music last year and, among many awards, won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Julius Isserlis Scholarship. Her piano partner Timothy End became an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music earlier this year, and among accompanists’ honours heaped on him are the Gerald Moore Award and the Piano Prize at the Wigmore Hall Song Competition.

To open their concert with Beethoven’s Op. 102 C major Sonata was a bold statement of their intent. It could have so easily backfired, but instead worked well.

The piece opens with a simple two-bar phrase from which everything evolves. It is concentrated, closely argued, each note deriving from its predecessor. Although written in 1815 it already exhibits the other worldly characteristics of Beethoven’s final transcendent works, and it was skilfully played.

To follow that with Bach’s C major Cello Suite was the immortal confidence of youth writ large, and again it worked splendidly. In Kashefi’s hands it had restraint and articulate forward motion. Its Prelude cascaded along, its Sarabande was nicely understated and the exuberance of its Gigue was tightly controlled.

The two final works were a delightful surprise, both concert rarities. Janacek’s Pohadka of 1910 is based on a prince and princess fairy tale, and Kashefi and End made it dramatic and magical, the cello clearly an ardent and impetuous prince and the piano a tentative and sometimes flighty princess.

Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano was written immediately after his Second Piano Concerto and sounds like an extension of it.

The rich harmonies and gorgeous melodies, with cello and piano as equal voices, were eloquently delivered.