MEMBERS of Prestwich music club were treated to a heart-warming experience on November 8. It was a special concert in every way, a family affair, involving a concert pianist and two splendid cellists.

The artists were Bernard Gregor-Smith, cellist of the recently disbanded Lindsays, the internationally-acclaimed string quartet; his wife, Yolande, whose prowess at the keyboard is well-known to our members, and their son, Ben, who is currently at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Bernard and Yolande opened their programme with Beethoven's Variations on Bei Mannern oder weibochen: from Mozart's The Magic Flute, in which they revealed the lively and whimsical nature of the music in an eminently perceptive performance.

Next, they gave the Debussy Sonata in D Minor, a work written by the composer during the First World War and which he dedicated to his daughter Claude-Emma. It is a piece that apparently defied the harmonic understanding of his contemporaries, but to today's listener is accepted as a matter of course.

Bernard and Yolande fully exploited the music's atmospheric and impressionistic leanings in a sensitive and persuasive performance which showed the piece to be substantial and not some quirkily written bit of ephemera.

Next came Astor Piazzola's Le Grand Tango, a 10-minute rhapsody originally written for Rostropovich and in which the Argentinean composer makes strenuous demands on its performers. Bernard and Yolande rose to the occasion happily revealing the underlying tango rhythms.

Before the interval, Ben Gregor-Smith accompanied by Yolande gave a spirited account of the first movement of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. Ben plays on a recent copy of his father's 300-year-old Ruggieri instrument and there is little doubt that on the evidence of this performance he is following hard in Bernard's footsteps and looks forward to a successful career in his chosen profession.

Returning after the interval, Ben gave the Allemande and Courante from J. S. Bach's Suite No. 2 in D minor for unaccompanied cello. This he delivered with elegant phrasing and a clarity which would do full justice to an artist of greater maturity.

The final work in the programme, the Beethoven Sonata Opus 102 in D major, which was written in 1815, is a demanding piece in which the lyrical slow movement leads into a complex and concentrated finale and looks foward to the comparable complexities of the Hammerclavier Sonata (Opus 106 of 1818) and the Grosse Fugue. To bring it off successfully requires virtuosic playing of the highest quality and Bernard and Yolande did not disappoint in fully realising the composer's intentions.

This was an evening of music to remember with gratitude and I share the hope along with other members of the club that a return visit from the Gregor-Smiths will take place in the not too distant future.

DB