Anthony Marwood / James Crabb Duo : Reviews
DUO
Wigmore Hall, London (May 2025)
‘From the opening Piazzolla tangos to the final crazy swirl through a Scottish reel, I felt energised simply through proximity to these two master musicians. The wit of their interplay, the magic of the timbres they conjured, their vitality, their astonishing dexterity, but also the remarkable breadth of moods they summoned, from eerie whispers to devilish fierceness — all this clearly enthralled the audience.’
Richard Morrison, The Times
‘James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a spectrum of pieces which brim with wit and inventiveness. This lunchtime concert with violinist Anthony Marwood was a sheer joy, as they together traversed a range of style and tone’.
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk
‘When English violinist Anthony Marwood and Scottish accordionist James Crabb performed Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending it was as if the audience had been transported from the concert hall to a very high-end folk club in the local pub.
Here were two old friends, fiendishly talented and who know each other’s playing inside out, performing a much-loved and familiar work in the intimate setting of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s The Neilson in the last of the Up Close series for the year.
It truly felt as if the listener were privileged to be there as an onlooker and eavesdropper. Any reservations one might have had about an orchestra being substituted by a classical accordion were washed away with the serene pedal chord opening before Marwood and his 1736 Carlo Bergonzi violin began weaving their silken magic.’