Callum Smart, The Riverfront (From South Wales Argus)

Callum Smart, The Riverfront

11:37am Friday 25th November 2011 in Entertainments By Nigel Jarrett

It’s customary to marvel at musical prodigies for the way their technique outstrips their tender years.

To find maturity as well is rare - but 14-year-old violinist Callum Smart definitely has it.

Last year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year competition finalist was paying his first visit to the Riverfront for a recital with pianist Gordon Back.

And that’s where the maturity first became apparent, as the violinist showed that he was on equal terms with this distinguished Neath-born accompanist from the start.

Musical competitions being what they are, especially those that are not comparing like with like, can be a lottery. The eventual winner is often anointed as the first among equals.

Although Smart didn’t win outright last year - he played the Mendelssohn E minor concerto in the final - he showed that his career will have a trajectory of its own independent of competition triumphs. His is a self-assured musicianship packed with potential.

In the 2010 strings final he played the first movement of the Brahms Sonata No 3 in D minor. At this concert he gave us the whole work as well as the Beethoven ‘Spring’ Sonata.

The recital ended with Wieniawski’s Variations on an Original Theme. It’s a scarily difficult work but much of it is laid down with a wicked humour. Smart seemed to understand this in dealing with its complexity while acknowledging its wit.

But the awesome rapport came most tellingly in Chausson’s autumnal Poeme, a work that this sports-loving youngster from Tunbridge Wells should have had, by all the rules of adulthood, no capacity to understand.