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Appearing with the kind permission of The Royal Northern College of Music, Laurel Saunders (clarinet) and Angharad Huw (harp) gave the first concert of the Season on Tuesday evening 18 October. It was good to see so many old friends and new faces at the concert, and what a concert it was – full of colour, life and interest. Your reviewer has never come across any of the composers in the programme – except for that Dave Brubeck classic Take Five.

The combination of clarinet and harp is new to the Club, I think, but on checking online I find that numerous composers have written for this combination, Schubert and Schumann to mention just two of them. Others will be mentioned later on in this Review.

The concert began with a piece by Paul Reade “The Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite”. This was a very good beginning and I particularly enjoyed the Prelude and Summer, these were delightful and very evocative of a well doing kitchen garden. Next we heard a short lyrical and peaceful Aria by Aaron Breeze. This was followed by “The Coastal Suite” by Roma Cafolla and was composed especially for clarinet and harp. I found myself on the coast and listening to the sea and the wind in all their varied moods.

Carlos Salzedo wrote “Chanson dans la Nuit” for solo harp and Angharad played this short piece with wit and feeling and it came with some percussive elements.

Béla Kovács’ “Hommage á J S Bach” and “Homage á De Falla” are both works for a solo clarinet, Laurel played these superbly well.

Paul Desmond composed “Take Five” and of course this was familiar to all of us from the Dave Brubeck Quartet. This was most enjoyable and who knew that the harp made a good bass? I didn’t. The first half ended with a Jazz Improvisation by Laurel and Angharad proving once again that harp and clarinet make an ace jazz duo.

After the interval we had a rare event at our concerts, so said Keith Osborne in his splendid programme notes, we had the World Premiere of Aaron Breeze’s “Adagio”. This is a piece which ought to be listened to again as on the first hearing it seemed that the clarinet played discordantly at times and the harp was the bass beat. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. It was followed by Laurel playing Tiberiu Olah’s Sonata for Clarinet and this piece showed very clearly the many different sounds that can be made by the clarinet, particularly by such a fine player as Laurel.

We then came to one of the most enjoyable pieces of music, this was “Six American Sketches” by Skalia Kanga. This is a descriptive and lyrical composition and the harp was very fine in II Running Water, very refreshing! And the clarinet was very grasshopper like in IV and in V Night Stillness the harp was very lovely with the clarinet interjecting. I would have liked to go to No VI the Country Fayre.

The piece of music by Uno Vesje I found fascinating “Life is flashing before my eyes and I realise that it all started with a blackbird”. This was played by Angharad and sure enough there is a real blackbird singing away (a pre-recording), and this was a lovely piece of music to listen to, both blackbird and harp!

We then heard two sections from Armando Ghidoni’s Jazzy-Celtic Suite – III Interlude and IV Celswing. In this the clarinet sounded smooth and the harp lyrical and in Celswing lively with a swing.

The concert ended, with I think my favourite bit. Laurel and Angharad played a folk improvisation and I asked Angharad about the lovely tune they improvised. Angharad wrote it down for me it is a Welsh folk tune “Hen ferchetan”. I looked it up online afterwards and it means old maid.

This was a wonderful beginning to the 2022/23 Season and I very much hope that Laurel and Angharad will be invited to play for us again. I am sure that they both have wonderful careers ahead of them.

CM

REVIEW OF CONCERT GIVEN ON 15th MARCH 2022

The concert given by the Alkyona String Quartet was a wonderful end to this season. The quartet line up was Emma Purslow, violin; Marike Kruup, violin; Claire Newton, viola and Jobine Siekman, cello. This concert was generously sponsored by Steve Boycott.

The concert began with Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 18 No 3 in D major. What a wonderful mellow sound from the cello in the first movement. All the players showed great musicality and what lyrical playing. In the final movement there was such a rich sound – it was like bathing in music.

Then we heard the String Quartet No 7 Opus 108 by Shostakovich, this was composed in 1960 and dedicated to his first wife who had died in 1954. Their marriage, I understand was volatile. The piece has humorous passages and in part an insistent beat. Was she nagging him I wondered, then there was a dissonance on all instruments and it all sounded like a monstrous quarrel; I felt some relief when that was over! This was a piece excitingly played and very colourful.

After the interval came the highlight of the evening; Schubert’s String Quartet D810 “Death and the Maiden”. This was played by the Quartet for the first time in concert and I understand from Steve Boycott that it had been learned specifically for this concert; it was an opportunity to learn it and play it for real and it’s now gone into their repertoire for the future (Emma Purslow). Death and the Maiden is a very dark subject, written in minor keys. Nevertheless it is quite lively in places, a dance of death and finally the maiden succumbs. The second movement shows Schubert’s genius in writing variations and the final movement asks who can stand against death?

The Quartet has a bright sound and the rapport and communication between the players was very evident throughout. The comments from members of the audience after the concert was very positive and it was felt that the players deserved the sustained applause they received at the end. It is hoped that they will make a return visit to us in another season.

CM

15 FEBRUARY 2022

Antoine Prēat the Franco-Belgian pianist is a Winner of the Philip and Dorothy Green Award 2020 and the Concert Club was delighted to welcome him as the soloist in the fifth concert of our Series on 15 February. This Young Musician shows great musicality in his playing and this was greatly enjoyed by the audience.

This concert was dedicated to the memory of a much loved member of the Club and Committee member, Susan Jennifer Oughton (Jenny) who sadly died last year. Jenny would have loved this concert.

Antoine began with Bach’s Partita No 4 in D major and he coaxed some wonderful sounds from the Grammar School piano and he played with great feeling. Next, he played the dramatic Aprés une Lecture du Dante and what an exciting piece this is and played with such expressive lyricism.

After the interval Antoine played that magical Sonata in A major by Schubert. In Keith Osborne’s splendid Programme Notes, Keith quoted from a letter that Schubert wrote to his parents, “Several people assured me that under my hands the keys become singing voices, which if it is true, pleases me very much.” Under Antoine’s hands in this and indeed in every piece the keys became singing voices.

The concert ended with Albèniz Iberia Primo Cuaderno which is wonderfully evocative of Spain this was beautifully played with sensitivity and colour.

Kezia Lovick-Jones amd Martha Cullen are both recent graduates of The Royal Northern College of Music and what talented musicians they are.They began the concert with Sonata No 2 from Telemann’s Six Canonic Sonatas. What a lovely sprightly round it was the music danced along, the soprano saxophones speaking to one another beautifully.

The concert continued with Gregory Wanamaker’s “Zippy!” In the introduction I thought I heard the word “chipmunk”, well that did it! Two chipmunks were chittering and chasing each other throughout the music with Martha on soprano sax and Kezia on Alto sax. It was great fun. What next? It was Marc Mellit’s “Black” played by Kezia and Martha on tenor saxophones; the imagination went off again and there was Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, then there was the sound of sawing wood on the saxophones and the hunters all went home.

Next the girls played their soprano saxophones in Matthew Brown’s “A cottage on fire”. Did I hear screams, the fire engines? Then the roof fell in…

Kezia played a solo on her soprano saxophone and this time it was Graham Fitkin’s “Braemar”. That was a lovely piece of music and I’m sure I heard a hunting horn, the call of a stag and was that stag hounds giving tongue? It ended with what may have been an elegy for the stag.

Then we tangoed our way to the interval with three tangos by Piazzola as arranged by Kezia, played on the tenor saxophones with Kezia playing the Allegro Tangabile as a solo.

After the interval we had Handel’s Passacaglia as arranged first by Johan Halvorsen and then by the Idesta Duo, this was played on the soprano saxophones. This has two meanings and old Italian or Spanish dance tune or an instrumental musical composition consisting of variations usually on a ground bass in moderately slow triple time. This was a happy dance to the sound of bells, and let’s face it, Handel never disappoints and the arrangement was delightful.

Martha had arranged the next piece of music, which was by Bartok and was a selection from his 44 Duos for two violins, again played on the soprano saxophones.

Next, Martha played on her alto saxophone a Caprice en Forme de Valse by Paul Bonneau. I think you would have had difficulty in actually waltzing to this, I think that Bonneau had his tongue firmly in his cheek as he went off on a frolic of his own.

Rob Buckland the next composer is, according to the biographies in the Programme, one of the girls’ Professors of saxohone at the Royal Northern. It was a splendid choice and I particularly loved Fjord. Off I went to the fjords and mountains Norway with the music which was very atmospheric. I’m almost certain there was a sea eagle overhead and most definitely the hound music of a skein of wild geese. This was played on the alto saxophones as was Buckland’s next piece Mojito.

The concert ended with Roshanne Etezady’s “Glint” again played on the alto saxophones. In this music I heard a hurrying stream, a glint of fog was seen and surely that was a foghorn and the scream of gulls.

Kezia and Martha are clearly musicians of the highest order given the technique they displayed, not least in the rapid (and apparently accurate) fingering in the fast sections of the pieces they played. Plus their breath control was impressive and the sound they produced was clear and melodic, with no hints of breathiness (which can be a trait in some jazz saxophonists – I don’t dislike that breathiness, depending on the piece, but it’s more appropriate in jazz than in classical pieces, I think). They came to us with an impressive CV and were/are clearly highly thought of at RNCM.

This was an unusual and happy programme of music and everyone I spoke to said how much they had enjoyed the music and the evening.

CM and SB

The Club was delighted to welcome back Hexachordia, the Early Music Group who visited us last in March 2018. A concert is a giving and a receiving of pleasure arising from the music played and December’s concert was a good example of this. There was quite a good turnout considering the present climate with Covid still rife, but we were all socially distanced and wearing our face masks.

The concert began with Sarah Doig and Jane Scheuregger singing, in Latin, Veni Veni Emmanuel, a capella as they processed down the hall at the Grammar School. Diction was clear and the singing tuneful, giving a sense of anticipation of what was to come. The music was interspersed with readings of poetry and prose. I particularly liked the reading of ‘Blow, blow thou winter winds’ from As You Like It which followed ‘On the Cold Ground’ by John Playford, ‘Jolly Shepherd’ by Thomas Ravenscroft and ‘In the Fields in Frost and Snow’ by John Playford.

I very much liked the bagpipes played by Jane; they were very festive being festooned with fairy lights. Mention must also be made of Tony Scheuregger who played the lute, renaissance guitar, gittern, recorders, tabor and pellet bells. He also sang, and very well too. The English traditional song “King Herod and the Cock” was great fun.

What a multi-talented ensemble this is. I have mentioned the instruments that Tony plays, but Jane and Sarah are equally talented, Jane playing recorders, crumhorn (what a lovely sound that makes) bagpipes, shaker, gittern and shawm, and Sarah playing viols, vielle and recorder.

The musicians did praise the acoustic of the hall and certainly their voices rang out and filled the space. Sarah had a minor problem in the second to last music of the first half when one of her viol strings broke, but that was taken care of during the interval.

Mince pies and wine were enjoyed during the interval and the audience was ready to enjoy the second half of a wonderful evening’s entertainment.