Festival 2008
For a review of other Festival events click here
A
review of the Festival 2008 Concerts
by Adrian Edwards, Festival
Administrator
On our opening Saturday, 31st
May, we welcomed back the University of London
Symphony Orchestra, ULSO, under their conductor John
Forster. They began their programme with Bax’s
magnificent seascape, Tintagel in a performance
which caught the long vistas of the horizon
envisaged in the music as well as the unpredictable
nature of the sea off that rugged part of the
Cornish coastline. Kitty Cheung, co- leader of the
ULSO, stepped out of the orchestral ranks to give a
heartfelt performance of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto
No 1 in D. The balance between soloist and orchestra
was well-nigh perfect. After the interval,
Tchaikovsky’s last symphonic masterpiece, the
Pathetique Symphony, was played for all it’s worth
by the orchestra who had the audience on the edge of
its seats in a brilliant performance, superbly
drilled and shrewdly judged by the conductor so that
the heart and soul of the work was manifest without
resort to self-pity.
On Tuesday evening, June 3rd,
William Vann, Director Music at St Stephen’s,
accompanied the baritone Samuel Evans in a recital
of German, French and English song, reprising
several items from their Wigmore Hall programme
which they’d performed in the finals of The Ferrier
Competition of 2007. The recital opened and closed
in upbeat vein with Schubert’s dance of the muses,
Der Musensohn and Warlock’s ditty, Captain
Stratton’s Fancy. In between the artists explored a
more dramatic mode with Schubert’s Der Zwerg, the
dwarf and a more introspective mood in settings of
Thomas Hardy by John Ireland and Gerald Finzi and
the haunting Les berceaux by Gabriel Faure. By way
of humour there was Mark Anthony Turnage’s setting
of Stevie Smith’s poem The Singing Cat. A refreshing
and unhackneyed recital from a singer endowed with
much talent.
On Thursday 5th June,
The Nephele Ensemble, piano, flute, with violin,
viola and cello gave us a programme evening of
chamber music of rare quality. They began with an
exquisite account of Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D.
K285 with Nicola Smedley, on flute, sending pure,
silvery notes up into to the wooden rafters of St
Stephen’s. A refreshing line-up of works followed
including music by that fastidious Frenchman Maurice
Durufle who despite his 84 years, scarcely achieved
double figures with his opus numbers, a very tuneful
Madrigal Sonata by Martinu and in the second half
the Phantasy Quartet in F sharp minor by Frank
Bridge featuring all the players of the ensemble who
during the evening, took turns to introduce each
item. An evening of rare delight.
The Saint Stephen’s Festival
concluded on Friday 6th June, with a
return visit by the choral and orchestral forces of
Imperial College. They began with an a-capella group
of part songs, sung from the north side aisle,
in-front of a display of artwork by APT, Artists
Producing Together, a group of artists featured in
the festival offering opportunities for people with
special needs. Three Shakespeare settings by Ralph
Vaughan Williams were followed in a different vein
by a setting of It was a lover and his lass by John
Dankworth, originally composed for his wife Cleo
Laine. The choir and orchestra then performed
Puccini’s rarely heard Messa di Gloria, an early
work, parts of which he recycled for his later
operas. Puccini’s music basks in the warm
Mediterranean sunshine that was complimented off
stage in the south aisle by Cecil Rice’s colourful
pictures of Venice. The unbuttoned tone of the
music, a perky Gloria in excelsis, a tune for the
Qui tollis that could have come out of Il Trovatore
and the trumpet scoring that heralds the words Et
vitam venturi put one in mind of some of the more
flamboyant characters in Italian politics in recent
years, a thought not unprompted by the programme
notes that told us that at the composer’s funeral,
the oration was given by the most notorious of them,
Mussolini.
To finish, the choir and
orchestra performed Serenade To Music, Vaughan
Williams’s rapturous setting of words from
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It was the
highlight of the concert with the ensemble in one
accord under the conductor’s sensitive direction.
Soprano Jessica Hayward caught, to paraphrase the
text, the soft stillness and the night which become
the touches of sweet harmony. The audience were
visibly moved.
