 |
||||
Page one | Page two | Page three | Page four |
||||
COCKTAILS & CANAPÉS: Friday 2nd July, Rook Lane Chapel However, it was almost as if the best was yet to come. As they were admitted into the recently restored chapel, they were able to admire the splendour of its magnificent proportions and to wander around the ‘Celebration of Art’ exhibition. Eventually all settled down to enjoy Audrey Hepburn in the light hearted film ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s. What a wonderful evening and a great start to the Frome Festival! Penny Hutton RICHARD MEYRICK - PIANO Saturday 4th July, Christ Church Festival Director Martin Bax, as Mayor of Frome, had invited other civic dignitaries from the locality: they should have left impressed that the town can attract such unique performers as Richard Meyrick to its Festival. The programme opened with three Schubert pieces, all played with sensitivity and warm lyricism. Such fare is often part and parcel of any good run-of-the-mill piano recital. However, he then embarked on a series of piano transcriptions of substantial orchestral works, music which he brings to audiences across the country as part of his personal musical crusade. The first transcriptions were by Prokofiev. There were occasions when I missed some of the orchestral colours in the Lieutenant Kije Suite, brilliant music written as a film score. However, Richard Meyrick’s technical ability was astonishing as he raced around the keyboard. The first half closed with Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliet. It was powerful, committed and romantically expansive. A tour de force. The second half began with music from two orchestral heavyweights. Richard Meyrick was completely at home in Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, a jewel in the crown of romantic music, and similarly in the slow movement of Mahler’s fifth symphony. The next transcription, of Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, was fiendishly difficult, hugely enjoyable and executed with panache. The Carmen Variations were no less demanding and performed with equal relish. During the first Frome Festival I recall a recital at Christ Church where a pianist played romantic music as though possessed, with the result that in the reverberant acoustic so much was a blur. Not so, on this occasion. The wide-ranging dynamics and athletic coverage of the keyboard were accompanied by careful articulation so we were always able to enjoy the detail. The performances were not faultless but we had been in the company of a musician who had enthralled us with his wizardry. Alan Burgess FROME SYMPHONY Monday 5th July, Christ Church It was refreshing to hear Kenneth Leighton’s Festive Overture, a spirited piece, chosen partly because it was written specifically for amateur orchestral players. Leighton’s music is very rhythmic, in a harmonic idiom which thirty or forty years back might have been considered rather challenging for the listener. The audience received it warmly and the orchestra responded well to their conductor’s demands for taut ensemble in a piece which was an inspired choice to begin the programme. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony showed off the orchestra as a well-balanced ensemble. It is hard to imagine a composer with a stronger sense of melody and the players responded to produce lyrical playing with a particularly good string sound. The two movements are extensive but the players’ musicianship kept the audience with them, even if they were, at times, a little unwilling to move on the pace. |
 |
|
Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite is often performed in a version for strings. The full orchestral version is less common but it was given a spirited and stylish performance, providing all sections of the orchestra with opportunities to show their true colours. In both the sustained and more extravagant passages the orchestra was wholly convincing in conveying the various moods of the music. The final work was Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with Stephen Marquiss directing the performance from the keyboard. Here it was definitely the case that, more and more, the Frome Symphony ensemble comes across as homogenous orchestral sound. However, his own contribution as a pianist was in a class of its own. This was exceptional playing of the highest order, with beautifully executed scale passages, feather-light sensitivity and exquisite charm. It is a mark of his highly intelligent musicianship that, as always, Stephen was the medium through which we heard exactly the music Beethoven wrote and, I believe, wanted us to hear. The ovation which he received at the end was richly deserved. His playing, together with his selfless commitment to Frome Symphony, week by week, which is bearing fruit of increasing quality as each harvest passes, is an inspiration to us all. Alan Burgess ORGAN RECITALS Monday 5th July, Christ Church Ann Burgess entitled her programme Mechanical Clocks and Roses and her detailed programme notes were a useful guide through the recital. Her programme at Christ Church was wide ranging and made the more interesting by the use of the newly installed Rushworth and Dreaper chamber organ, in addition to the two manual Vowles instrument which was built in 1873. The programme began and ended with two large-scale and technically demanding works: Franck’s ‘Piece heroique’ and Reger’s ‘Introduction and Passacaglia’ In both, Ann used a variety of registration and the contrast between the Introduction and start of the Passacaglia was particularly stark and effective. Bach’s ‘Jig Fugue’ was full of life, with a certain joie de vivre, and the two settings of ‘Es ist ein Ros’entsprungen’ (Behold a rose is blooming), by Brahms and Heiller, contrasted well: the blues style of the latter was very unusual, yet totally convincing. Perhaps some of the best received pieces were played on the chamber organ, notably Gareth Burgess’s Fugue in F, a well-crafted eighteenth century pastiche, and Haydn’s rhetorical Piece for Mechanical Clock, bright and breezy music and definitely festive fare. The following day, organ fanatics moved on to Wesley Church to hear Kevin Duggan’s Organ Fireworks, a programme of organ transcriptions, none of the pieces having been originally written for the instrument. Bach’s transcription of Vivaldi’s A minor concerto and a set of Handel Variations involved all the string parts of the originals being played on the organ. For those of us to whom the music was unfamiliar, they sounded wholly convincing as compositions in their own right. Kevin Duggan had been involved in transcribing two of the pieces himself, one a set of sketches for pedal piano (a piano/organ hybrid) by Schumann and the other being three movements from Warlock’s Capriol Suite. The Schumann pieces were particularly attractive. The real fireworks came with transcriptions of two outstanding orchestral scores of the last century, parts of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird Suite’ and Holst’s ‘Planets’ Suite’. These were not just intriguing pieces, they were intensely difficult to play and we were impressed not just with Kevin’s virtuosity, which included changing stops with his left foot and nose on two separate occasions, but also by the imaginative and colourful interpretation. The registration on occasions seemed to perfectly capture the timbres of the orchestral originals. This was particularly the case in some of the quieter sections such as the ‘Berceuse’ from ‘The Firebird’ and ‘Venus, the Bringer of Peace’ from ‘The Planets’, but, as at Christ Church the previous day, with the bigger pieces such as the ferocious ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’, we could have done with a larger instrument. Maybe we should start a ‘Four-manual Frobenius for Frome’ campaign. Alan Burgess |
|
