Reviews by Judi Moore
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Joo Cho & Marino Nahon
Those of us who braved the bleak midwinter to attend December's recital enjoyed an evening of songs by two more talented young performers enticed to Leighton Buzzard by the very clever committee of the LB Music Club. Haverhill in Cambridgeshire run a well respected music competition each year. Singers don't often win it - but Joo Cho did in 2009 and, as a result, has been prevailed upon to take the stage in the Library Theatre with her very fine accompanist Marino Nahon. Their partnership appeared mature, seamless, as if they'd been playing together for years.
He, of course, only has to play in one language ? and did so with an element of theatricality that, personally, I always appreciate in a pianist. At times he hovered over the keyboard like a hunting cat searching out the heart of the music.
Joo Cho, the South Korean singer, moved seamlessly from language to language as well as from style to style, dealing now with the lyricism of french, now the passion of spanish, now the explosive vocal combinations of german. Her soprano voice was as warm and mellow as liquid chocolate, powerful and tender at need.
The songs were grouped into four sections. The three sections in the first half comprised short and delightfully accessible pieces, with a pleasant variety within the little cycles and across them too. We began with Fauré; his luscious, lyrical songs are always favourites of mine. Here were a little suite of five - two of his better known songs sandwiched between three perhaps less well-known. These were followed with five love songs by Brahms, himself both a lyrical and Romantic German composer. Finally in the first half of the concert we enjoyed a suite by the spanish composer Joaquin Turina (who was new to me). Nahon began this with a spirited piano solo; Joo Cho completed the suite with four songs running a gamut between yearning and passion.
The second half of the concert was given over to Schubert songs, some well-known, some less so; some 'Troutish' if I may put it thus, some more dramatic - tending even to the melodramatic - some yearning, some serious. Nobody does angst like Schubert; his passions roil, his heartbeats pound and then ? ah! ? all fails and we're suddenly swooping down towards death and doom. What a master of song he was as a composer - and how delightfully his songs were rendered for us by Cho and Nahon.
I was surprised when Mr Phillips told me that singers don't attract big audiences. Instrumentalists is what people want to listen to, apparently, rather than singers. What an opportunity missed. One may revel in the big guns of an operatic performance - such as the relatively recent Tosca, perhaps, at Milton Keynes theatre - but performances of the quality and intimacy of this recital in Leighton Buzzards' Library Theatre are rare and precious. Especially so now that we don't sing in our own parlours any longer, preferring to let X Factor contestants do that for us of an evening. Given the excellent quality of the artistes that LBMC attracts I recommend you put the date of their next recital in your shiny, new 2011 diaries right away: 29 January. LBMC's website has all the details about who's playing that evening.
Alexander Ardakov
The evening of Saturday 18th September was the start of Leighton Buzzard Music Club's autumn season. The season's brochure promised both quality and variety - in particular the Russian pianist booked to open proceedings: Alexander Ardakov. Ardakov has an impressive discography, plays on Radio 3 betimes and holds a professorship at Trinity College of Music in London. This was his third visit to Leighton Buzzard. Thinking of all this I asked David Phillips before the show, "how do you get such good people to come and play?". He smiled enigmatically. "We have contacts," he said - and would say no more.
So on Saturday this most accomplished Russian pianist played for us Russian music as only a Russian can play it. We were given Tchaikovsky, Chopin (Polish, but who's counting), Scriabin and Mussorgsky.
Ardakov opened with six short pieces by Tchaikovsky. They ran the gamut from lively to warm to soulful. One could picture the silver birch leaves falling in the forest; the rain dripping from the branches; clouds of breath in chilly air, feet dancing to keep warm. Next Ardakov gave us four Polonaises by Chopin. I have always thought of Chopin as being a bit misty and fey (I only know the Nocturnes). So the robust passion of these dances was a surprise. Ardakov spared nothing - certainly not the piano, which at times gave the odd tiny squeak of protest as he drew impassioned rivers and swirling eddies of notes from it. The Polonaises were very well received by the audience. Breathless, we made our way to the bar.
But the highlight of the evening was yet to come. To begin the second half of the programme Ardakov gave us three dainty and melodic Etudes by Scriabin. They were a delightful sorbet before the wonderful confection that is the Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky, apparently, wrote of how the music poured out of him in response to the memorial exhibition of Victor Hartmann. So did the music pour from Ardakov's fingers. The music is wonderfully illustrative - from the stately minor chords of the 'Catacombs' to Baba Yaga's hut scurrying about on its chicken's legs - yet keeps returning to certain themes, which helps to hold the diverse `pictures' of the music together. The most notable recurring theme is the Promenade, which was used for the theme tune of TV's The New Statesman some years ago.
Finally Ardakov, most generously, gave us not one encore, but two! Your reviewer is not a classical music specialist, but I think the first was a Chopin Nocturne (and it turns out they're not that misty and fey after all). The second was a piece of which I have a 'Very Easy' piano arrangement at home that I sometimes stumble through. Would that my fingers would behave in the way that Alexander Ardakov's do! He enthralled us with two hours of scintillating music and was warmly rewarded by an appreciative audience at the end.
Leighton Buzzard Music Club provides an astonishingly high quality of music. If you're a youngster - or have youngsters - playing instruments at school do come along. Many of the performers the canny Mr Phillips and his crafty committee engage are youngsters on their way up in the classical music world; some of them have been or are currently part of Radio 3's 'New Generation Artists' scheme and/or have won other prizes and scholarships. When they're household names you'll be able to say you saw them at Leighton Buzzard first!
Galliard Wind Ensemble
On Saturday 17th of April, the Galliard Ensemble gave the final concert in Leighton Buzzard Music's current season.
The ensemble comprises five players: Kathryn Thomas on soprano and alto flute and piccolo; Katherine Spencer on clarinet; Paul Boyes on bassoon; Owen Dennis on oboe and Richard Bayliss on horn. The ensemble has a first rate track record, having been part of BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists scheme.
The music was from seven composers, three different centuries and five countries. The programme was light and varied. The pieces selected were like hors d'oeuvres and the appetite was merely whetted (or not) before something else was brought out for one to try.
We began with the overture from Rossini's Italian girl in Algiers. The sound was full and sweet, the musicians a joy to watch as fingers fluttered like wings to coax out the melodies. Next we enjoyed Haydn's Divertimento in B flat, the music moving from majestic to sprightly; from delicate to robust. The third piece - Kleine Kammermusik fur funf Blaser by Hindemith - showed the composer's virtuosity and allowed the players to show off theirs too. The first, rhythmical, clock-like movement was followed by a feathery waltz featuring the piccolo. The third movement was passionate and romantic and the last full of flashy, fiery cadenzas for the flute. A gamut of music run in little more than ten minutes.
After the interval we were given Trois Pieces Breves by Ibert. The interplay of flute and oboe was luscious, the interweaving of all five instruments in the final piece quite magical. Holst came next (Wind quintet in A flat Op 14) - pastoral and pensive, with the horn contributing a warm solo. The penultimate piece required a bit more work on the part of the audience. Arvo Part (from Estonia, and still living) wrote his Quintettino in an austere style using a 12 tone scale. There were moments of magic in this - the way the breath taken in by the players became part of the musical line. But it was a little too bleak for my taste. The final piece of the evening was Berio's, Opus Number Zoo, a musical entertainment with words, in a similar vein to William Walton's Façade, but created some 25 years later. It pushed to the limit what could be coaxed from these instruments, while the spoken words flitted across time and space 'a cry of bombs, the scream of a distant field ? what can be the reason?'
Enthusiastic applause brought an encore - 'Lisbon' from Lincolnshire Posy by Percy Grainger. Perfect winding down music, it's hard to imagine anything more quintessentially English than this tiny song without words. It makes one want a plate of roast beef right then and there before skipping off to dust off the maypole.
Hannah Marcinowicz and John Reid
On Saturday 26th February those very clever people at Leighton Buzzard Music Club brought us two more talented young musicians: Hannah Marcinowicz with her saxophone and John Reid playing the piano. The underlying theme of the concert was Spanish, although the composers came from many lands and several different centuries.
The mellifluous sound Hannah produced with her sax made it immediately clear that the instrument can do much more than jazz solos. The sound was like a purring kitten, prone to scampering off in trills and runs and with a surprising range of both tone and pitch. When I attend these concerts I am constantly surprised at the wonderful music and varied repertoire given by solo instrumentalists of all persuasions. This was one of the charms of the evening.
The Spanish theme was established with the joyous little 'Fantaisie sur "Le Freischütz" de Weber' by Jean-Nicolas Savari. It was followed by a yearning piece of Debussy - 'Syrinx'. Hannah explained that, in mythology, Syrinx was a nymph who fled from Pan down to the water's edge and turned herself into a reed which Pan plucked and shaped into pipes, so he has been playing her ever since - and you could hear the nymph's fear and the wind in the reeds in the music. The mood turned sprightly once more with a musical realisation of five picture postcards in 'Tableaux de Provence' by (hooray!) a female composer, Paule Maurice. My favourite of this little suite was "Des Alyscamps l'âme soupire" which had a soulful, Gershwin feel to it. The final piece of the suite was recommended to us as a French version of ""Flight of the Bumble Bee" and proved a tour de force of speed and trills. Bravo!
John now gave us two Argentian dances by Alberto Ginastera. The first harked back to the Thirties and had something of Scott Joplin's slow rags about it, crossed with Manuel da Falla, with lots of luscious blue notes. The second was a fast dance allowing John to showcase his formidable skills and talent. The first half was brought to a close with Hannah's 'signature piece': an arrangement of "Deep Purple". Variations on the theme of that lovely song were played with enormous verve by both parties.
The second half opened with a short, lyrical and varied sonata by Telemann which led us forward to more demanding music by Jean Françaix which Hannah described as 'a cross between Poulenc and Stravinsky, spiky and anti- romantic. Here were African influences as well as Latin, harking back to the Twenties and including something, introduced by John as 'intricate', in five-four time. Next came a traditional Japanese love song, gentle as a lullaby, which was surprisingly western in tone and tempo.
Now we returned to the fiery Latin temperament with 'Intermezzo from "Goyescas"' by Enrique Granados. Finally we heard 'Pequena Czarda' by Pedro Iturralde. There was a big dollop of film noir about this piece. The girl with the sad eyes spies M'sieur Rick through the hazy cigarette smoke in his ill-lit gin-joint; the music takes off in loops and palpitations as she wishes she hadn't come. She flutters, she prevaricates. She tries to run from him and suddenly there's a touch of klezmer to the music as she tries to push her way through the Jewish refugees in the doorway. But Rick is at her elbow now. The refugees bicker amiably as he leads her away. I shall keep my ears open for more Iturralde; this piece made a very fine finale. So much so that our enthusiastic applause persuaded Hannah and John to give us an encore - Scott Joplin's 'New Rag'.
What a lovely selection of Spanish-flavored musical tapas - as light and pequeño as you could wish for.
Claire Jones
On Saturday 20th February Leighton Buzzard Music Club presented an evening of harp music by Claire Jones, harpist to HRH the Prince of Wales. On entering the theatre one found the stage dominated by Claire Jones' magnificent golden 'Salvi' harp, romantic and ethereal, albeit some seven feet tall. Anticipation was high, therefore, when the golden girl from Wales joined her glorious instrument on stage.
Her programme was varied, and designed to show off the harp's capabilities and party tricks. During the evening she also explained something about how the harp is played, how to buy a new one, how to travel with one, what it was like to play regularly for royalty and their guests and how to solve amplification problems when playing a harp in the middle of the Millenium Stadium for an international rugby union match!
She began with Fantaisie on themes from 'Eugene Onegin' by Tchaikovsky, gracefully coaxing from her instrument extraordinary ornamental runs and trills. Next we were given Partita No 1 by J S Bach, a particular favourite of Prince Charles. This piece showed us a different side of the harp and the harpist. It sounded as though it had originally been written for the harpichord. The music moved in a stately but lively fashion quite unlike the bird-like work in the Tchaikovsky. Next we were given a modern piece by Patrick Hawes - a name some readers will be familiar with as he is Classic FM's composer in residence. How Hill was obviously a favourite of Claire's. She completed the first half of her concert with her own arrangement of Men of Harlech, demonstrating that a harp can be commanding as well. While Claire plucked music from the instrument it threw golden highlights from its pillar and highly varnished sound board around the theatre, as well as notes.
After the interval the evening continued with Rosetti's Sonate, which music poured over us like honey, sweet and hypnotic. This was followed by another modern piece written for the harp by an Arabian composer, Ami Mayammi, about whom I can find nothing - except to encourage you to search her (or him) out for yourselves. Maqamat was music redolent of indolence, the seraglio and the oasis; Claire made the harp purr and maiow, producing luscious discords and pedalled drops in pitch.
Her penultimate offering was the Theme from 'Schindler's List' by John Williams, which, again, she had arranged herself. The familiar melody felt almost as though it were being produced by a guitar - but, of course, a guitar of many more than usual strings and greater sonority. The final item in the concert allowed Claire to demonstrate her dexterity with glissandi and harmonics with her new Salvi harp. Finally, warm applause called her back for an encore, a melody drenched in lovely arpeggios.
'Thank you for having me,' she said as she sat down to play her final piece. The pleasure was ours, golden girl. The Prince chose his harpist well.