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THE winners of the Festival’s young composers’ competition were announced at a concert for youth at St Michael’s Church in Highgate on Monday. From left to right: Lloyd Robert Coleman, (highly commended, under 16s), William Marshall (winner, under 16s), festival director George Vass, Alexander Nikiporenko (winner, under 18s) and judges, composers David Matthews and Cecilia McDowall. |
Inspired string fellows
Applause for world class performances at the Hampstead and Highgate Festival
WIHAM QUARTET
CHURCH OF ST JOHN-AT-HAMPSTEAD
NO classical music festival in Hampstead is complete without a concert of music for string quartet.
The one given by the Wihan Quartet in Hampstead Parish Church on the first Friday of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival was marked by the presence of the Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Jan Winkler.
The event included two of the most famous Czech quartets, Janácek’s first string quartet known as the Kreutzer Sonata, and Antonín Dvorák’s ‘American’ Quartet, Opus 96.
The Wihan Quartet is from the Czech Republic. It retains the same line-up of players who started the quartet 21 years ago: Leos Cepicky and Jan Schulmeister on violins, Jirí Zigmund on viola and Ales Kasprík on cello.
Predictably they played the Janácek and Dvorák as if they had imbibed them with their mother’s milk, or at least their Pilsner beer.
Much is made of the special feel central European string players have for the folk idioms that inspired Janácek and Dvorák. In the case of the Wihan Quartet it boils down to beautifully integrated quartet playing, and a control of tempo and dynamics that gave us that idiom without exaggerated harshness or excessive sweetness.
This musical craftsmanship was crucial in holding together the Janácek quartet, which can sound rather episodic. In the slow movement of the ‘American’ Quartet, the ebb and flow of the music was superbly paced to enhance its feeling and intensity.
In the second half, the Wihan Quartet exchanged Czech rural musings for the music of the bourgeois Viennese drawing room, in Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet. The control of tempo and dynamics enhanced the feeling in Schubert’s by no means just morbid reflections on his imminent death.
This was a world class performance, far superior to the rendering of this Schubert quartet that I heard a few days ago, played by a much more glamorous quartet in the Wigmore Hall.
The large Hampstead audience were evidently convinced. They applauded until they got their encore, the slow movement of Beethoven’s Opus 74 ‘Harp’ quartet.
Jan Toporowski
CHARITY GALA CONCERT
CHURCH OF ST JOHN-AT-HAMPSTEAD
THIS gala concert was a jubilantly celebratory evening that was not only a fanfare to the start of the ninth Hampstead and Highgate festival, but also marked the 50th birthday of conductor and artistic director George Vass.
The evening opened with a premiere – a bold new composition by composer Hugh Wood, Divertimento for String Orchestra.
With a slightly American flavour and underpinned by a sense of weightiness, it was well received.
But the highlight of the evening came in the next performance.
More usually found on the stages of great concert halls worldwide, musical heavyweight John Lill, took to the tiny performance area in St John’s to perform Mozart’s piano concerto in A.
Lill, whose career stretches more than 50 years and is regarded as one of Britain’s foremost pianists, delighted the audience simply by appearing, and his relaxed and shimmering concerto went down a storm.
Cecilia McDowall’s 2001 choral work, Ave Maris Stella, was composed as a response to the events of September 11. Soprano Rebecca Rudge joined the Hampstead Voices as soloist in a haunting work conjuring up images of the ocean, turbulence, and storms and mists at sea.
A surprise encore rounded off the celebrations, in the form of a birthday tribute to Vass, penned as a joint effort by eight contemporary composers Vass has supported.
He rounded off the evening by making an impassioned plea to the audience to attend more live concerts and in doing so, keep classical music thriving.
Jane Wild
FESTIVAL ENSEMBLE
CHRIST CHURCH
MESSIAEN’S Quartet for the End of Time was composed while he was a prisoner of war. Scored for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, as the only available instruments to Messiaen at that time, the work is one with particular resonance.
The Festival Ensemble made an admirable attempt at interpreting this complex work. The four blended well, save some shakiness in the solo violin part near its conclusion. Clarinettist Catriona Scott immersed herself in her part, her instrument alternately cajoling then screaming.
Scott had further opportunity to demonstrate her virtuosity in Paul Patterson’s new work, Soliloquy for Solo Clarinet, receiving praise from the composer for her wild and explosive cascades of notes.
Balancing the programme was Beethoven’s Ghost piano trio in D, a work with haunting chromaticism. It was given a hearty rendition by the quartet, although additional rehearsal time would have yielded a greater performance.
JW
PREVIEW: HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE FESTIVAL
THERE are two concerts remaining in this year’s Festival, the ninth such event.
On Friday evening oboist Althea Ifeka is joined by harpsichordist Katharine May in the lovely setting of Emmanuel Church, Lyncroft Gardens, to perform a programme including Handel’s Sonata in F, op 5 and 11 and his Passacaglia as well as Byrd’ Calino Casturame and Henry Eccles Sonata in G Minor.
And on Saturday at St John-at-Hampstead, there is the Festival Finale, featuring soprano Elizabeth Watts, violinst Tamas Andras and the Hampstead and Highgate Festival Orchestra conducted by festival artistic director George Vass.
There will be Mozart’s Divertimento in D, Britten’s Les Illuminations and Dvorak’s Serenade in E Minor, as well as Highgate resident Paul Patterson’s Violin Concerto, op 72.
The event looks such to bring to a close a very successful festival. |
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