performingartsincornwall

What's wrong with old-fashioned entertainment.....Answer absolutely nothing!   This concert by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Brass and Woodwind Sections was a model of exactly that.  The programme (see below) didn't perhaps have  the same gravitas as exemplified by the Sibelius Second Symphony the full orchestra had played under the baton of Kirill Karavits the night before to a packed house at the Hall for Cornwall.  But it was stylish,  hugely polished and beautifully executed.  And let's face it any programme which includes a Leonard Berstein score is going to produce a lot of fireworks and excitement.   As the players clicked their fingers to get us into the mood of the West Side of New York, the menace of the scrap to come was palpable and the sheer joy of wonderful, gripping, rhythmic energy pulsed through the hall.   Here is a paean to the art of the arranger too.   Because on the evidence of this concert there are some very clever musicians weaving some nifty l

 Roseland Music Society Cornwall Cello Voices  11th February 2022 Barbara Degener:  Leader Liz Brazier Susanna Campbell Ben Hoadley Tim Pratt Giovanni Gabrieli                    Canzona Seconda  arr. Nick Halsey Henry Purcell                         Fantasia no 3 arranged by D. Moore J.S.Bach                               Three movements From Suite in G major                                                       Prelude - Sarabande - Gigu F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy     Andate for organ arr O Mandozzi Franz Schubert                    Allegro moderato from Sonata for Four Hands G. Valensin                         Menuet:  arr G. Piatigorsky 4 American Folksongs     arr, Wendy Bissinger A. Villoldo                         El Chachoritto  arr. W.Birtel J.S> Bach                              Chorale "Der Christ"  arr. J.Navascues D. Popper                              Requiem op. 66 D. Johnstone                         Argencello  Marie    Dare                         Elegy G.

 The play the Welkin by Lucy Kirkwood was presented by The Gweek Players and Touch Theatre in September 2021 We are transported to rural Norfolk in mid 18th century England - where a heinous murder has taken place where a man aided and abetted by his mistress have murdered the young daughter of a local lady who had been consigned to the young woman's care.   Justice is perfunctory - the perpetrators were apprehended covered in the innocent's blood and proof seems undisputed and sufficient for the judges to convict more or less immediately and send the condemned to a spectacle at the local gibbet.    The crowd heaves outside as the condemned man is duly hung from the gibbet, meanwhile within a procedural problem arises as the young woman condemned as an accomplice is heard to claim she is "quick with child".  The law does not allow an innocent child to die in the womb and will transmute the sentence if the condemned woman is found to be pregnant, so the bailiff is inst

Review of Graham Fitkin’s Lecture Recital for Roseland Music Society on 9 th October 2021 By Tim Smithies Its not often you get to hear a composer talk about his or her music with such clarity and sincerity as Roseland Music Society heard from Graham Fitkin in their first music event since lockdown  last Saturday 9 th October.    This was a rocket fuelled launch to a season of 8 concerts the society has lined up until July 2022.  An increasingly engrossed audience  experienced a huge range of creative ideas performed with illustrations from the piano,  recordings of concert work (from the Proms, Tokyo, the USA) featuring unusual combinations of instruments introducing new sound worlds e.g. for three marimbas,  sampled music with vibraphone, but also full symphony orchestras and memorably a cello concerto (for YoYo Ma) inspired by one note…B flat. After a rapid trot through his Cornish musical education (his mother taught piano in West Penwith and he is fulsome about the variety and s

Friday 7th February 2020 Truro Catholic Church Cello Voices. Liz Brazier - widely regarded as the mother of cellists  in Cornwall  as Barbara Degener, the ensemble leader , called her at the close of this concert, has for some years run a cello weekend in the new year where cellists of all ages and abilities meet to work  and play together.   (she is actually the mother of Ben Hoagley one of the other performers - and celebrated a significant birthday today) Cornwall Cello Voices is a group of  eight of the rather more accomplished performers who have given concerts at the end of the weekend.   The sound of 8 cellos playing together in harmony is thrilling as recordings by the cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic in the 90s attest.  And this concert was certainly extremely well delivered with ensemble and balance between a frequent myriad of parts well judged. The cello's sonorous register makes it a favourite with many but the comparative lower register of the parts and th

Blog on Freiburg Baroque Orchestra Concert and the commodious Concert House The @FreiburgBaroque   orchestra gave a concert devoted to the music of Pergolesi.   A musician at the Neapolitan court of the Colonna family whose   command of appealing and creative approach to sacred choral music and poised   counterpoint gave him a meteoric rise before an early death cut off a    In their programme two of his best know works the Stabat Mater with its lovely suspensions, and the comic intermezzo La Serva Padrona, were preceded by a sinfonia and a violin concerto played with great beauty by Goltz and his band . The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is an interesting musical phenomenon in German Late 20 TH century baroque   performance history . Founded by a group of students at the local conservatoire in the 1980s it was a pioneer in Germany in grasping the tectonic changes occurring in performance practice in the early music movement with regard to baroque and early cl