From the West Somerset Free Press –
In a season of damp despondency, the welcome warmth of a week’s magical music making through the 44th Minehead and Exmoor Festival has this year been a special blessing.
From the moment in Minehead's St Andrew's Church on Sunday July 22, when a fine ad hoc festival chorus of 50 singers sang praises from three centuries of memorable English church music, something extraordinary broke through the gloom. Festival Praise had delivered its promise.
The Young Artist Recital, which followed close on its heels and played to a full audience, was a shining revelation of what the best of local youth can do.
Sixteen-year old flautist Jonty Hedges, a sports-loving, drum and piano-playing pupil at Queen's College, Taunton, performed an hour of demanding professional repertoire with the stamina, warmth of tone and virtuosity of technique that would have graced a much more experienced player.
From two slightly understated E major Bach sonata movements, he moved with real assurance and enthusiasm to three short sonatas - the first by Poulenc, a popular work whose wit and lyric beauty were well characterised; the others in similar vein by Lennox Berkeley and William Mathias.
In his second half he offered helpful introductions first to a contemporary oriental-sounding experimental piece by Anne Boyd and finally to the two dazzling jazz-influenced movements from Sonata Latino by the renowned Mike Mower of Itchy Fingers.
Accompanist Keith Jones, who previously had directed the Festival Chorus, gave able support on the piano. The festival was off to a good start.
One programme, two concerts. The tradition of giving the opening programme a second hearing was particularly welcome because of the enterprise of Richard Dickins' programming this year.
To
start with, the Introit for Two Trumpets and String Orchestra (1981) by David
Matthews (born in 1943) in buildings so unlike Gloucester Cathedral, for which
it was written, was risky.
Beautiful
though they are, neither
Nevertheless
the decorative florid super-structure, particularly of the two trumpeters John
Hackett and Lucy Leleu, evoked a grander, nobler renaissance world and provided
a kind of static foil for the scintillating Mozart Symphony No 40 which
followed.
Here
the clarity of the local church acoustics, particularly at Dulverton, were
better suited to revealing with clarity the nuances of dynamics and phrasing
which in only two short rehearsal periods Richard Dickins had elicited from his
40 or so players, many of whom had struggled to make the cross-country journey
to reach Minehead in time.
Perhaps
something of their anxiety, in the Dunster performance, gave appropriate
nervous energy to a piece noted for its restless tension.
The
distinguished international violinist Maya Magub, a much loved leader of this
orchestra for several years, was soloist in Dvorak's Romance in F Minor on her
silver-timbred Gagliano instrument from 1760.
Nostalgic
in mood, this piece, suggestive of "the warm air of summer and the
Bohemian woodlands" [programme notes],
was additionally appropriate for the resumption after an interval which had not
featured the usual open air refreshments!
Metamorphosen,
Richard Strauss's darkly ecstatic wartime music for 23 solo strings, was not a
textbook finisher, but its remarkable structure grows rhapsodically from a
single phrase first heard in adagio, and thence makes a compelling journey of
shifting string alliances, multi-layered texture and increasing passion before
it achieves a deep-voiced whispered gravity that on Monday night dissolved into
a breathless hush which was spellbinding.
Full marks for the compelling delivery of a programme of courageous enterprise.
The
Wednesday afternoon chamber music recital in
Antonin
Dvorak's Serenade for Wind in D minor (incidentally including a 'cello and
double bass) was as abundantly "charming" and "refreshing"
in performance by the "Minehead twelve" as Brahms found the work to
be in 1878.
The
rich sonorities of horns, clarinets and bassoons (including a splendid double
bas-soon) and the more plaintive voices of oboes were evoked by Richard
Dickins's spirited direction and given resonance by the appealing acoustic of
the
One
was tempted to agree with the 19th century German critic who said of this music
"...only a poet by God's grace has such inspiration".
The Wind Serenade was preceded by two trumpet and organ sonatas by the little known Italian composer G B Viviani. These sonatas are the earliest of their kind, and were delivered with 17thC clarity and vigour by trumpeter John Hackett and Minehead Methodist organist Keith Halstead.
This
is music that visits the dark night of the soul, and in Richard Dickins'
reading, the music aspires, defies, grieves, mocks and grimly asserts.
It is
not music for easy listening. Shostakovich suffered in the
On
Thursday the Regal rocked and trembled under the battery of sound of 60 players
and its audience strained to hear the minutest pianissimos.
Such
force and restraint have been rarely heard before at the festival (one musician
was observed to be wearing earplugs!)
By
contrast, Debussy's Children's Comer and Rodrigo's Guitar Concierto de Aranjuez
began the evening in light and relaxing mood.
The
former's affectionate recollection of childhood scenes and the latter's blend
of aristocratic poise and popular colour in 18th century
Both the Debussy and the Rodrigo provided opportunities to enjoy the high quality of solo playing throughout the orchestra and the Spanish work featured the celebrated British guitarist Gary Ryan as soloist.
Something
of a "Last-night-of-the-Proms", this was an occasion to charm excite
and amuse.
From Borodin's evocative In the Steppes of Central Asia and the deliciously melodious African dance (La Calinda) much loved and used by Frederick Delius, attention moved to the first solo performance of the evening, the Trumpet Concerto by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a popular Viennese contemporary of Mozart.
Co-principal trumpet of the RPO, Mike Allen demonstrated both the singing quality and the acrobatic agility of the instrument, only recently furnished with keys when the work was written,
The
second half began with Poème, a rhapsodic piece for solo violin and orchestra composed
by the tragically short-lived French composer Ernest Chausson (1855-99).
The
orchestra's leader, Gonzalo Acosta, who is much in demand for concerto work
internationally, was the soloist. With Richard Dickins he subtly engaged the orchestra
in a joint unfolding of the work's emotional range from the plaintive to the
intensely passionate, concluding in dark solemnity.
Aaron Copland's Dance Episodes from the American ballet Rodeo quickly dispelled the melancholy, however, with a raunchy "knees-up" piece (Buckaroo Holiday) which dazzled with high-spirited brass and percussion, followed by two quieter episodes and ending with the famous Hoe-Down - in the words of Trevor Bacon's excellent programme notes "the riotous finale … based on a square-dance tune called! Bonyparte".
The
Minehead and