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Concerts and Recitals

The Autumn Concert - Wednesday 16 November 2011

Autumn mists and mellowness

Keats may have being imagining more the still-balmy days of late September when he wrote his famous autumnal ode, but even if the rain gods provided us more with persistent fogs than sylvan mists, those sheltered in Big School for the annual Autumn concert were treated to mellifluence, melodiousness and indeed mellowness in seasonally-varied abundance.

At the behest of Mr Hills, and under the unswervable baton of Mr Pring, the orchestra opened the feast with Smetena’s ‘Dance of the Comedians’ – strolling players these forces were not, with rapid strings and well-marshalled percussion-work. That this work comes from the Czech’s Bartered Bride opera may or may not have been a comment on the following March from Handel’s Scipio, aristocratically reprised from a performance given by pupils earlier in the term at the College’s official dinner at Mansion House within the districts of the City, whose financial gambles may yet condemn us to those more primitive forms of economic transaction.

An audit provided by the College’s previously singly over-swelled and now strategically-bisected cello ensembles was definitive proof of the assertion that no quantitative easing is currently required for the College’s budding bass lines. They led us into sonically lush groves, respectively with Lionel Bart’s ‘As long as he needs me’, Frances Buist (L6th, OH) sitting confidently atop, and with Mendelssohn’s famous ‘Nocturne’, in the arrangement of which first cellist Rosie Stoner (L6th HH), singing with ‘treble soft’, was most sensitively supported by her four very well-tuned accompanists (notwithstanding the B-string scordatura). Mendelssohn was also represented by the tenth of his infrequently-heard early string symphonies, in B minor, with Oliver Gittings (L6th, ST) leading his band of 21 from the violin securely through well-characterised subjects, a driving development section, tricksome modulations, and the final acceleration of the Allegro. This was a substantial work convincingly communicated by all desks.

Mr Robson’s Chamber Choir bade us relinquish any vestigial longings for the ‘songs of Spring’, at first by reminding us that although their present emotional troubles were ‘here to stay’, at least according to the text of McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’, they are currently very capable of some very smoothly-blended harmonies to support the artful shapes and tonal nuances of tenor soloist Jonah Trenouth (U6th, ET) – certainly no gnatty mournings here. In ‘With a little help from my friend’ the melody passed clearly between the many parts, the accompanying scat-singing and broadening coda both especially well pulled-off. This was arguably the best secular singing achieved by this choir to date, with several new recruits helping keep the seven-fold part-work and tuning tightly coordinated.

Other more contemporary offerings included Jonah Trenouth at the keyboard in a well-developed ‘Autumn Leaves’ improvisation, the 6th Form Sax group in a rhythmically and intonationally tight rendition of Ellington’s ‘Solitude’, and Jazz Workshop, first in ‘The Jody Grind’ with stylish solos from Charles Vaughan (4th, ST) and Pavel Telica (L6th, SH), and then Adderley’s ‘Work-Song’ with Hud Abdul Sattar (4th, MH) and Roscoe Crawley (L6th, ET) profiled.

To close the programme, the Concert Big Band under Mr Miles was taken through its strides with young drummer Archie Williamson (3rd, ET) confidently driving the group throughout. From Glen Miller’s ‘American Patrol’ we moved to Lopez’s ‘Touch of Honey’, the solo of Conor Giebus (L6th, ET) sounding through well to the end of each phrase amid balanced antiphonal exchanges of the massed saxes and trumpets and well-projected clarinet countermelodies. The band paid a second and final homage to the melodic and orchestrational talents of Miller in a super performance of ‘In the Mood’ – as well-known now as in its hey-day. Unanimity in the opening monophonic phrases was followed by robust brass bass-line underpinnings courtesy of both tuba and euphonium alongside the trombones – valued extra weight for the obstinate recurring F-pedals – with several extended dynamic levels cleverly exploited before the closing blasts.

All pupils and warmly-thanked music-staff leaders fully justified this event, not only as a mid-Michaelmas showcase for the result of rehearsals from the beginning of term, but also as a healthy bulwark against the insidious precession of the Christmas season, under the name of which many institutions consign all the over-ripe fruits of their termly toils to cheapened yuletide festivity. Those who remained for the end refreshments of this concert certainly concurred with the general message that we should drain Autumn to the last oozings of its distinctive musical ‘cyder-press’.

By James Drinkwater
Teacher of Academic Music and College Organist

Monday 31 October, 7.30pm

Recital
Cellist Rosie Stoner (HH, L6) will give an Advanced Performance Platform in the Music School Recital Hall. This recital has been re-arranged from Monday 3 October.

Please read the review of the Fine Arts Brass concert held in February 2011.

See the review of the fantastic Autumn Concert 2010.

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