Chamber Music Recital

Chamber Music is not easy to play, as it tends to be written for experienced professional musicians. On Friday evening the students rose magnificently to this challenge with eleven works which between them covered over three centuries of music.

The works ranged from Frank Bridge’s Three Miniatures written in 1909 and played by Hannah Savignon-Smythe and Shona Wedner-Ross, followed by Handel’s 1718 Trio Sonata in G Minor with Oliver Hermann and Zachary Kahn.

Mrs Pendry’s Cello and Viola arrangement of Khachaturian’s Melodia for piano was followed by Sarah May and Hannah Savignon-Smythe playing CPE Bach’s Trio Sonata in G.

Daniel Bulman played part of the Concerto in F by the prolific, but largely forgotten, Giovanni Sammartini (1700-1775). The recorder is so often just a starting point, to get young people to play an instrument, and it is rare to hear it played at this level, but of course it was one of the most important wind instruments in the baroque era, and Dan did this work full justice.

Oli took on the lead part in Morricone’s 1986 work Gabriel’s Oboe, ably assisted by Tom Widdicombe, Zachary Kahn and Hannah Savignon-Smythe.
The chamber choir then gave a beautiful performance of part of Rachmaninov’s Vespers. This was the composer’s favourite work, and was sung in the original Russian, no easy task, particularly with fluent Russian speaker and fine singer Mr Dixon in the audience.

Tom then gave a vigorous, dancing performance of Brahms Sonatensatz, accompanied, as were many of the performances, by Mr Scamardella on piano.

The string group, accompanied by Andrew Barclay on Organ, then did full justice to the famous Adagio for Strings, credited to the 17th century composer Albinoni. Whether the work was really based on a lost fragment of one of his manuscripts, or was entirely the work of his biographer Remo Giazetto in the 1950s, we may never know but it does not detract from the pleasure of hearing it performed.

The Trio Sonata in G by JS Bach, as revised by his son CPE Bach, then followed, with Zac, Tom and Mr S all taking the lead in turns. The final work was a piano quintet arrangement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. It is dangerous playing well known pieces but Hannah Savignon-Smythe, Shona Wedner-Ross and Mrs von Riebech, together with Mrs Pendry proved more than capable.

It was one of the best school concerts I have attended at St Bede’s and Mr Scamardella deserves our thanks for organising the whole concert, for his preparation of the players, and of course for his magnificent accompanying throughout.