TIM KLIPHUIS

at the Thaxted Festival

27.06.10

To Thaxted Church, steeped in musical tradition, for a wonderful concert by Dutch violinist Tim Kliphuis.

He must be tired of the “second Stéphane Grappelli” label, but it's true – that easy swing to the fiddle, those familiar standards ornamented, bent and improvised around. Satin Doll, After You've Gone, a colourful Caravan. Sweet Georgia Brown, too, of course, featuring a great dialogue between the violin and the inspired bass of Len Skeet, who's played with the great Grapelli himself. And, as a nightcap, a magical Berkeley Square.

But Tim's speciality – and possibly the reason for this Thaxted gig – is his way with the classics. They get the same affectionate makeover: a witty, swing Humoreske, Grieg's Norwegian Dance and a spell-binding Debussy Clair de Lune.

With Skeet and Kliphuis on the stand were pianist David Newton, his heels on the wooden platform the only percussion, and guitarist Colin Oxley.

CHELMSFORD SINGERS
26 June 2010


Jim Hutchon writes:

To Chelmsford Cathedral for an inspiring evening of works from the Chelmsford Singers. This is a group that always delights, with crisp intonation and timing – the result of long hours of rehearsal under a demanding taskmaster.

Musical Director Peter Nardone conducted the choir in two Britten numbers – one of which, ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’, likened animals and musical instruments to God. The nonsense rhyme text was written by a 17^thC poet in a lunatic asylum.

Two main works occupied the bulk of the evening. The first was a set of five delightful and evocative songs by Essex composer Alan Bullard, where the Choir was joined by the Chelmsford Youth Choir under the baton of Simon Warne. The second half was taken up with Purcell’s ‘Come Ye Sons of Art’, composed for the wife of William III and completed only a year before Purcell’s death. This is a complex delight to the ear, with nine sections, each employing different vocal techniques, from counter-tenors to bass.

For me, the highlight of the evening was the short, beautiful and dynamic ‘Tu es Petrus’ by the renaissance composer Palestrina, which swept us bodily from Chelmsford to the heady delights of the Seminario Romano in 16^thC Rome.

LOVE STORY

Chichester Festival Theatre, Minerva

23.06.10

“What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died ?”

Whatever you can say, you could set to music, and that's what Howard Goodall has done. You get a chamber opera, a budget Boheme with some serviceable tunes and a sad ending.

Lucky to get Chichester to stage it, with its antithesis, 42^nd Street, tapping and grinning over the way in the Main House.

Rachel Kavanagh's stylish and sensitive staging is set in what looks like a classy Konditorei, with musicians on a dais at one end [seven in the band, three singers] and a black carpet square for the drama, audience on three sides.

The scene changes deserved an ovation of their own. The chamber music recital – a wry homage to Francis Lai's music for the 1970 film – became bed sheets in the love nest, an intimidating dinner table slides in from the foyer. There's a viola joke, two different kitchen islands, practical pasta preparation, with the best spaghetti duet since Lady and the Tramp. Food and music combine again just before Jenny chooses terminal care in hospital – the bad news hits us 80 minutes into the show; her last three months played out in little more than 20 minutes.

Emma Williams made a sparky Jenny, with a lovely singing voice, and Michael Xavier was her preppy lover, totally convincing, and moving at the end when he realises all he has to lose.

Hard not to weep with him as Jenny leaves us with a backward glance at her death bed; another moving moment has Jenny's long-dead Momma [Julia Worsley] consoling her across the work surface.

Good support from the contrasting Dads, too. Rob Edwards as the WASP millionaire, and the excellent Peter Polycarpou as Phil, the emotional Italian immigrant.

I liked the subtle way the wordless chorus were used in café and restaurant, and at the end, the three singers move back on the dais to join MD Stephen Ridley and his sorrowful strings.

MASQUERADE

Tomorrow's Talent at the Civic Theatre

19.06.10

Masquerade, this year's title song, in stylish black and white, introduced the amazing achievements of Tomorrow's Talent.

There was more Phantom from Tara Divina, a beautifully delivered Think of Me. Six of the senior girls draped themselves on Cabaret chairs to sing the Cell Block Tango from Chicago: strong stuff, though the punch lines could have been subtler, perhaps.

Not surprising to see Fame and High School Musical up there – a nicely done sequence including Pray, Hard Work and Stick to the Status Quo, but this kind of showcase can produce some strange bedfellows. So Lady Gaga's Telephone led into a random scene from Lord of the Flies [convincing performances from Jack Martyn, Jamie Papworth, Greg Bennett and George Horscraft], and then into Popular, from Wicked, impeccably sung and acted by this year's West End guest, Julie Atherton.

After the interval, hippy favourites. Frank Mills [Hair] sung with touching naivety by Laura Messin, who straightaway slotted into the chorus for Rhythm of Life. There was pure dance, like the energetic Work, and several sketches, of which the best was a painfully well observed pair of disruptive school-girls – Deanna Byron and Hazel Ellender. Amusing glimpses of the wings, too: a trio of obsessive ballerinas [Laura Baylis, Catherine Hale and Bethany Smith] – only the Marlboros missing – and five whingeing luvvies [Alex Houlton, Josh Butcher, Mark Ellis, Ana Dillie and Maisie Allen], with a guest appearance from director Gavin Wilkinson.

He also conducted the juniors for some of their numbers; I felt their finest hour was the Willy Wonka sequence, with some very promising narrators and confident holders of the Golden Ticket.

Incredible to see the Civic stage crammed with all these enthusiastic and extrovert youngsters for the final number – Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Starting Something.


show picture by Erika Patterson, video from an early rehearsal

SPRING CONCERT

Waltham Singers in the Parish Church

19.06.10

It's fifty years since the death of Armstrong Gibbs, and this enterprising programme was one of several concerts in his home county marking this anniversary.

It featured works by his teacher, Vaughan Williams [the familiar Three Shakespeare Songs] and his contemporaries Howells [Take Him Earth for Cherishing] and Parry – a wonderfully stirring Blest Pair of Sirens, with Robert Poyser getting the most out of the Waltham organ.

The same forces for Gibbs' Cantata for Passiontide, Behold The Man. Dramatic choruses, linked by narration, beginning with How Beautiful on the Mountains, and ending with a note of triumph. Conductor Andrew Fardell, and his sizeable choir, made excellent advocates for this neglected work.

Unaccompanied works included Dryden's Pleasures of Love, and Five Elizabethan Lyrics. Sleep was something of a theme – a lovely diminuendo at the end of The Cloud-Capp'd Towers, and Gibbs' “Come Sleep”, preceded by his setting of an Evening Prayer, “Before Sleep”, with a tellingly simple beginning and end. And Walter De La Mare's Five Eyes, very enjoyably rendered by the women's voices with Poyser at the piano.

He also gave us Gibbs's eight Lakeland Pictures, charming miniatures written in 1940 when World War Two took him to Westmorland.