Page 318 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

want to hear more. It was lovely to hear more of Morfydd Owen's
work, having heard some of her music last week for St David's

Day. Some songs approached the Edwardian parlour but others
had striking and often touching moments. Grace Williams is more
of a known quantity, though I have to admit to being unfamiliar

with her songs. We heard two, one clearly inspired by her teacher
RVW but the other far darker and more complex. Claire Lidell was

represented by two of her Orkney scenes, imaginative and
evocative.

The songs were given terrific performances by singers Rhys Meilyr, Charlotte Forfar, Molly Beere,
Esyllt Thomas, Nicole Dickie, Kira Charleton, Chloe Hare-Jones, and Maisie O’Shea, with Nicola
Rose (piano), all coached by Kitty Whately. Everyone embraced the music with a will, giving fine
confident and expressive performances of music that was probably as unfamiliar to them as it was to
us.

And throughout the week, the SWAP'ra Forgotten Voices jukebox has been going, giving us short
recitals from singers from the other conservatoires and from the National Opera Studio exploring
women composers across the ages. Yes, we've heard of Clara Schumann, Pauline Viardot-Garcia
and Augusta Holmes, but who could say their music was familiar, and there are many more who are
undeservedly unfamiliar. Credit must go to everyone for making this happen, not just the logistics
during lockdown but the finding of the music in the first place (including the not inconsiderable task of
locating performing editions!) and of learning it. [SWAP'ra Forgotten Voices]

Sunday saw the Zoffany Ensemble giving a benefit concert for Conway Hall Sunday Concerts. It was
wonderfully expansive programme themed around the late 18th century.

The five players, Karen Jones (flute), Alison Alty (oboe), Manon Derome (violin), Lydia Lowndes-
Northcott (viola), Anthony Pleeth (cello), came together in a variety of instrumental combinations for a
highly imaginative programme. We began with everyone in Boccherini's Quintet in C, a wonderfully
civilised work, rather like a serenade with great interplay between the performers.Then came early
Beethoven, a Serenade for flute, violin and viola. An intriguing combination of instruments, written
with the amateur market in mind but Beethoven drew them together in some imaginative textures and
tricksy rhythms. A Haydn string trio came next, though this was an arrangement of a piano sonata by
an anonymous hand. In two movements the first was beautifully elegant and the second nicely perky,
though you felt Haydn might have added a bit more imagination to the textures if he'd done the
arrangement himself. Mozart's Oboe Quartet came next, a stunning work which was designed to
show off the oboe player and shine Alison Alty did. Finally, another quintet JC Bach's Quintet in
D which was very, very Mozartian in its feel with some lovely writing for all the instruments, the real
interplay of five voices [Conway Hall]

On Thursday, violinist Jennifer Pike and pianist Petr Limonov launched a new on-line concert series,
The Polyphonic Concert Club with a recital from St George's Bristol. The Polyphonic Concert Club is a
project of Polyphonic Films (founded in 2006 by Robert Hollingworth, John La Bouchardiere and Greg
Browning) and features weekly recitals from a group of non-London concert halls (Colin Currie from
the Stoller Hall and I Fagiolini from the National Centre for Early Music in York coming up next).

Pike and Limonov began with Mozart's Violin Sonata in G major K301, a work which revolutionised
the genre by treating both instruments equally, rather than the violin playing along with the piano. The
two gave a full blooded yet elegant performance, with Pike displaying a lovely sense of line but there
were some finely perky rhythms too, ending in a delightful Allegro. Next came the dark and