Brighton Year-Round 2024
Sussex Musicians Club Chapel Royal
Sussex Musicians Club
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: Chapel Royal, North Road Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
A very fine Finzi song recital, and Pergolesi Concerto both bright and luminous, and playfully late-baroque. To cap it all members gave an impromptu carol service too: flashcarol. Fine and rather affecting.
Review
Alan Ford and Celia Vince are artists I’ve not come across before; but their superb recital of Finzi songs is a highlight. Of course it’s Thomas Hardy from his 1912-14 poems in particular; and with Finzi his Op 15, 16 and 19a collections.
Beginning with the shattering ‘The Clock of the Years’ Ford begins conversationally then opens up vocally. A remarkable song sung quite individually as well as powerfully, it was followed by a lighter piece: ‘In the Mind’s Eye’; and then the more ambitious ‘The Phantom (The Horsewoman) a song I didn’t know well. It’s one of those taking the truth slant as if from another persona.
‘In a Churchyard ‘ is a philosophical poem rather like ‘Channel Firing’ where an alien being brings a far deeper reach of thought ‘and I grew to accept that view of things’ says the poet listening to the trees.
‘To Lizbie Browne” is for Hardy and Finzi full of pathos but gratitude too, a bright elegy for lost chances. Ford enjoys the stretches syllables and affect if the setting, and keeps it airborne.
‘The Market Girl’ is astonishing – it’s happy and fulfilled. The young man notices the eponymous young woman’s attractiveness; whilst everyone else is too busy. ‘A prize had been won by me!’ caps a darting touching song, brief and sweet. And in under 20 minutes the fine recital is over.
Karen Rash and Hugh O’Neal play Pergolesi’s Flute Concerto in G major. Dying at 26 in 1736 his reputation was such that everyone wanted to ascribe music to him to sell more. Had he lived he would have been one of the greatest European baroque composers as Rash says.
This is the piano and flute reduction. Rash possesses a fine bright tone, sounds out of Arcady. O’Neal is quite Bachian and luminous in his counterpoint.
An Allegro moderato bright and filigree-laden presages the Rococo of the composers of his 1710 generation like the two eldest Bach sons, Avison, Arne, Boyce, Stanley and Gluck. There’s a strong Neapolitan flute and orchestra tradition recently uncovered and recorded.
The Adagio is something paradisal. Lightly decorated in the piano, though keeping airborne herself, Rash relishes the Allegro spiritoso and the instrumental alternation, a swervier late-baroque counterpoint,
One of the madrigalists lost their voice so Sue Mileham with Kevin Allen literally sight reading helmed an impromptu replacement. Michael Head’s ‘Little Rose of Bethlehem’s a very attractive hug of a song. Warlock’s ‘The Little Mercy’ with its lilt and rocking rhythm it’s hypnotic.
Edmund Rubbra (1901-86) a month or so older than Finzi is mainly known as a symphonist and chamber composer. His songs are rare but inhabit a modal hymnal quality. ‘To the Virgin’ owns an almost mystically tinged warmth and numinous edge to it.
Another song is even more surprising A ‘Lullaby’ by Reger that’s quite like Brahms trying to be lyrical and managing it. Reger the ferocious contrapuntalist really is lilting a simple strophic song to its close. Who knew?
Samuel Liddell’s arrangement of ‘A Christmas Carol’ again was a fine seating and gentle close. Allen read perfectly at sight and Mileham sang with a bell-like wistful middle register. A fitting clos
To cap it all members, including Rash on the flute, O’Neal on the piano and a range of sopranos and altos, gave an impromptu carol service too: flashcarol. Fine and rather affecting.
