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Charlton Fridays Hommage à Schumann Charlton House 31 May 2013 A notable recital. This was a repeat of a programme given at the Royal Academy for Music by gifted senior students who had refined their already superb performances. Schumann and Bruch went down well,but Kurtag was not appreciated by the Charlton regulars, and eyebrows were raised by their substituting a discrete dropping of the piano's lid to signify finis, really a better solution than Kurtag's heavy joke to end his Schumann tribute (a single quiet tap on a bass drum - RAM wouldn't lend them one). Peter Grahame Woolf See Hommage à R Schumann with the bass drum ... !
Reactions and Reflections - Les Six Bethan Langford (mezzo-soprano) Megan Quick (mezzo-soprano) Timothy Connor (baritone) Justin Snyder (piano) Charlton House, 22 March 2013 This was a more difficult programme for regular listeners to Amber Rainey's series mainly because translations were not provided and the repertoire was more esoteric. See full review from BachTrack PGW Barber, Poulenc & Britten Claire Candy, Alessaandro Fisher & Harriet Kirk [L to R below] with Ricardo Gosalbo (piano) 8 March 2013 A marvellous vocal recital, one of a series curated by Amber Rainey of the Guildhall SMD. Theirs was a strong programme, facilitated for this audience by Amber Rainey's introductions (and page-turning !) and by the provision of English texts for all three of these important cycles. All the singers were excellent, as was their pianist. There was the usual near full house as we have become used to at Charlton, but it amazed the musicians, as did the wonderful acoustic of this prime venue, to which all the experienced singers adjusted perfectly.
None of them overwhelmed us as had Dušica Bijelić
and Ashley Riches of the Royal Opera It had felt as if they had prepared that event as for the vast space at Covent Garden. Is due attention in the Jette Parke course given to song recital singing, often in smaller venues, which has to be part of the work for aspiring opera stars? Don't miss a forthcoming recital in the series, with music by Les Six and pianist Justin Snyder at Charlton House on March 22nd, and at Regent Hall in the final concert of the series, Amber Rainey herself at the piano. Peter Grahame Woolf
Debussy, Ropartz, R R Bennett, Piazolla etc RAM Harp Quintet
A nice, soothing selection of French music with harp, together with a quintet by the late Richard Rodney Bennett, in a not dissimilar idiom. Very cold, and a smaller than usual audience PGW
Arnold - Three Sea Shanties Charlton House Old Library, London, This lively group of recent graduates from London colleges gave a scintillating concert to an appreciative weekly audience of mainly elderly people at Charlton House; they did not respond to an invitation to take to the floor and dance with some of the jazzier items - so do see on a video how the Sideris work with children ! Some of the of the more jazzy arrangements were just a bit genteel (though the horn player was outstanding and not afraid to take risks). The group might benefit from a jazz-oriented musician to help rehearse them in that repertoire? Peter Grahame Woolf
Berio, Kurtag, Webern & Xenakis etc Lunchtime concert, Charlton House, London, 24 February 2012 An interesting, stimulating and contentious programme put on at short notice. Songs by "multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger composer" Fred Thomas (guitar & piano) were soothing with Ellie Rose's delicate voice, very slightly amplified. More stimulating were short pieces by Berio, Kurtag & Webern; nothing to frighten the horses there until the surprise cello solo of Xenakis' Kottos [Lucy Railton, below] a rough and quite lengthy modernist classic from 1977, which will have been unfamiliar - uncompromising (and shocking) - to most people there... Congratulations on innovative programming which sent Charlton's large captive audience out arguing about whether they'd liked what they'd heard...
Peter Grahame Woolf See Lucy Shailton in a music theatre piece by Matthew Shlomowitz.
WREN ENSEMBLE/Stephen Maw A splendid concert of music for ensembles, devised, introduced & conducted by Stephen Maw, who has built up a loyal lunch-time audience of c. 100 at the lovely library of Charlton House. I knew Bax's luscious Nonet, a deliciously 'heart-on-sleeve' work of yearningly lyrical melodies, in the '50s from a 78 r.p.m. shellac disc, and was keen to take the opportunity to renew its acquaintance (hear substantial Bax was followed by a novelty, Glinka's quite extraordinary Serenade on tunes from Donizetti's Anna Bolena, for septet featuring harp and piano, together with lower strings, horn & bassoon, each with rewarding solo spots taken in style. The concert is to be repeated at Trinity College Chapel and at Regent Hall in the West End. Try to catch it. Peter Grahame Woolf
Royal Greenwich Brass Band conducted by Stephen Maw at First, click here and be amazed ! This was (I trust) the loudest concert ever at Charlton House, drawing many players from Trinity (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) which contributes its student musicians generously to this series. It hyped up the audience to palpable exhilaration, "milked" by Maw to demand an encore. No ear-protectors visible amongst the band and hopefully many listeners were already hard of hearing? Most of the pieces were medleys of more or less well-known tunes, the sort one is used to in the Parks on Sunday afternoons. We began with a March, then a post-1914/18 Postbellum Rhapsody. I enjoyed Gaelforce by my nearly name-sake Peter Graham and we climaxed with all the bells of St Petersburg in Boris's coronation (not our current Boris !), before quietening down to Elgar's Nimrod. Gorgeous ! Gabrieli, Jacov, Grieg, Poulenc arr. Hughes, Harvey
Regent Hall, Oxford St. W1 2 November 2012 A couple of weeks or so on, and Stephen Maw [see him above conducting at Charlton House] was to be seen at Regent's Hall, greeting some 70 arrivals seeking an hour's peace amongst the Oxford Street About fifteen trombones from RAM, in various groupings, made a bright, cheering sound in this excellent acoustic, with no lack felt by the absence of trumpets (which can be overwhelming and bad for the ears - q.v. Greenwich Band review immediately above!). May I be forgiven for mentioning that my small son broadcast and made an LP of Stravinsky's The Owl and the Pussy-cat (his final composition, setting the first English verse to be memorized by his wife Vera) and that Simon's younger brother became a trombonist in the National Youth Orchestra... Peter Grahame Woolf Brahms, Shostakovich, Stravinsky etc Isabel Villanueva, Viola. Oxana Shevchenko, Piano Charlton House, 23rd November 2012 Before that the mostly elderly audience had listened with rapt attention to Stravinsky's Elegy for solo viola and, earlier, everyone enjoyed Isabel's impassioned account of the second Brahms sonata, in which her partner went a bit wild coping with the Charlton House piano, which was not in best condition. An exciting event, which MP's readers and Charlton's "silver surfers" ["riding the crest of the internet wave"] could follow up afterwards by watching on YouTube both artists in Bartok; also Isabel in Gubaidulina's double-viola concerto Two Paths. PGW
Beethoven, Barber, Grieg, Strauss etc Academy Horn Ensemble/Michael Thompson Charlton House 1 p.m. 30 November 2012 This student ensemble played with a will, taking risks, and it was fun for those who were not too perfectionist; a reminder that until the time of Denis Brain, broken notes from the horns were regular in symphony concerts. The horn is the most fickle of orchestral instruments and this large ensemble of experienced and less experienced students (maybe the whole RAM horn department?) gave us a lively concert, but not really one fairly to be videoed and recorded. Beethoven's Egmont overture, with which they began, features the horn, so it was interesting hearing them cope with the whole score, rather well. However, it attracted the largest audience yet crammed into the Old Library. The Richard Strauss piece Feierlicher Einzug der Ritter des Johanniter-Ordends (say that again?) was We all enjoyed ourselves as I hope you do my photos ! Where else outside a city centre can a comparable venue boast such a large and loyal regular lunchtime audience? Peter Grahame Woolf
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House's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme
at Blackheath's intimate Recital Room earlier in the week, in a programme of Debussy & Britten songs and the final scene from Eugene Onegin. 
extracts from 
shoppers. 
