Tomasi, Mozart & Milhaud

Cinq Danses Profanes et Sacrées, Henri Tomasi
Serenade in C minor KV388, Mozart (transc. David Walter)
La Cheminée du roi René, Milhaud

The Vesuvio Wind Quintet

January 25 2011, Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich, London

A well devised lunchtime concert, well attended at Trinity College of Music's sumptuous on site concert venue. These busy young professionals all studied there and they came back to Greenwich en route to a Tomasi International Competition in Marseilles, and then to play in Qatar.

The Tomasi is tricky and their performance has yet to completely mature. The Mozart arrangement is completely successful, and gives nothing to the orginal for wind octet without flutes - Mozart hated the flute, and once called it "an instrument I cannot bear."

Here they were entirely at ease and in their element, technically secure and phrasing as to the manner born, sharing with us the composer's mastery in which they revelled.

Milhaud too brought out special sympathy for winds in quintet in his masterly 1939 incidental music to a film, in which he shared the score with Honegger and Roger Désormière, whom I remember well as conductor. The endlessly reourceful Milhaud I recall with great pleasure conducting his string octet at the Royal College of Music; it consists of two of his string quartets played simultaneously !

All the music was despatched with aplomb and they will be worth looking out for as their career progresses.

Peter Grahame Woolf

Dufay, Schubert, Piazzolla, Bernstein etc

London Performance Collective

February 3rd 2011 at St Pancras Parish Church, London

An excellent lunchtime concert by present and past students of Trinity College of Music was enjoyed by an audience of some 50.

These opportunities around the Capital are important stepping stones towards professional careers and on this showing Anna Ter Haar (flute), Daniel Broncano (clarinet) and Georgi Mottram (soprano) are well on the way.

With organiser Alan Taylor they gave a varied programme without pause for applause. The Shepherd on the Rock and Sephardic Songs by Manuel Valls were particularly successful, and Bernstein's Tonight brought the eclectic programme to a finish with just the right tone.

A related programme to be given Feb 15th, 1.10pm at the very special St Giles in the Fields [R] will include a Shostakovich piano trio (Anna Michel, I'An Tai and Androniki Liokoura) and some of today's items.

Peter Grahame Woolf