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Thursday, May 11, 2017
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
JANE Austen was a frequent visitor to
Kintbury, so St Mary’s Church in the
village was the perfect place in which
to enjoy an adaptation of
Pride and
Prejudice
by writer and resident Gill
Hornby, narrated by actress Hayley
Mills to music by Carl Davis, to mark
Austen’s bicentenary.
This was a reminder – if ever we needed
it – that Austen is one of the world’s
greatest writers and
Pride and Prejudice
her masterpiece. Gill Hornby has
produced a sharp, clear, clever adaptation
of the novel, retaining all the author’s
wit and forensic social observation while
moving the plot forward in a series of
word and sound pictures.
The text was intelligently and
vivaciously read by Hayley Mills,
clearly relishing Austen’s incisive
characterisation and humour. We
enjoyed again the stops, starts and
misunderstandings of Elizabeth and
Mr Darcy’s courtship (“He would lay
aside his sense of her inferiority”); the
glorious foolishness of Mrs Bennet;
Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s hauteur, as
she patronises the Bennets “for being so
persistently poor”; and the oleaginous
Mr Collins, one of the literary world’s
greatest bores. “Mr Collins pounced.
Lizzie recoiled… He was engaged to
Charlotte Lucas within a week.”
Composer Carl Davis has adapted
and added to his celebrated score of
BBC Television’s much-heralded
mid-1990s production of
Pride and
Prejudice
for this new venture. Pianist
Ashley Wass and violinist Matthew
Trusler, both international performers,
played with panache, but, equally
important, with sensitivity to the
integrity of the spoken word, Wass
almost imperceptibly cueing words
and music together.
The text was read both with and without
musical accompaniment, giving colour
to the production and varying its pace
and feel. A technical problem with the
sound balance between music and voice
in the first half was happily resolved for
the second.
The production is touring, but will be
back in Kintbury on June 24, for the
Jane Austen Festival. Find out more
about the Kintbury connection in
Out&About
magazine inside the
NWN
on May 25.
LIN WILKINSON
Austen
masterwork
celebrated
in word
and sound
Newbury Spring Festival
Pride & Prejudice,
at St Mary’s
Church, Kintbury, on Sunday,
May 7
Painting
by music
Newbury Spring Festival
Stephen Hough,
at the Corn
Exchange, on Sunday, May 7
“CONTRAST and opposition”,
Stephen Hough’s own words to
describe the music chosen for his
Spring Festival recital.
Not only is he a world-class pianist, he
has also had articles published by
The
Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian
and
The Independent
. His recordings
have won eight Gramophone Awards,
he has performed in the world’s most
famous concerts halls and, being a true
21st-century man, his performance of
the Liszt
Sonata
was released for iPad
by Touch Press in 2013. The piece,
recorded by multiple cameras, allows us
to view the performance from all angles
and to call up the score at the touch of a
button.
The Economist
hails Hough as
one of 20 living polymaths, he has
performed at the
BBC Proms
no fewer
than 25 times and, to cap it all, he was
made a CBE in the 2014 New Year’s
Honours.
Sporting one of his trademark
Mandarin-style jackets, he sat at the
piano, closed his eyes and drew us
gently into the world of ‘picture-
painting-by-music’ with Debussy’s
beautiful
Clair de Lune
. The auditorium
fell immediately silent and so entranced
were we by his mastery, you might have
been forgiven for thinking he was play-
ing to an empty hall, until the applause
rang through the rafters after the final
chord.
Images (Series 2)
followed and the
sound of Debussy’s beautiful dissonance
washed over us before Hough wowed us
with the flashy
Poissons d’or.
Fast and
furious, I now know where Scott
Bradley found his inspiration for some
of the fabulous
Tom and Jerry
cartoon
incidental music.
In total contrast, Schumann’s
Fantasia
in C major
closed the first-half and
Hough showed us why he is in demand
the world over. Hinted shades of
Beethoven’s
Pathétique
sonata gave us a
taste of things to come in the second-half
and we hurriedly ate our ice creams, not
wanting to miss a thing.
Images (Series 1)
began with
Reflets dans
l’eau,
one of my favourites and Debussy’s
pianistic genius, once again, gave us the
chance to close our eyes in order to ‘see’
the shimmering colours in the music.
The third movement (
Mouvement
)
allowed Hough to demonstrate his
phenomenal technique in this relentless
toccata-like piece. Beethoven’s
Opus 57
Appassionata
sonata closed the
programme; a total change of mood and
a demonstration of Hough’s remarkable
ability to interpret the different
composers’ musically diverse styles.
I tweeted Stephen to tell him how much I
had enjoyed his recital. He tweeted back
almost straight away. Wow, a 21st-
century polymath – and a really nice guy.
FIONA BENNETT
Jazz with a Dutch touch
PICTURE the scene; in a cellar in
Nazi-occupied Holland, a group of
musicians meet to play jazz. Jazz
is banned and if they are caught
they will be shot. On Liberation
Day, in 1945, they came out and
played their first public
performance and the stylish trad
jazz we heard in Newbury did
those pioneers proud.
First in the line-up, two familiar
faces from their appearances in
Marlborough and at The Mill at
Sonning; genial double bass Adrie
Braat, the rhythmic anchor man and
powerhouse of the outfit Bob Kaper,
clarinet, alto sax and vocals –
musical director since the death, in
1990, of Peter Schilperoort.
The youngest additions to the band
bowled me over with their superb
musicianship: Keesjan Hoogeboom,
trumpet and vocals and Maurits
Woudenberg, trombone. The latter’s
solos had this amateur trombonist on
the edge of her seat. His outrageous
glissandi and smooth improvisations
were a delight.
The band brought fresh treatment
and superb solos all round to every
number from
Apex Blues
, first
recorded on 78rpm vinyl, to
Tiger
Rag
. No tired copies of American
standards here: absorbing arrangements,
many by Kaper, kept us entertained
from the moment they arrived on
stage in their neat suits to the final
medley from
William Tell
to
Way Down
Yonder in New Orleans
. In those last
bars we drooled at the cool soprano
sax of David Lukács, the third of the
band’s shining new stars. His clarinet
duos with Kaper and his bari sax had a
superior tone.
We enjoyed guitarist Ton van
Bergeijk’s vocals. The surprise
element was an extraordinary drum
solo by Anton Burger. Members of the
audience were amazed at its length
and variety, his lightness of touch,
dexterity and mesmeric performance,
all delivered with the humour beloved
by fans of this great band.
We hope Newbury Spring Festival
will not wait another 12 years before
inviting this fabulous outfit back to
Newbury.
EILEEN CASTER
Newbury Spring Festival
Dutch Swing College Band
World Tour,
at the Corn
Exchange, on Saturday, May 6
Entertaining band brings fresh treatment to US standards
DutchSwingCollege Band
Lea Lyle ’s teatime assortment
JAZZ singer Lea Lyle made the
short journey to the Bluecoat
School from the Angel, Woolhampton,
where she was last seen singing in
this area.
She arrived with a sturdy jazz combo,
which featured Mark Aston on tenor
and soprano saxes and Rodney
Mendoza on keyboard. Terry Davis
was the bassist and John Sergeant
was on drums.
Resplendent in a bright silver dress,
Lyle made immediate verbal contact
with the audience before launching
into her first selection,
Straight No
Chaser
by Thelonious Monk. There
were two other pieces by the Monk,
Round Midnight
, arguably his best-
known composition and
Well, You
Needn’t
. That last title came about
owing to Monk’s eccentric manner of
naming his compositions, or rather,
not naming them. Someone offered to
title his song and he said: “Well – You
Needn’t.”
One record producer made the
mistake of asking Monk if he’d like
to name his song now “or worry
later”. Guess what the title of that
one became...
As to Lyle though, she got around
the odd contours of Monk’s spiky
compositions very well.
Straight
received a crisp and clear
vocal, aided and abetted by Mark
Aston’s tart tenor sax and Rodney
Mendoza’s fleet lines at the keyboard,
where he chose to use an organ
sound.
The vocalist’s other choices were
Busy Line
, the novelty song made
popular by Rose Murphy and
A Raggy
Waltz
by Dave Brubeck. Together
with selections by Phil Craddock, a
local pianist and composer, it made
for a varied musical programme. She
also did well with Billy Strayhorn’s
marathon torch song
Lush Life
with,
once again, good supporting solo
work from Mendoza.
A final
Strange Meadowlark
by Dave
Brubeck found her in good voice and
at the end she answered questions
from the audience.
DEREK ANSELL
StephenHough
Picture: SimCanetty-Clarke
...absorbing arrangements,
many by Kaper, kept us
entertained from the
moment they arrived on
stage in their neat suits to
the final medley from
William Tell
to
Way Down
Yonder in New Orleans
“We have just had two
hampers of apples
from Kintbury, and the
floor of our little garret
is almost covered.”
Jane Austen
October 1808
Jazz
Tea & Cakes concert series:
Lea Lyle, Love That Jazz,
at
the Old Bluecoat school,
Thatcham, on Sunday, May 7
Newbury Weekly News