Out & About July 2017

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... we’ve all got the music in us
With bookings for the annual
Newbury Spring Festival of
classical music opening earlier
this month, (it’s encouraging to
note that 11 of this year’s concerts are already
fully-booked), this is perhaps an appropriate
time to briefly highlight the transforming power
of classical music.
Benjamin Zander, the famous conductor,
teacher and author believes everyone loves
classical music, it’s just that a lot of people
haven’t found out about it yet.
A powerful and moving illustration of his
approach to musical appreciation is available
in a TED (Technology, Education, Design) talk
he gave to an audience of 1,600 people in
California in 2008.
This short video has been viewed by more than
eight million people and is available on Youtube
).
It is well worth watching, and includes an
insightful analysis of Chopin’s popular E minor
prelude op. 28 No. 4 (movie buffs will recognise
it from The Pianist and Jack Nicholson’s
rendition in Five Easy Pieces).
The revealing and novel
way in which Zander
deconstructs the first few
notes of the Chopin
prelude for the musical
layman is fascinating.
Incidentally, the first
musical example featured
in the talk is Mozart’s
Sonata in C major K545.
As well as the Newbury
Spring Festival, residents in the Newbury
area are also well-served with classical music
through Southern Sinfonia.
Based in Somerset and rural Berkshire,
Southern Sinfonia recently celebrated its 25th
anniversary. They play a diverse and exciting
repertoire and present world-class
performances of the highest quality across
the South of England, all year round.
They firmly believe everyone deserves the
opportunity to experience classical music and
this conviction has led to a thriving Education
and Outreach programme, which works with
more than 6,000 local school children and
young adults a year.
Southern Sinfonia is currently hosting a
series of lunchtime Café Concerts at the Corn
Exchange, Newbury and their next concert is
on Friday, April 21.
My take on the classical music world from a
local perspective would not be complete
without a brief mention of the British composer,
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956).
Finzi is best known as a choral composer,
but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale
compositions include the cantata Dies natalis
for solo voice and string orchestra, and his
concertos for cello and clarinet. He lived locally
for a number of years at Ashmansworth Farm,
near Newbury.
Eclogue, composed in 1929, is a comparatively
modest movement for piano and strings and
was the slow movement of an unfinished piano
concerto that Finzi had begun in 1927-8 and
which he continued to work on until 1953. He
twice revised it, but after the abandonment of
the piano concerto was content to leave it as a
single movement.
Nevertheless it was not performed in the
composer’s lifetime, and the title was given to
it by Finzi’s executors.
Its calm serenity and quintessential
Englishness is typical of the composer’s
slow movements.
Eclogue continues to ascend Classic FM’s
annual Hall of Fame top 300 and is at number
101 in the 2017 list.
Interestingly, three out of the top five
compositions in Classic FM’s 2017 Hall of
Fame list are by English composers.
The single most popular piece of music is The
Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Also by the same composer and at number
three is Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis.
Elgar’s Enigma Variations is in fourth spot.
A great vote of support for English composers
and although Eclogue may not be in Classic
FM’s top 100, (at least not yet), it is nonethe-
less an excellent example of the transforming
effect of classical music.
For more information about the Newbury Spring
Festival turn to p37 and for a chance to win a pair
of tickets to see Voces8 plus a pre-concert dinner at
The Crown & Garter turn to p40
Gerald Finzi
Mozart