Abingdon School was treated to another amazing concert by students of the Music Department who showed how much they have achieved in their studies this year with a selection of small ensemble work.
Held in the Charles Maude Room on the 22nd January 2012, the students played to a packed audience showing great skill and confidence.
The star performance of the evening was the wonderful Hymnus by Klengel that was performed by twelve of Valerie Findlay’s cellos as seen above. This made for both a marvellous visual spectacle as well as an aural feast, with the rich, ever-changing textures that the composer develops through sublime music with its shifting tonalities and melodic phrases, adroitly passed from one cellist to the next.
Another ensemble was the oboe trio of Henry Binning, Sam Gibb and William Haines, who performed Mozart’s own Variations on his Theme, La ci darem la mano from Marriage of Figaro, followed by Powning’s Ragtime, a suitably contrasting jazzy piece. The second half of the concert featured a clarinet ensemble in a movement of a Mozart Serenade, arranged by our clarinet teacher, Tim Payne, for clarinet sextet. This was a lovely performance of lyrical, cantabile playing. The Saxophone Quartet of Adam Parkes, Jamie Blackwell, Jeffrey Hang and Max Robinson also entertained us with Neilhouse’s Taking a Chance, rhythmically tight in its syncopated style.
We were reminded in these three woodwind ensembles of the tremendous support that we get from our parents at Abingdon. Each of the ensembles had special instruments that had been purchased as a result of the fund-raising of our parents – a Cor Anglais, a Bass Clarinet and an Eb Clarinet and, in the saxophone ensemble, a Baritone Saxophone. All of these would be beyond the purchasing power of individuals, but it is wonderful for the boys to have access to them to use in the department.
The concert’s other offerings embraced a great deal of variety; a viola quartet, a couple of violin trios, three string quartets (music by Wesley, Haydn and Dvorak), two piano trios (Mozart and Gurlitt) and a piano quartet (Seitz), all coached and masterminded by our Head of Strings, Mariette Pringle.
Our thanks to the boys for a most stimulating evening of music and to their teachers for all that dedicated work! We have ten ensembles in the National Chamber Festival, something the school can really be proud of – good luck to them all!
