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Holy Trinity Lunchtime Concert\u00a0\u00a0 Wednesday June 5\u00a0\u00a0 Kenneth Roberts\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Glorious sunshine on Wednesday lunchtime surely tempted everyone towards the beach.\u00a0Not music-lovers though.\u00a0 They were hieing towards Holy Trinity Church where the first of 2013’s Wednesday lunchtime concerts featured Hastings’ own latter-day Toscanini ( Tosca who?).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kenneth Roberts is well-known as a conductor, but his presenting and educational activities are probably less familiar.\u00a0 A taste of these in his programme of French piano music provided his listeners with a musical treat.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0He told how from the Romantic era (1830-1900) onwards\u00a0 no Fremch composers wrote mammoth works such as the symphonies and operas of Germany’s Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and the rest.\u00a0 French musicians tended to work on a more intimate scale – music for the drawingroom rather than the concert-hall or stage.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Opening with the familiar Debussy’s Clair de Lune <\/i>Kenneth led us into the Victorian drawing-room with Chaminade’s Automne, <\/i>one of the few female composers of the past still heard today.\u00a0 For his set on the theme of nostalgia, Kenneth chose the composer with whm he has a special rapport, Francis Poulenc, with his Pastourelle,\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i>and dance music from the little-known Grovlez and Emmanuel Chabrier, the latter whose orchestral rhapsody Espana <\/i>\u00a0is a TV regular.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies No 1 <\/i>is one of the many ‘I know the tune but I haven’t a clue what it’s called’ melodies, and further works from Poulenc and Debussy including the latter’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair <\/i>concluded a delightful and thought-provoking ‘I wish I’d practised more but it was all those scales and arpeggios that put me off’ programme.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Deputy Mayor Cllr Bruce Dowling and several professional musicians expressed their pleasure and wished the organisers Good Luck for the series.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Marrion Wells <\/b><\/p>\n
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Holy Trinity Lunchtime Concert\u00a0\u00a0 Wednesday June 5\u00a0\u00a0 Kenneth Roberts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Glorious sunshine on Wednesday lunchtime surely tempted everyone towards the beach.\u00a0Not music-lovers though.\u00a0 They were hieing towards Holy Trinity Church where the first of 2013’s Wednesday lunchtime concerts featured Hastings’ … Continue reading