2006
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The year’s Tilford Bach
Festival was another great success from every standpoint – the music was
to the highest professional standard throughout, there were some outstanding musicians
in performance at every concert and the audiences were large and enthusiastic.
Add pleasant weather plus an interval where you can wander outdoors and have a
glass of champagne and the festival becomes a foretaste of the Elysium Fields.
In addition to the professional
concerts, there was a very successful music workshop for local singers, under
the direction of Laurence Cummings, culminating in a Choral Evensong in All
Saints Church on 27th May.
Here are reports of the three
main concerts.
If you sit open-mouthed watching
BBC Young Musicians and thinking how can they be so good yet so young, how
about natural talent combined with brilliant teaching. And nowhere was this
better displayed than the opening night of the 54th Tilford Bach Festival on May
26th at
The first part of the concert was a group of
recorder players known as Consortium 5, playing in consort all five types of
recorder from sopranino to bass. Much to the surprise of the audience they started
in the high musicians’ gallery and then wound their way down via the
lower balcony to the Great Hall where they played music by five different and
largely unknown composers of the Baroque period. To no one’s surprise we
were told that this was a programme that had just won them a prestigious
Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award. The half ended with J.S.Bach’s cantata
Susser Trost BWV 151 played and sung beautifully by flute soloist Gabriel
Poynton and soprano soloist Siona
Stockel.
In the second half some
of the recorder consort combined with the strings of the R.A.M.B.O and singers
for a performance of Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri. This is a choral
work that deserves to be heard more than it is. It consists of six Easter
meditations in the style of the twelve stations of the cross, but dwelling upon
six parts of Jesus’ body on the cross. The combination of strings and the
tenor recorders produced an unusual and poignant sound appropriate to the words
and the feeling of such a work. And to add a little pressure for the young
musicians most of them were due to give a recital in the following week as part
of their final exams. It was no surprise to hear later that they all passed.
Pete
Wisbey
It was
like a family concert, the London Handel Players being so familiar to the
regular Tilford Bach audiences. But
few families can boast such a stunning line-up of world-class musicians as this
ensemble, led by the Society’s co-directors Laurence Cummings and Adrian
Butterfield on harpsichord and violin, with
The
evening began and ended with sparkling flute concertos by Telemann and Quantz,
admirably suited to demonstrate Rachel Brown’s sensitive playing in
lyrical movements and breathtaking agility in the fast ones. Rachel has spent some time in
Research
was also needed for the fascinating Violin Concerto by Montanari, which Adrian
Butterfield tracked down by contacting the composer’s only
biographer. The lively fugue had
some highly original effects and contrasted dramatically with the stark unison
playing that followed it, while the finale was a fitting vehicle for
Of
course, given the names of the ensemble and the festival, there had to be works
by Handel and Bach. Handel was
represented by a highly theatrical trio sonata – cunningly arranged for
six players – and Laurence Cummings gave a masterly performance of
J.S.Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in E. The concert closed to thunderous
applause from an appreciative audience, some of whom had travelled all the way
from
Rosemary
Wisbey
The final concert of a
TBS Festival is traditionally a climactic event, featuring choral works and a
greater number of performers than the earlier concerts. The programme for this
year’s final concert was equally climactic but slightly different in that
there was no major choral work on offer, more a fascinating programme of motets
and arias, a major international performer and a bonus item of a Bach organ
piece.
James Bowman is almost a legend,
being the singer who re-awakened the world to the beauty of the counter-tenor
voice. It was therefore a great boon for the audience to hear this most
distinguished of singers and enjoy his rendering of two Handel arias,
accompanied by the London Handel Orchestra under Laurence Cummings.
The Pegasus chamber choir was
making its debut at a festival but was already well known and greatly
appreciated by the TBS. This choir of young singers, that started life in
Their delivery at this concert
was outstanding – two motets by Bach, which started the concert, plus the
closing piece described below. They were accompanied by the London Handel
Orchestra. Almost all of Bach’s choral music is extremely demanding and
requires that an entire choir be well trained and highly musical. Pegasus sing
with a confidence and power that displays both these qualities. Their
performance at the end of the concert after singing Bach’s Singet dem
Herr ein neues Lied drew rapturous applause from a highly responsive audience.
The society was again
deeply indebted to Laurence Cummings for planning and staging the concert and
his intense involvement and performance in every item – musical direction
of all the items, harpsichord accompanist, concert organ accompanist and, not
least, church organ soloist. The additional item mentioned above was a
wonderful, powerful delivery of a Bach prelude and fugue. Laurence Cummings is
a musician of quite extraordinary versatility and unlimited energy and the
final concert of this year’s festival was yet another triumph for him and
all his performers.
Ian Sargeant
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