My first walk along the seafront since last September was a gusty one.
There's a lot of air down there on a day like today. Which I thought was a
good, contrived way of introducing the idea of wind instruments - Ensemble
Concertante are four clarinets, which I don't see often among the piano,
violin, cello and vocal music.
They
began with an arrangement of the first movement of William Boyce's Symphony
no. 1. Wonderful. I must upgrade my old cassette to a CD, it's been that
long since I listened to him. Baroque decoration in four parts. I wouldn't have
minded the whole symphony but Ensemble Concertante offer variety and the
programme moved on.
The French
Suite by Yvonne Desportes was recognizably that, and C20th and thus
'impressionistic' in its evocation of light, and perhaps Ravel. During
sunlight, at lunchtime, the stained glass casts its colours onto the stone wall
but the music
At times,
in different ways, both this and the Khasene March evoked Sidney
Bechet's 'enormous yes' without the group quite moving into the jazz that their
instruments do the flailing bits of so well. And the big one was a bass
clarinet not a saxophone's uncle.
The
composer Matthew Holloway was there to hear his Scherzo, more
contemporary, stop-start and proof enough that the Ensemble are ensemble, with
excellent timing and togetherness.
We were kindly
put out of our anxities about where we had heard one of the two Gounod pieces
before, Marche funebre d'une marionette, and the answer was Hitchcock
Presents. Such was the blend of musical genres and between known and new.
The Dansa
Latino di Maria del Realby Patrick Hiketick wasn't quite as Latin as the French
Suite was French but provided a salsa finale to complete a real excursion
into the potential of what is a lightly niche instrument but, wait, tonight's
concert on the wireless is Brahms and Stephen Hough and all clarinet so perhaps
it's World Clarinet Day and I didn't know.
After the
morning wind and the lunchtime sunlight, it was quite severely raining at
leaving time so a few minutes of stained glass and remembering George Villiers,
1st Duke of Buckingham, who was assassinated a few yards up the road in 1628,
was enough to wait for it to stop, do my bit as a typical Southsea Remain
Waitrose customer and come home to see the fruits of my best investment
decision of the week- not to put the life savings on Paisley Park in the
Stayers Hurdle. Swerving horse racing is saving me a fortune.
Thanks very much to Ensemble Concertante for an enlightening performance
and Portsmouth Live! for being there. Maybe we can have the whole Boyce
symphony one day.