Celebrating a decade of support from Furley Page Solicitors, this year’s Lunchtime Concert season got off to an heraldic start with a visit from the award-winning trombone quartet, Bones Apart.
A well-conceived programme blended an array of musical styles, all inspired by the works of Shakespeare, ranging from the Baroque to Bernstein. Three movements from Purcell’s The Fairie Queen opened the concert, including a light-footed arrangement of the ‘Chaconne.’ There was also some warm, lyrical playing in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the melody originally appearing in the French horn in the orchestral version here beguilingly played by Jayne Murrill.
The group showed their sassier side with Duke Ellington’s jazzy Such Sweet Thunder, which had the group demonstrating a deft, rhythmic jazz feel and crafted wah-wah mute-playing, all solidly underpinned by Lorna Macdonald. The ensemble then showed some astonishingly deft playing in Tchaikovsky’s incidental music to Hamlet.
Written for an RSC production, Jason Carr’s Poem Unlimited combined five separate motives, each reperesenting one aspect of Polonius’ famous pompous litany of theatrical characteristics, where each facet – comedy, historical, romance, tragedy – was given a separate thematic idea, all woven together. The piece had great rhythmic vitality and some richly colourful sonorities.
A luminary of British jazz, the late John Dankworth’s ‘If Music Be The Food of Love,’ demonstrated a wonderfully lyrical, jazz flavour in an arrangement by Helen Vollam, apparently done with the blessing of the great man himself who came to hear its first performance: an accolade indeed.
The group finished with two pieces from Bernstein’s West Side Story; ‘One Hand, One Heart’ had a rapt audience holding its breath as the group wove a magically lyrical portrayal of the doomed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, an intimacy then thoroughly and riotously dispelled with ‘Gee, Officer Krupke,’ which was brash, lightning-fast and delivered with great panache, awash with glissandi to the delight of an enthralled crowd.
The players were on magnificent form, demonstrating some virtuosic skills combined with instinctive ensemble playing that had the four players working as one. A magnificent way to begin the new season and to celebrate ten years of music-making with Furley Page: top brass.
