Reviews

Performers in this excellent concert in St John's Church last night were Jodi Marshall (flute), Vanessa Smart (flute), Alexandra Swift (oboe), Chris Willey (oboe and organ), Elizabeth Cheng (clarinet), Jocelyn Retter (clarinet), Ashley Sarangi (horn), Justin Coombs (bassoon) and Daryl Shippey (piano) - nine young people in whom academic attainment runs parallel to clearly demonstrated artistic achievement.

A quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn opened the concert with Ibert's Trois Pièces Brèves, showing the melifluous contrast of the wind instruments.  Two flutes and piano were the trio for Cimarosa's Concerto in G major, the composer who was the trail-blazer for Rossini with his seventy-six operas.

After the interval the audience greatly enjoyed Three British Folk Tunes arranged by Andrew Gant. Bobby Shaftoe, the Ash Grove (given as a solo by Chris Willey), and ending with the counting song This Old Man. Saint-Saëns' Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano, by differences of tempi and orchestration clearly evinced both Scandinavian and Russian folk idiom. A brilliant contrast was given by Chris Willey who laid aside his oboe and played the organ, reverberating Keswick's elegant parish church with Cesar Franck's Chorale no. 3 in A minor.

It was probably Rimsky-Korsakov's Quintet in B flat for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano, where Daryl Shippey had brilliant work to do, that gave an answer to the musical public's increasing interest in the eponymous wind ensemble. As well as the avuncular tones of Justin Coombs' bassoon underwriting the woodwind tonality, the composer provided for short cadenzas for the flute, clarinet and horn. This demonstrates the woodwind's differing colour, tonality and appeal as an ensemble, while the demands of the recording studio have sought, if anything, to subsume the woodwinds into a more homogeneous orchestral sound within the confines of the symphony orchestra for the apparent benefit of the tape and disc, but certainly not the concert platform or the church nave. The gifted ensemble played in St Martin's Church, Bowness-on-Windermere before giving their Keswick concert in St John's and then went to Ulverston Parish Centre.