- Press Reviews
Unless stated otherwise, the following Reviews of 2010 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
The Royal Quartet, St Cenydd's Church, Llangennith, Saturday 17 July
Rian Evans, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 July
The Warsaw-based Royal Quartet have made their mark in Britain in recent years, notably as BBC Radio 3 Young Generation artists. Yet, in this opening concert of the Gower festival, the pressures of being such a busy and sought-after ensemble seemed to be showing.
Initially, the expressive slow introduction to Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, K.465 in C major, augured well, but after that, the playing was distinctly uneven, with extremes of dynamic exaggerated as though this were Beethoven rather than Mozart.
The Royal players sounded more attuned to the edgy tension of Shostakovich's Quartet No 7 in F sharp minor, Op 108, making the spare lines of the Lento raw and angst-ridden. After the incisive fugue and the ironic inflections of the waltz, the relative acquiescence of the final bars carried a sense of stoic resignation rather than resolution.
The quartet's most passionate advocacy was reserved for Grieg's rarely heard Quartet in G minor, Op 27. The music's restlessness chimed with the Royal's intensity of delivery, and the darker timbres of viola player Marek Czech and cellist Michal Pepol added resonance. Yet perhaps most striking was the vivid highlighting of Grieg's imaginative textures and harmonies. Not everything was high drama, though, and the lilting dance rhythms of the Romanza and the saltarello of the finale had a warm and, by now, rather welcome, exuberance.
The Royal Quartet, St Cenydd's Church, Llangennith, Saturday 17 July
SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW
Izabella Szalaj-Zimak (violin)
Elwira Przybylowska (violin)
Marek Czech (viola)
Michal Pepol (cello)
Mozart, Quartet in C major K465 ‘The Dissonance' Shostakovich, Quartet no. 7 in F sharp minor, Op. 108 Grieg, Quartet no. 1 In G minor, Op. 27
I had been itching to hear the Royal Quartet from Warsaw as soon as it was announced they were to open this year's Gower Festival, The Festival has always attracted outstanding quartets (just as examples, the Skampa and the Wihan in recent years), and the acoustic of the Gower churches seerns perfectly attuned to them. Starting off with the great 'Dissonance' quartet is a pretty good test for any group, as after the mysterious early bars the lead violin really has to nail the opening phrase of the theme proper, the purest expression of soaring lyricism, but so exposed that any uncertainty could dampen the whole concert. I'm delighted to report that the Royal nailed it absolutely. That phrase creates a wonderful sense of uplift which is sustained - and sustaining - even where the music's subsequent mood darkens slightly. I don't believe Mozart wrote a finer quartet than this.
They then played Shostakovich's 7tn. I thought I knew this extraordinary work fairly well, but I didn't. The Royal found things in it and ways of conveying them that I never knew were there. As soon as I got home I fished out my much-admired old Borodin Quartet recording, which remains a favourite, but I really felt the Royal's performance had more. There was a virtuosic fury of lament in the middle, disconcerting cries and bell-tollings earlier, and a clear articulation of those sections where the quartet divides into pairs and threes, wistful and haunting. Dare I say they made it sound Polish? They gave the closing passages, where the work's opening material regathers, a certain chilly serenity.
Rather a shame, then, that they chose to conclude the concert with Grieg's quartet, not showing to best advantage in this company. It's a frustrating work, over-dependent on a rather self-conscious folksiness, with too many stop-start scurryings detracting from the more interesting and intimate sequences. Nonetheless, it was worthwhile hearing it, as it's such a rarity, and the Royal made about as persuasive a case for it as could be imagined. The reception was as warm as usual for the Gower Festival, a marvellous fortnightly summer event, hidden almost from general view like the beautiful village churches that host it.
Neil Reeve
Musical glimpse of a forgotten world
Swansea Bach Choir, All Saints Church, Oystermouth, Sunday 18 July
In the second half the choir and soloists performed Brahms's Liebeslieder Waltzes, 24 short love songs of varied mood, but mostly light-hearted, one irresistibly lilting melody after another. It was easy to see how a faint erotic frisson would have contributed to the popularity of part-singing in otherwise tightly-buttoned middle-class Victorian homes – especially if the Victorians could sing with as much joyful panache as we heard at All Saints'.
NHR
Gifted performers were inspiring
Sara Trickey and Tom Poster, St Illtyd, Ilston, Tuesday 20 July
The Gower Festival faithful braved the be-swamped lIlston car parks to hear the hugely gifted young violinist Sara Trickey, and her equally accomplished pianist partner Tom Poster, in a rich and varied programme.
Their opening Beethoven sonata was vigorous and spacious. They then played Schumann's first violin sonata, it used to be thought Impossible to approach Schumann's late music without scouring it for sights of his impending insanity. Nowadays, performers such as these two tend to be more enthusiastically alert to the new directions he was striking out.
The Latin sultriness of Saint-Saens's Havanaise helped us forget the Welsh weather for a while, and they concluded with Elgar's fine sonata, a work composed 70 years after Schumann's, but In much the same spirit, ful! of edgy, searching beauty. The sympathy and balance between the performers was quite perfect, the playing clear, fresh and inspiring.
NHR
Great guitarist's set shone
Morgan Szymanski (guitar), St Mary’s Church, Pennard, Wednesday 21 July
The vogue for Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla continues unabated, and he was represented here by two pieces: Primavera Porteńa and La Muerte Del Angel. Further works by Iannarelli (born in Italy but now living in Mexico) and the Brazilian guitarist Paulo Bellinati completed a breathtaking tour of South American music.
Szymanski turned with equal sensitivity and verve to the British composer Alec Roth. Four delightful movements — together entitled Cat Dances — brought smiles both to guitarist and audience alike. Finally, the sublime Recuerdos De La Alhambra by Tarrega was the perfect encore and, unable to resist Szymanski's infectious joy, the rain cleared.
RFD
Double treat from top-class quartets
The Navarra Quartet and the Sacconi Quartet , St Peter’s Newton, Thursday 22 July
The Gower Festival has always attracted top-class string quartets, but to have two of the best young ones — the Navarra and the Sacconi — at once was a double treat. And what a treat of a programme — beginning with the sextet Prelude to Richard Strauss's opera Capriccio. All Strauss's late music — he was 78 when he wrote this in 1942 — has an otherworldly beauty with a profound lament for the war-ravaged European tradition at its heart. Wonderfully expressive.
Brahms was of course at the centre of that tradition: the richly sonorous B flat Sextet shows as well as any of his works the imposing of classical restraint upon deep and almost intolerable Romantic passion. Then, talking of rich sonorities, the two groups came fully together for the Mendelssohn Octet. If Strauss was 78, Mendelssohn was 16 when he wrote this — so young and so little to learn. It's hardly equalled anywhere for the marvellous accelerating flow of fresh ideas from beginning to end. The two quartets played and blended superbly and showed a visible delight in doing so.
NHR
A delightful trio
Sitkovetsky Piano Trio at St Cenydd Church, Llangennith, Friday 23 July
The simple beauty of the 12th Century church of St Canydd Is a long way (geographically and culturally) from the grandeur of central Europe, and Indeed from Shanghai and Moscow.
But all such distinctions were transcended by the Srtkovetsky Piano Trio, Ied by Moscow-born Alexander Sitkovetsky, along with Shanghai-bom pianist Wu Qian and British cellist Richard Harwood, playing trios by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms.
They opened with Haydn, followed by the second of Brahms' two trios, with the string playing of a particularly high order. In the Opus 49 trio by Mendelssohn, Wu Qian played with imperious authority in the opening allegro and expressive eloquence in the andante. Throughout, however, it was the perfection of ensemble that delighted.
QP
Moving music
The Gonzaga Band, St John’s Church, Gowerton, Saturday 24 July
The Gonzaga Band are a quartet made up on this occasion of soprano Faye Newton, Jamie Savan playing renaissance comets, Richard Sweeney (theorbo) and Alastair Ross (harpsichord and chamber organ).
They gave a fascinating and beautiful programme of devotional chamber music by such masters as Monteverdi and Palestrina, as welt as lesser-known names such as Maurizio Cazzatti and Chiari Margarita Cozzolani, music arranged for these "chamber" forces, though often originally written for much larger numbers.
The results had an intimacy of expression distinct from the sheer grandeur of some of the music heard in its original form.
This was an Impressive, joyous and moving evening.
GP
Young double act serves up elegant show
Laura Mitchell and Charlotte Forrest, St George’s Reynoldston, Tuesday 27 July
St George's was filled with intelligence and beauty as Laura Mitchell and Charlotte Forrest inhabited songs and settings with delightful skill and dramatic conviction. Mitchell has a striking presence whether in nave or on stage, and her voice has the clarity, colour, and finely-controlled range that marks an emerging operatic star. Accompanist Forrest also shone, her musicality and understanding always sensitively responsive to the demands of both composer and singer.
For St George a well-chosen variety of Shakespeare song was passionately performed. We were invited to lie Under the Greenwood Tree by both Thomas Arne (1710-78) and Madeleine Dring (1923-77).
We were also treated to Rachmaninov's moody Romanticism, the cross-currents of love in Schubert's Die Männer, and the poignancy of Strauss's Allerseelen. Meanwhile, Roderigo's De los Alamos Vengo, Madre received a proudly captivating performance.
Mike Franklin
A Tuneful Treat
Evelina Puzaite, St Hilary’s Church, Killay, Thursday 29 July
Even by the high standards invariably set by the Gower Festival, this was something special – another triumph for artistic director Gareth Walters. The demure young pianist, a slim pat of cool butter in her mouth, lulled us into a false sense of security with a sparkling performance of Mozart’s Piano Sonata no16 in C Major K.545, which Wolfgang himself labelled ‘for beginners’. The opening of Evellina Puzaite’s performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No13 changed everything. The daring liberties she took with her shiny Steinway showed this young Lithuanian relishing technical difficulty and the ‘Gypsy Scale’. Was it the harmonic minor scale, the augmented seconds? The audience certainly thrilled to the dynamic colour and the rhythmic passion which filled St Hilary’s. Kodaly’s Dances Of Marosszek gave no respite – almost too much excitement! If Kodaly embodied the Hungarian spirit , it was running through Puzaite’s veins and agile fingertips. Latvian Peteris Vasks’s delicate White Scenery rinsed our ears before the virtuoso brilliance of Prokofiev’s Ten Pieces. Puzaite also composes and writes short stories; in his pew her partner looked proud. Understandably – this woman is on her way.
Mike Franklin
A Polished Performance
Quartetto di Cremona, Sts. Rhidian and Illtyd, Llanrhidian, Friday 30 July
What a night! Music for summer evenings seemed damply ironic. Tuesday saw the Quartetto playing at S. Agostino on a balmy Tuscan night air in Pietrasanta; Llanrhidian laid on a dark, thin drizzle. But there was a Welsh warmth to the audience’s delight in this quartet’s superb musicality, the product of Cremona, and early Celtic settlement, and home of Guameri and Stradivari. The experimental chromaticism of Haydn’s Opera 77 No1 was magically enhanced by the dynamic alchemy of four virtuosi. Their immaculate phrasing provided a polished performance of Borodin’s popular Quartet No. 2, whose sensuous Russian themes are familiar from the musical Kismet. The Quartetto’s handling of the innovative irregularities of the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, Opera127 in E flat major was stunning – a genuine highlight of this year’s festival. The variations of the vast Adagio second movement take us close to the edge, gesturing towards exciting new musical vistas. The Cremona’s understanding of late Beethoven and the influence of his teachers unified this recital which ended with a remarkable Haydn encore.
Mike Franklin
2009 Gower Festival
The following Reviews of 2009 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
Gottlieb Wallisch, St Cenydd's, Llangennith - Saturday 18 July
The Austrian pianist Gottlieb Wallisch opened the 2009 Gower Festival with an intriguing recital in the Haydn bicentenary of Haydn's own music, interspersed with later pieces written in tribute to him by a variety of composers — including Czerny, Debussy, Ravel and Richard Rodney Bennett. The most interesting and successful of these was a work by the German late-Romantic composer Carl Reinecke, who took the finale theme from Haydn's C major Sonata — played earlier in the recital — and made something beautifully sonorous and burnished from it, without completely losing sight of its simple gaiety.Haydn wrote his majestic F minor Variations in 1793, aged 61, shortly after the woman he was secretly in love with had died. I felt Wallisch's performance found some of the work's grandeur, but perhaps not quite its anguished, elegiac quality. But the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly Haydn's E flat Sonata, a strangely exploratory piece which nonetheless exhibited all the composer's most striking characteristics — the way elements of rustic burlesque or childlike fancifulness keep infiltrating and humanising the classical order. This, and the rest of the programme, was played with crisp vigour and authority. NHR
Swansea Bach Choir All Saints', Oystermouth - Sunday 19 July
The concert was heavily Bach-dominated, starting with motets by J S arid his older relative Johann Christoph, and a group by his Venetian-influenced predecessor Schutz, all sung with great vitality and a fine sense of colour. The choral works were intermitted by the Australian cellist Pei-Jee Ng, playing one of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites. These works exploit all the instrument is capable of expressing, from sombre gravity to skittishness. Curiously, the suite was split into two parts, one for each half of the programme — an idea which might have seemed better in theory than practice — but nonetheless Pei-Jee Ng gave a compelling performance, technically assured, delicate and bracing. The concert continued with an abstractly layered work by Arvo Part, the lines of text gradually spiralling from voice to voice, and then another kind of intricacy, virtuosic rather than slow-burning: Bach's magnificent motet Singet dem Herrn. The choir and conductor John Hugh Thomas took this at a rare lick, with some loss of textual clarity, but never momentum, sending tapping feet all the way to Mumbles seafront. NHR
Henschel Quartet, Llanrhidian - Monday 21 July
The Henschel Quartet is one of the top chamber groups of our time. They produce a distinctive richness of colour and an uncanny balance — maybe it helps that three of them are siblings. Their Haydn was bright and vivacious, their Mendelssohn beautifully shaped, with its dainty scurryings and perfect classical proportion. But the real crown of this concert was the quartet from 1924 by Erwin Schulhoff, a remarkable and unaccountably neglected distillation of central European modernism, as fierce and affecting as anything by Bartok. The Henschel Quartet made an utterly compelling case for this piece, as they do for just about everything they play. NHR
Elizabeth Watts and Paul Turner, St Illtyd's, Ilston - Wednesday 22 July
A damp congregation appreciated the appropriateness of Schubert's Die Forelle as the opening song. Elizabeth Watts and Paul Turner outdid each other in sparkling playfulness, but it was the playing of the trout that focused her compassion — he was hooked as firmly as the audience. With a bell-like clarity and purity of tone, she filled the church with a voice reminiscent of Lucia Popp in its warming richness and colourful agility. Her career continues to blossom and there was a springtime emphasis in her choice of Schubert's lieder. Watts is a fine lyric soprano inhabiting every nuance of the lyrics she sings, her immaculate diction and phrasing alert to every dramatic effect. As the rain raged outside, it was Walpurgisnacht in llston; with Mendelssohn's Hexenlied they brought the roaring Bracken witches' dance inside the church, relishing its gruesomeness. A wise and sensitive pianist, Turner matched her interpretive wit in Rachmaninov's sensuous romanticism. The whole recital reflected the invigorating power of youth: in the words she sang, "Let the hot sun/Shine on". Michael J Franklin
Jakob Lindberg (lute), Bethesda Chapel, Burry Green - Friday 24 July
Jakob Lindberg is one of the great European masters of the lute, whose recordings of music by composers such as Bach, the Italian Renaissance lutenists, Weiss and Dowland have gathered universal praise. To listen to him in the intimate setting of the early 19th Century Bethesda Chapel was a rare privilege. On this occasion, his programme consisted entirely of music by the great Elizabethan and Jacobean lute composers (save for an encore featuring Lindberg's own arrangement of a song by Purcell). Lindberg's command of the idiom was absolute, and his playing was thoroughly responsive to the often exquisite poetry of this repertoire. Whether in the dignified melancholy of pavans by Daniel Bachelor and John Danyel, or in the charmingly atmospheric Fairy Round by Anthony Holborne, this was playing of great beauty. Perhaps predictably, it was the music of John Dowland which provided the highlights, in the chromatic writing of Farewell Fancy, that wonderful nocturne Mr Dowland's Midnight and the complex inventiveness of Fantasia. GP
The Galliard Ensemble, St Teilo's Church Bishopston - Monday 27 July
"Why dost thou not go to Church in a Galliard, and come home in a Coranto?" asks Sir Toby. We did at St Teilo's, and the exuberance of this ensemble, named after the high-leaping dance, certainly put a spring in our step. Five wind players at the peak of their powers reflected the galliard's five steps, or sinkapace, and their dynamic performance of the lively syncopations of Gyorgy Ligeti's Six Bagatelles delighted everyone. Having worked with Ligeti as students, their insight into his avant-garde experimentation with folk rhythms and tonality produced a definitive reading. Nielsen's Quintet was at the heart of their recital, and they superbly communicated his deep understanding of the potential of each instrument and his playful references to the musical personalities of his Copenhagen wind-players. Samuel Barber's impressionistic Summer Music also showcases virtuosity, and we were rewarded with impressive individual and ensemble depictions of sunlit languor and love. Michael J Franklin
The Badke Quartet, St Peter's Church, Newton - Tuesday 28 July
The Badke Quartet were a revelation at St Peter's. Their flawless and sensitive music-making reveals that mutual respect and dedicated attention to each other's playing which lies at the heart of any great quartet. This was beautifully illustrated in their performance of Mozart's Hoffmeister quartet, where the Alegretto's subtle dialogues between pairs of instruments were handled with memorable felicity. The intense harmonies of the opening Adagio were conveyed by the Badkes with incisive intelligence, recalling the enigmatic lyricism of Beethoven's last quartet, Op. 135. If Mendelssohn's and Schumann's Romantic experimentation was founded on the radical interiority of Beethoven, it was the interpretative brilliance and exuberant playing of the Badke Quartet that reminded us of the irresistible energies of their chamber music. Michael J Franklin
Bartholomew LaFollette, St George's, Reynoldston - Wednesday 29 July
The young American cellist Bartholomew LaFollette is certainly an artist to watch. Although only a recent graduate of the Guildhall School, he is already an assured and engaging performer, with a wide tonal range and a fine sense of the shape of a work. His recital plans for the Gower Festival were disrupted by the late withdrawal, through illness, of his original accompanist, but pianist Alison Rhind stepped superbly into the breach, and they played as tightly together as if they had rehearsed for months. A sonata by Poulenc had a characteristically Gallic mix of half-light suavity and chirruping badinage, while Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, an arrangement of his Pulcinella ballet-music, was a striking blend of classical restraint and fiery virtuosity that left the cellist's bow almost in tatters. But the crown of the recital was a magnificent performance of Beethoven's great A major sonata, a work which supports some wonderfully delicate tracery. Both played with a combination of sweetness and power: a joy to hear. NHR
Respectable Groove, St Gwynour's Church, Wernffwrdd - Thursday 30 July
Approaches to early music have changed profoundly in recent years. An excessive reverence for authenticity and a rather puritanical idea of correctness have given way to greater freedom, with performers investing the music more fully with their own personalities. This is the method of Respectable Groove — made up of harpsichordist David Gordon, recorder player Evelyn Nallen, bassist Oli Hayhurst and percussionist Tom Hooper. The main work in their concert was David Gordon's instrumental paraphrase of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, full of wit but not without some depth of feeling too, jazz rhythms and folk phasing in dialogue with Purcell's score. Gordon is a formidable musician and his abilities as an improviser are striking, as are those of Hayhurst and Hooper. Nallen played her way through the family of recorders and delivered some of Purcell's melodic lines with affecting grace and expressiveness. The results were always intriguing and often memorable. GP
Llyr Williams, St Cenydd's, Llangennith - Friday 31 July
This year's Gower Festival closed at a packed Llangennith Church with an eagerly awaited, utterly thrilling recital by Llyr Williams. He is a deeply intellectual pianist — which is not to say his playing lacks emotion. Rather, every note, every phrase has been thought out and precisely weighted, and then re-infused with warmth, life and colour, almost as a strange new discovery. Isn't this how it should be? The result, in this seriously heavyweight programme, was some Mendelssohn by turns sonorous, massive and balmy, a Beethoven sonata beautifully shaped, even where it might have been a touch more animated, and one of the best performances of Chopin's four Scherzi that I have ever heard or ever expect to hear. Completely masterful. Llyr Williams may seem a little too forbidding to qualify as a national treasure, but for my money he is one of the finest artists modern Wales has produced, and to hear him on this form was a rare privilege. NHR
2008 Gower Festival
The Independent, 30 July 2008
Can there be a more charming and intimate chamber music series anywhere in Britain than the Gower Festival? It takes place on the beautiful peninsula west of Swansea during the last fortnight of every July, and has just completed its 32nd year. The concerts are all given in the local medieval churches; discovering these is a treat in itself- Ilston with its bat colony and kingfisher stream, Cheriton in a dip, with the grave of Freud's disciple Ernest Jones, Llandewi surrounded by farmyards, Oxwich hidden in woods, on the point almost out to sea, Llanrhidian fronting its sweep of salt marsh, its sheep and cockle pickers. Coastal air and light pervades everything, the sun usually manages to shine., wine appears by magic in the intervals, clouds scud, marram grass rustles. As for the concerts: the festival has a great knack, largely owing to the skills and instincts of music director Gareth Walters, of showcasing brilliant young performers before they become famous — in recent years, the Belcea Quartet, the Australian guitarist Craig Ogden, the violinist Alina Ibragimova, and further back, an unknown bass-baritone from North Wales called Bryn Terfel. Other exciting Welsh talents have featured - the extraordinary pianist Llyr Williams, harpist Catrin Finch, cellist Thomas Carroll - and the roll-call of established international stars is equally impressive. Especially the string quartets, always among the highlights of the fortnight: the very best are attracted down to enjoy the light, the acoustics and the warmth of their reception so much as to want to return - the Wihan, the Skampa, the Salomon, the Brodsky. This year we had the Allegri Quartet, supplemented by an extra viola and cello, performing Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht in its sextet form, the last word in lush fin-de-siecle harmonic twist and melt, a tension of anguish and rapture that kept the audience as still as if they were nailed down. The enterprising festival committee, no doubt foreseeing such enforced paralysis, have started marketing and selling their own-logo foam cushions, just the thing for a Victorian-issue pew not designed for the enjoyment of sitting. People stream through the porch waving them at each other. The Prazak Quartet the previous week had provided breathless passions of their own in Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata quartet, with its rat-like scuttlings around a ghostly ballroom, thrillingly played, before releasing us back to grateful comfort with some late Dvorak. Another highlight was Ashley Wass's performance of Elgar's own piano transcription of the Enigma Variations, giving its musical logic and grandeur a freshly austere focus, like a black-and-white film. But perhaps most perfectly suited to the atmospheres of the venues are the singers: sopranos from recent festivals such as Mary Nelson, Elin Manahan Thomas and Lucy Crowe, the mezzo Wendy Dawn Thompson, and, this year, in the church at Ilston, the not-yet-well-enough-known Anna Stephany, performing Schumann's notoriously difficult Frauenliebe und Leben with real commitment and authority. The applause sent those bats on a wild whirl through the ancient beams.
N. H. Reeve Swansea
The following Reviews of 2008 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
Swansea Bach Choir: All Saints' Church, Oystermouth – Sunday 13 July
The Swansea Bach Choir, directed by John Hugh Thomas, sets and maintains high standards — standards it certainly lived up to in the opening concert of this year's Gower Festival.
The programme put the emphasis on a cappella works from Scandinavia; listening to them, one was struck both by their indebtedness to the North German tradition, and, in some cases, by their affinity with the work of English music of the early part of the 20th Century. The afternoon opened with a chorale-like work by the Swede Anders Ohrwall, and closed with folk-song settings by Hugo Alfven. In between, the highlights included two of Grieg's moving Four Psalms, written at the very end of his life, and inventive, distinctively beautiful works by contemporary composers Sven David Sandstrom and Thomas Jennefelt.
Interspersed were organ works by Leo Sowerby, played with pleasing clarity by Glen Crooks, and an engaging performance of Bozza's splendid Image played by flautist Nicola Loten. GP
Prazak Quartet, Llanrhidian – Tuesday 15 July
The Gower Festival has been graced in recent years by some of the finest string quartets in Europe: the Wihan, the Skampa, the Belcea - and now the Prazak Quartet from Prague, no less glorious. From the opening bars of Haydn's Frog quartet you could hear the wonderful burnished quality Czech string players conveying it so naturally.
The centrepiece of the concert was Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata quartet of 1923. Most of Janacek's most celebrated works were composed when he was well into his 60s, which gives hope to many of us, but they are hardly an advert for serenity, the music here was almost frighteningly intense and tragic, with ghostly fragments of dance, rat-like scuttlings and cries of anguish.
Everyone was completely wrung out by the end. But for real serenity one can always turn to Dvorak's late quartets, full of the warmth and brightness of things still growing. The Prazaks played his opus 106 with consummate musicianship, perfect balance and infectious joy. A triumph. NHR
Lucy Wakeford Trio, St. Teilo's, Bishopston – Wednesday 16 July
Although Bishopston stream is amazingly dry and St Teilo's has lost its pipe organ, the hidden Kittle Cwm was magically repopulated with Celtic water nymphs courtesy of William Alwyn's unashamedly romantic fantasy Naiades and the virtuoso playing of harpist Lucy Wakeford and flautist Siobhan Grealy.
Inspired by Alwyn's beloved River Blyth, its mixture of meditative intensity and technical intricacy inspired a brilliant performance of this undeservedly neglected work. The whole programme - with works spanning the centuries from Telernann's delicate Trio Sonata in F to Toru Takemitsu's tribute to Emily Dickinson, And then I Knew 'twas Wind — was both well-chosen and cleverly interwoven, fusing the traditional with the impressionistic in harmonic and filmic evocations of water and rustling reeds.
French music proved a revelation to Takemitsu and accordingly the real highlights of the evening lay in the psychological tensions of Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp and Skaila Kanga's artful arrangement of Ravel's Sonatine.
Here Fiona Bond's practised blend of control and spontaneity complemented the impressionist harmonies which lingered under the hammer-beam roof of St Teilo's. Michael J Franklin
Alina Ibragimova and Cedrlc Tiberghien, St George's, Reynoldston - Thursday 17 July
Arriving early we spotted the slight figure of Alina Ibragimova, her 1738 Guarneri safely on her back, wandering through the lanes like a schoolgirl returning home. But the education she was shortly to give, together with her exciting duo partner Cedric Tiberghien, captivated the Reynoldston audience.
After exploring the subtle colours of Beethoven's versions of pastoral in his Op. 96 Violin Sonata, these powerful champions of Karol Szymanowski provided a world-class performance of the Polish composer's early D minor Sonata. Its lyrical sensitivity and intense individuality reflected those qualities in its charismatic interpreters, whetting an appetite for his maturer compositions. Szymanowski's search for new musical structures was apparent in Mythes. The technical innovation of its first tone poem. La Fountaine d'Arethuse, obviously attracted Ibragimova as it had Bartok, and an erotic charge of mythic mystery inhabited St George's. With Szymanowski's Three Paganini Caprices. Op. 40, we returned to more reassuring ground, but this piece — like Ibragimova and Tiberghien — still has power to disconcert. These performers take us far beyond technical perfection; they will continue to amaze. Michael J Franklin
Rose Consort of Viols, with Catherine King (mezzo soprano), St Mary's Church, Rhossili – Friday 18 July
Perhaps no instrumental sound evokes a past age more completely than that of a group of viols. From the opening bars of their first piece — a stately Pavan by Anthony Holborne — the Rose Consort of Viols spoke irresistibly of the Elizabethan worlds of theatrical, courtly and domestic music making. The rediscovery of the viol is one of the great achievements of the modern revival of early music and in the intimate surroundings of St Mary's Church in Rhossili — which, despite its 19th Century restoration, retains much sense of its mediaeval origins — one could relish the transparent textures created by the five instruments of the Rose Consort, listening to the intricate interweaving of voices in this undemonstrative, sophisticated music. Catherine King's use of Elizabethan pronunciation and the blending of her voice with the ensemble in consort songs by both the familiar (such as William Byrd) and the less familiar (such as Nathaniel Pattrick) added a further evocative dimension to a rare treat of an evening. GP
Allegri Quartet, St Peter's Church, Newton – Monday 21 July
Another quite superb concert from a Gower Festival filled with chamber performances of astonishing quality. This time we had the Allegri Quartet, augmented by a second viola (Jane Atkins) and a second cello (Caroline Dearnley).
Their opening Haydn was an attractively sprightly appetiser, but the two main courses were altogether more massive. Before he became a byword for uncompromising modernism, the 25-year-old Schoenberg wrote, in 1899, Verklarte Nacht for string sextet, a work taking lush, post-Wagner fin-de-siecle romanticism to its very limits of expressiveness. But even in the most extraordinarily intricate and passionate harmonic twists and blends, one could sense a new, sparser, more abstract musical language waiting to be born. The performance was riveting.
It was in the late music of Brahms that Schoenberg felt atonal modernism was latent, although perhaps less so in the grand G major quintet of 1890, structurally and melodically more secure than Verklarte Nacht. To hear two such works from so close in time made for a fascinating comparison. The performers gelled beautifully and brought out every last nuance of drama and mellow reflectiveness. NHR
Doric Quartet, St John's Gowerton – Thursday 24 July
That this is a vintage year for the Gower Festival was again illustrated with an intensely enjoyable concert from the prize-winning Doric Quartet. A professional blend of poise, energy and sensitive interaction was underscored by their emotionally involving investment in the music. The volatile chromatic and dramatic transitions of the Op. 18 F major Quartet were given acute articulation by their mature grasp of the powerful complexities of Beethoven's discourse. As Beethoven knew the anxieties of influence and originality, Brahms heard giant footsteps behind him, but the elaborate harmonics and relentless rhythms of Brahms's Quartet in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 proved revelatory, especially as mediated by the Doric's clarifying vision. Simon Tandree enjoyed the Allegretto's masterful foregrounding of the viola, typifying the Doric Quartet’s intelligent attention to the intricate working out of musical ideas. Their sympathetic handling of the 12-tone symmetry of Webern's 1905 Quartet, with its impassioned development of three-note
Michael J Franklin
La Follia, St David’s Church, Llandewi – Friday 25 July
Part of the charm of the Gower Festival lies in the beautiful character and setting of the churches used for its concerts.
With the festival nearing its end this year, the delightful church of St David's Llandewi was the wholly appropriate setting for a concert of early classical music given by La Follia.
Both its location and intimate size complemented the music perfectly. The group were established in 2002 and have risen quickly to become one of the leading ensembles comprising violin, recorders, cello and theorbo.
Playing on period instruments or modern copies, the ensemble achieved a wonderful balance, with each instrument complementing the others. The use of gut strings, -and some alternative tuning, helped the violin and cello blend beautifully and the softer tones of the recorder and theorbo added another dimension, especially with its low register octave of strings.
The programme comprised works from the early 18th Century and it was interesting to note the differences in style and harmony of the varied countries represented by Bach. Corelli, Handel, Leclair and others.
The night was warm and the church was full, yet any discomfort was dispelled by the magic of the playing on one of the highlight nights of a successful festival. UC
Jorge Luis Prats, St Cenydd, Llangennith – Saturday 26 July
I well remember the Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats's wonderfully flamboyant performance of Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody at a previous Gower Festival, so when I read that a hand injury had caused him to alter his Llangennith programme, I expected him to be reining himself in somewhat more than usual. No fear of that! Each of his virtuoso showpieces seemed more ferocious than the last. There was a predominant Latin flavour - the three excerpts from Granados's Goyescas were played with great spirit and character - but also Bach and Ravel with equal facility. In a way, though, the best came last, as with his encores Prats took us right back to the old school of concert pianism. He started with Liszt's transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan, no less, and then played a succession of increasingly manic, light-hearted and infectiously joyous Cuban dance improvisations, by the end of which the piano was probably wishing the hand injury had been more serious. A terrific finale to another terrific Gower Festival. NHR
The following Reviews of 2007 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
Concerto 'delle Donne, Swansea Bach Choir, All Saints' Church, Oystermouth - 14 July
The voices of Concerto delle Donne, Donna Deam, Gill Ross and Faye Newton blended with the female singers of the Swansea Bach Choir in this fascinating insight into the tradition of French religious music.
The concert's central figure was Marc-Antoine Charpentier — forgotten until the 1970s but now re-established as the greatest composer of the French Baroque,
His motets and miniature oratorios for women's voices show him developing away from Italian influence to a distinctively French musical character, short sectional contrasts and complex vocal layering producing an extraordinary combination of fervour and opulence.
The tradition was carried on by Charpentier’s successor Couperin, whose Tenebrae Lessons for two high voices, ravishingly sung in this performance, are as a musical depiction of Holy Week about as unlike his contemporary Bach’s St Matthew Passion as one could imagine.
We were also given some 19th and 20th Century works by Poulenc and Caplet, together with Faure’s beautiful Canticle de Jean Racine. In between, organist Alastair Ross played solo pieces including Dunrufle’s marvelously atmospheric Chorale Variations.
John Hugh Thomas conducted with real style and flair.
NHR
Libor Novacek, St George's, Reynoldston - 16 July
The Gower Festival has welcomed many terrific pianists in its time, but few can have made so powerful an impression as the young Czech Libor Novacek — an impression as much of his stamina as his musicianship, since he drove 200 miles from Uppingham to play an extraordinarily demanding programme at Reynoldston, and then 200 miles straight back again.
The hard-living temperament was well suited to an early Brahms sonata, full of impetuous
rhapsodic surges, and to the closing item, Debussy's Fireworks.
The piano nearly exploded. But Novacek was equally at home in gentler Mozart, and especially in Janacek's In the Mists, a kind of Czech homage to Debussy, but with its own quirky strangeness.
Novacek held nothing back – he seemed to be playing with his entire body, lungs included -and he established a charming rapport with the audience. A virtuosic triumph.
NHR
Red Priest: Pirates of the Baroque; St John the Evangelist Church, Gowerton - 17 July
The timbers of St John's were soundly shivered by the colourful virtuosity and lively stagecraft of a piratical quartet named Red Priest, in honour of the flame-haired Venetian Antonio Vivaldi.
Their talent and costumed buccaneering put both bite and barque into the baroque which they firmly believe must not be knocked but soundly rocked.
Theirs is the kind of music which takes captives and makes converts. The calm waters of Gower were transformed by tempestuous energies.
The rapid recorder-playing of Piers Adams was matched in agility by the ricochet bowing of his wife Julia Bishop, and the warm sonorities of Angela East's 1725 cello complemented the corsair continuo of creative re-arranger Howard Beach.
Performing without scores, they swaggered and swashbuckled their way through the concert with disciplined abandon.
Their theme was the rapacious pirating of musical ideas, but the irreverent skill with which they spiked the musical canon in the Adagio e spiccato of L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3, Concerto No. 11 in D minor showed them worthy of their name.
MJF
Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook, St Illtyd's, Ilston - 18 July
The Gower Festival keeps unearthing magnificent young singers, and the latest is the soprano Lucy Crowe, whose recital with the pianist Anna Tilbrook covered a wide range of period and mood.
Her voice is effortlessly powerful, clear, naturally expressive. Having warmed up with Purcell and Handel, she moved on to Schubert, Gretchen am Spinnrade and Nacht und Traume quite electrifying, and her Richard Strauss group brimmed over also with intensity of feeling.
Stepping through the porch for the interval one sensed the sunlight drawing in, the stream rustling by the shadowy churchyard.
Thank goodness the second half was lighter in mood — apart from a harrowing piece by Ivor Gurney — and towards the end she displayed a real gift for comedy and jazz as well.
Anna Tiibrook was a marvellously sensitive and discreet accompanist.
NHR
Wihan Quartet, St Teilo's Bishopston - 19 July
What is it about the Czech Republic that it produces so many superb musicians?
Whatever the reason, Gower Festival audiences have every right to be grateful —having enjoyed the talents of, first, Libor Novacek and now the Wihan Quartet, one of the very best, in the same week.
It can't be overstated how amazing it is that, for the price of a ticket to a conference or football match, you can go to a small Gower church and hear performers you would normally expect to find at Carnegie Hall.
The Wihan played Haydn's half-courtly, half rustic Lark with simple delicacy and beautifully clear articulation in the rapid finale.
Schubert's Rosamunde quartet was full of wistful dances that somehow suggested warmth and chill at the same time, and the closing item, Dvorak's opus 61 was in the hands of such masters, so mellow and burnished and seamlessly eloquent that it became just music; you hardlynoticed anyone was playing it. Nobody wanted to leave.
NHR
Acoustic Triangle, St Cenydd, Llangennith - 21 July
The Gower Festival commands a growing international reputation for the quality of its classical musicians.
In recent years the festival has developed an exciting and innovative dynamism. At the Llangennith concert last weekend, the trio Acoustic Triangle created a unique blend of sounds and improvisations drawn from a variety of musical traditions.
The melding of classical and jazz styles is seldom attempted and rarely successful but this versatile group produced a thrilling and creative programme.
The trio achieved a lyrical, almost gentle, mood with mellow saxophone, subtle double bass and sensitive piano in ‘And then she was gone’ (Simcock) and ‘Rosa Ballerina’ (Garland).
By contrast, remarkable energy and drive underpinned two numbers, Buleria (Garland) and Fundero (Simcock), both of which acknowledged strong Hispanic influences.
An extended work, Coffee Time (John Taylor) was the perfect platform for the extraordinary talent of young Welsh pianist, Gwilym Simcock.
RFD
The Vermeer Piano Trio, St Cenydd, Llangennith - 23 July
Although Colin Firth was notably absent from St Cenydd's and pear! earrings were limited to the audience, the spirit of Jan Vermeer triumphed in the subtle chromatics of the electrifying trio that bears his name.
The perfection of balance and dynamics achieved by the three superb technicians produced a sonorous synaesthesia of colour and sound.
The violinist Ruth Palmer, who received a Young British Classical Performer Brit Award in May, bows with a spell-binding intensity and was matched by the confident maturity of Naomi Williams's taut playing and rich cello tones.
Alexei Grynyuk is a powerful but sensitive pianist and there was a visible empathy between all three performers as keyboard percussiveness was captivated by the sinuous strength of strings. Nuances of mood and meaning played between composer, performers and audience in exploratory and engaging performances of the Ravel and Tchaikovsky A minor trios.
The Ravel was a late substitution, unfortunately for the billed Mendelssohn Piano Trio Op, 49, which would have provided a D minor test of dynamics.
MJF
Partita at St Cattwg's Church, Port Eynon - 24 July
No classical composer wrote for wind instruments with as much understanding and affection as Mozart. And in their Gower Festival concert at Port Eynon, the wind group Partita returned Mozart's compliment.
Besides two of his wind sextets for clarinets, horns and bassoons, they performed pieces for the same combination of instruments by Beethoven and Weber, playing throughout with a rhythmic zest and variety of colouring that was captivating.The concert was also a lesson in the advantages of playing this music on instruments of the period.
They may be more fallible and less powerful than their modern descendants, but they have a speaking quality, echoing the human voice, and a subtlety of articulation and dynamic shading which modern wind instruments perhaps lack.
Hearing them played with skill and infectious enthusiasm, and hearing the young musicians of Partita talking about their instruments, too, made for an enthralling evening's entertainment.
HD
The Henschel Quartet, Church of Saints Rhidian and Illtyd, Llanrhidian - 26 July
Like some famous German quartets of the past, the young Henschel Quartet is a family affair. Twin brothers Christof and Markus Henschel take the violin parts. Their sister Monika plays the viola. And only the cellist of the group, Mathias Beyer-Karlshj, comes from outside the family circle.
Their Gower Festival concert at Llanrhidian began appropriately with the greatest of all German composers. Beethoven. His early B flat Quartet is tuneful, witty and, in the scherzo, rhythmically teasing. But perhaps the best playing of the evening came in the very different sound world of Shostakovic"s Eighth Quartet. Written in Dresden in 1960, this music is sad, eerie and at times, violent. It evokes war and the victims of war, and the Henschels caught its mood to perfection.
They ended with a different sound world again, the 'new world' of Dvorak. Combining native American folk tunes with those of his native Bohemia, Dvorak's F major Quartet is popular and the Henschels' lively performance will have won the work new friends. Generously, they gave their audience an encore. This was their first visit to Wales — the first of many let's hope.
HD
Jennifer Pike (violin) and John Reid (piano) St Peter's Church, Newton - 27 July
The peaceful setting of St Peter's Church was invigorated with the energy of young talent at the penultimate night of the Gower Festival 2007.
Jennifer Pike (violin) and John Reid (Piano) captivated the large audience from the outset with a programme that showcased amazing virtuosity and deep musical expression.
The rapport between the musicians was evident as they opened with Schubert's Sontatina in G minor. This demanding work was performed with panache. Jennifer Pike remained technically faultless throughout the virtuosic passages of Prokofiev's Sonata No 2 in D and in the lyrical passages revealed the beautiful sound of-her rare Venetian violin. This exceptional talent proved her musical maturity and sensitivity goes far beyond her 17 years.
The second half of the concert treated the audience to Eigar’s Sonata in E minor. In this the pair displayed immense stamina and musical power, leaving the audience demanding more and, true to form, the duo finished with two explosive encores.
Kathryn Bromham
The following Reviews of 2006 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
Orchestra of the Yehudi Menuhin School: All Saints, Oystermouth – 15 July
The 2006 Gower Festival got off to a flying start with the young string players of the multi-national Yehudi Menuhin School under their conductor Malcolm Singer.
The first half of the concert was given over to Vivaldi’s complete Four Seasons, deservedly the most popular of his works, combining virtuosity, charm and power, and it was fascinating to hear it played by musicians of about the same age as those for whom it was written, the young nuns of a Venetian convent.
The performance was suitably fresh and energetic. Each season was fronted by a different violin soloist; all four were excellent, the fourth, Mari Lee, exceptional.
Later, we had some spirited Mozart and a characteristically brooding and agitated work by Peter Maxwell Davies, before the orchestra produced a fitting farewell both to the audience and to several of it’s own members who were about to leave the school, with an inspired performance of Tchaikovsky’s glorious Serenade for Strings – outstanding playing. NHR
Swansea Bach Choir: All Saints Church, Oystermouth – 16 July
In the second of this year’s Gower Festival concerts, Swansea Bach Choir, under their director John Hugh Thomas, offered a programme on the Christian theme of faith, hope and charity.
The warm acoustic of Oystermouth Church is ideal for choral music and the choir’s wide range of dynamics and colour was heard to good effect in anthems by Harris, Lauridsen, Rutter and Geraint Lewis. Three sacred pieces by Rossini, ably conducted by Katie Thomas, provided a nice contrast in style. Songs by Samuel Barber and Alan Bush were performed with wit and assurance by Elin Manahan-Thomas and the pianist John Reid. But perhaps the highlight of the concert came with two works by Hilary Tann.
Commissioned for the choir’s 40th anniversary, her splendid setting of Psalm 86 was premiered. It was followed by The Moor – mysterious, withdrawn and wonderfully sensitive to the words of R S Thomas’s poem of the same name. HD
Galliard Ensemble: St Hilary’s, Killay – 17 July
The Galliard Ensemble are a collection of superbly accomplished young wind soloists, originally from the Royal Academy of Music and known throughout Europe and, on a sweltering evening at Killay, they showed glimpses of virtually the full range of the wind quintet repertoire.
Their suave, powerful Mozart was complimented by pieces from Milhaud and Ibert, deeply evocative of the rustic, outdoor origins of wind music, perfectly suited to the views of wooded hillsides and sunset from the church porch during the interval. By contrast, the absurdly difficult Scherzo by Bozza sounded like a wood pigeon crashing into a hornet’s nest, and the concert closed with two other modern works – a brief quintettino by Part, playful and violent, and Berio’s equally playful Opus Number Zoo, complete with spoken, or rather shouted texts, cartoon animal fights alternating with some beautiful, fragmentary contemplative passages. Holst’s Wind Quintet, recently discovered and reconstructed from his sketches, was in many ways the most absorbing work of the evening, the horn and bassoon more prominent than usual, the shifts of mood rapid and subtle. Marvellous playing throughout and a delightfully convivial atmosphere. NHR
Ruth Palmer and Katya Apekisheva: St John’s, Gowerton – 18 July
Two outstanding performers, and two different musical temperaments.
First, Ruth Palmer offered a Bach partita, her violin extracting every available touch of sensibility. She plays with an extraordinary physical expressiveness, as if her soul were turned inside-out, acting out the feelings she draws from this very difficult music.
For the second piece, a Mendelssohn sonata, she was joined by Katya Apekisheva.
Her assured, fluent, strongly rhythmed piano was a fine contrasting voice. The players’ different, but complimentary, personalities were particularly evident in the agitato of the last movement.
What would happen in the Cesar Franck double sonata that formed the second half of the evening?
Better than dialogue between the two – great drama, with each player inspired by the qualities of the other.
The drama rose to a pitch of intense energy in the third and fourth movements. In the familiar last section each instrument seemed to accommodate itself to the nature of the other and this produced a finale both lyrical and assured.
As an encore the very appreciative festival audience were treated to a witty and engaging ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’. AJV
Gower Festival Lecture: Reynoldston – 19 July
Malcolm and Ruth Ridge closed their festival lecture by outlining a wish list of what would help safeguard Gower as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which it has been for 50 years. This included a distinct section of the Local Authority dedicated to Gower; an agency to enforce constraints on inappropriate development; proper rewards for the farming community to help them maintain the living landscape; tourism development sensitive to the AONB status; and, possible extension of the area north east into Upper Gower.
This wish list concluded a researched and illustrated account of the process by which Gower became, in 1956, the first AONB in England and Wales.
The Gower Society was particularly active in getting the original area of 47 square miles extended to 73 by the inclusion of Fairwood and Clyne commons and coastal areas west of Mumbles.
An excellent slide show was followed by a lively question session which included the matter of dredging off Gower. AJV
Elizabeth Watts and Paul Plummer: St Illtyd’s, Ilston – 20 July
The standard of music making at this year’s Gower Festival has been quite exceptional, but this evening at Ilston may have been the best yet.
The church absolutely rang to the voice of one of the UK’s most exciting young singers.
Elizabeth Watts seemed equally at home in English, French and German repertoire, in drawing room charm and in operatic power.
Her Mozart was graceful, her Strauss passionate, her Debussy fiery and quirkily humorous, the settings of Traherne by Elizabeth Maconchy were virtuosic and striking.
Everything was faultlessly enunciated, in four languages, and touched with a perfectly judged sense of drama – with such expressive eyes I wonder if she’s been signed up for Carmen yet?
Among many highlights were the powerful and nicely contrasted Strauss group, Britten’s strangely dark, almost sinister arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer, and the half-ironic, half-tender setting by Geoffrey Bush of a scene from Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse.
A word for Paul Plummer, whose expertly sensitive and unobtrusive accompaniments gave the singer the perfect platform to display a talent that will undoubtedly thrill many more audiences. NHR
Vertavo String Quartet: Sts Rhidian and Illtyd, Llanrhidian – 21 July
The Norwegian
all-female quartet reminded us how deeply attuned Frank Bridge was to
musical developments in Europe; an important composer in his own right, not
just the teacher of Benjamin Britten.
In this 250th anniversary year some Mozart was
obligatory, and the Vertavo's rendition of the Hunt quartet was
uncompromisingly vigorous, even rather driven at times, but with a kind of
austere delicacy in the slower, quieter passages, the cello playing
especially sensitive. The lyrical lines were beautifully shaped, the
passages of angry or ironic defiance given full measure.
The audience was torn between calling for an encore
and not wishing the impact of such a work and such a performance to be
diminished.
Martyna Jatkauskaite: St Gwynour’s Church, Blue Anchor – 22 July
Lithuanian pianist Martyna Jatkauskaite made a welcome and keenly anticipated return to the Gower Festival on Saturday, with a varied programme ranging from Scarlatti to Ligeti that allowed her to demonstrate many facets of her command of the instrument.
In the quieter moments of her recital a Scarlatti she showed subtlety and delicacy.
To one of Chopin’s more passionate Nocturnes she brought a broad romantic sweep.
This was a technically demanding programme performed with bravura and yet, despite the virtuosity and pyrotechnics, my abiding memory will be of the delicacy and restraint she brought to the Scarlatti. BC
Fidelio Piano Quartet: St
Cenydd's, Llangennith – 24 July
The Fidelio Quartet presented a well-designed and richly varied
programme, beginning with the first of Mozart's two piano quartets, a
powerful work full of tumultuous exchanges, especially in the first
movement.
The Fidelio's account of the dancing rondo, which
closes the work, was particularly good.
The Schumann Piano Quartet which followed is a work
that makes great demands on the performers - met without any difficulty
here.
The scherzo second movement and the lyrical andante
third, full of lovely string writing, were an unqualified joy.
After the interval, Faure's first quartet was like a
glass of cool champagne at the end of a hot Gower day, with its bubbling
scherzo and its sparkling closing allegro.
It all made for a richly enjoyable evening in
beautiful surroundings, much appreciated by a capacity audience. GP
Peter and Zoltan Katona: Oxwich – 25 July
The guitar duo,
twins Peter and Zoltan Katona, first visited the Gower Festival nine years
ago. On a perfect evening in Oxwich, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable
audience welcomed them back.
The evening programme began with an arrangement of a
Rossini overture. This gave a taste of the dramatic range, the percussive
and rhythmic energy and the lyrical facility of which the guitar is capable.
A Bach dance suite followed this, in all its many-voiced intricacy and
variety. A triumphant trio of dances from a Falla ballet was full of
Hispanic energy and melodrama. Falla appeared later in a stunning,
atmospheric and highly narrative series of extracts from another ballet,
displaying the wonderful energy, and artistry of the Katonas' playing. Two
other 20th Century pieces, by Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Piazzola, completed an
evening of brilliant musicianship. AJV
Gemma Rosefield and Michael
Dussek: St George's, Reynoldston – 26 July
In the intimate surroundings of Reynoldston church, the pianist
Michael Dussek and cellist Gemma Rosefield began with a powerful
interpretation of Beethoven's fourth cello sonata, and followed with
Webern's Three Short Pieces, which in such surroundings, sounded both more
approachable and more spiritual than they can in other contexts.
After Webern's terseness, Shostakovich sounded
positively garrulous in his Sonata in D minor; Michael Dussek made the most
of the clangorous writing for piano, and the mock-sinister finale was
splendid.
Finest of all was Chopin's Sonata, in which both were
perfectly attuned to the work's long melodic lines; the tone of Rosefield's
Gagliano cello of 1704 was at its most ravishing. The dancing rhythms of
David Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody and the lyricism of Mendelssohn's Song
Without Words rounded out a joyful evening. GP
The following Reviews of 2005 Gower Festival events are from the South Wales Evening Post
Laurette Pope: St Illtyd’s Church, Oxwich - 19 July
The Swansea-born harpist Laurette Pope gave a delightful recital in the seaside setting of Oxwich Church. Her technical skill and sensitivity were formidable and her enthusiasm for her instrument and its music were most warmly communicated. It is unfortunate that the repertoire for solo harp should be so thin, the problem being to find works which stretch beyond salon grace and impressionist shimmer to pose some real imaginative and interpretive questions. In the respect, while the Faure Impromptu was robust and challenging, the Sonatas by Dussek and John Parry attractively delicate, and the Fantasie by Spohr - with its reminiscences of, or borrowings from, Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata - set considerable physical demands, the most interesting music was the most modern. In their harp pieces the two Welsh composers William Mathias and Gareth Glyn, without losing sight altogether of the instrument's traditions, explored unusual sonorities and a range of harmonic and rhythmic complexity to produce a blend of old and new. It would be good for more modern composers to investigate the harp's potential, especially with such brilliant young performers as Laurette Pope to inspire them - as she has herself was inspired, as she told us, by hearing Gower Festival harpists as a girl. (NHR)
Buddug James (Mezzo-Soprano), Andrew Wilson-Dickson (Piano) and Penclawdd Primary School pupils: Penclawdd - 21 July
Buddug James is a wonderfully versatile singer (from Baroque opera to jazz). In a programme called A Celebration of Cultures as part of the Gower Festival, she presented an enterprisingly chosen sequence of folk songs, set by composers ranging from Haydn to contemporaries such as James Macmillan. She sang convincingly in at least half a dozen languages and she has the good recitalist's gift of creating a convincing character very quickly, helped by her expressive face and gestures. Her voice is particularly powerful in its lower registers and Ravel's Kaddish was especially memorable.
Andrew Wilson-Dickson's accompaniment was as impeccable as one would expect, and a particular delight came in a newly commissioned piece from him, excellently performed by choir and instrumentalists (including sweeping brush!) from Penclawdd Primary School. (GP)
Rebecca Carrington: Reynoldston Village Hall - 22 July
Rebecca Carrington conjured a wonderful evening of musical entertainment with just her own 18th Century cello and highly inventive skills. She is a fine, classically trained cellist. She has a good strong singing voice and a talent for all kinds of musical mimicry, with a sense of humour that flowers as she performs. She can make her cello mimic the sound of the bagpipes, the indian sitar, the one-string Japanese fiddle, the blues guitar and more besides. To this she adds her own parodic singing, or imitations of accompanying instruments, such as Miles Davis’ trumpet or a wah-wah trombone. Larking about with classical instruments is nothing new, but Rebecca Carrington uses her performance to showcase not only her own range and versatility but that of the often under-exploited instrument she plays. And her own compositions reveal deep feeling for diverse musical traditions. (AJV)
London Concertante: St Peter’s Church, Newton - 23 July
The London Concertante are a seven-piece string orchestra whose programme at St Peter’s was a perfectly judged demonstration of their gifts and versatility. Mozart’s early D Major divertimento had an arresting grace and beauty, a sonata by the 12 year old Rossini was full of foretastes of the liveliness and wit in his later works, and Bartok’s Romanian Dances were brought evocatively and exotically to life. Two works beautiful in other ways were Elgar’s famous Serenade for Strings, a miracle of thematic unity with a wonderfully soaring slow movement, and Samuel Barber’s even more famous Adagio, a tune of lament and consolation, played with an intensity that had the audience almost pinioned. The final work was Holst’s St Paul’s suite, full of gigs and reels and a homage to Tudor England, with the Greensleeves tune blazing out over wild figurations. A delightful concert with, unusually, an encore in each half in contrasting styles – a languid Piazolla tango, and a frantic Gypsy Rhapsody to finish, composed by one of the Concertante’s violinists – a hint of what’s to come in next Saturday’s performance by one of this group’s offshoots, Zum. (NHR)
Wendy Dawn Thompson: St John’s Church, Gowerton - 27 July
The young New Zealand-born mezzo-soprano Wendy Dawn Thompson was a finalist at this year's Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and showed why in her superb recital at St John's. She was completely at home in a considerable variety of styles, ranging from some of Schubert's more mournful lieder to the brittle after-hours cabaret wit of William Balcom. Her rendition of Schubert's Der Musensohn was full of irresistible gaiety. Passion and vulnerability came through equally strongly in a Richard Strauss group, and she switched without strain to the French repertoire, some Debussy and three exquisite songs by the under-valued Reynaldo Hahn. The emotional character of each piece was effortlessly inhabited, and she sang with an infectious enjoyment as well as great feeling and musicianship - an opera star of the future.
Her accompanist, Lindy Tennent-Brown, also from New Zealand, was a perfect foil, her playing subtly complementing the singer and often reaching tremendous heights of dramatic expressiveness. Rarely can a wet evening in Gowerton have been so alluringly transfigured. (NHR)
Oboeworks: St Mary’s Church, Rhossili - 28 July
It's a long way to Rhossili, especially when the wind is from the west and the rain is falling. But those who made the journey for the Gower Festival concert at St Mary's Church were rewarded with some fine music. Generously sponsored by Norman Smart, the performers were the oboist Imogen Triner, with string-players Roger Huckle, Moira Alabaster and Richard May, who are collectively called Oboeworks. The heart of their programme was Mozart's Oboe Quartet, a miniature masterpiece with a slow movement recalling the composer's operatic style and a dancing finale. The oboe was heard alone in Britten's vivid Metamorphoses after poems by Ovid. But the most intriguing music-making came in a work by Peter McGann. Inspired by an old photograph of a holidaying couple, it offered all kinds of surprises - from mouth-organ tunes to the voices of children playing. Not for the first time Gower provided just the right background for an evocative performance. (HD)
Brodsky Quartet: Sts Rhidian and Illtyd Church, Llanrhidian - 29 July
There are so many excellent string quartets around nowadays, and many of them have appeared at the Gower Festival in recent years - the Belcea, the Salomon, the Skampa - but this year we have had two, the superb Vanbrugh Quartet last week and now the renowned Brodsky at Llanrhidian. They follow a growing modern trend of playing standing up, and this seemed to intensify the projection of every last detail of the music. An early, high-spirited work of Schubert's was followed by the seamlessly inventive quartets by Debussy, who cannot have written anything more beautiful than the closing bars of the slow movement, a bird rising over a grave. Smetana's first quartet is a tremendous work, deeply personal, written out of his struggle with encroaching deafness; it is full of fierce gestures, chill laments, defiant efforts at dancing, and sudden brightenings of melody, before falling away into silence. The Brodskys played the entire programme with great sensitivity and power, never losing the balance and the sense of mutual sympathy between the instruments that lifts a quartet into the highest class. They let their hair down, too, in a rousing Sarasate encore that sent everyone out whistling. (NHR)
Zum: Llangennith Village Hall - 30 July
This year's Gower Festival came to an exhilarating close with a remarkable performance by five-piece band Zum. Their eclectic music fuses gypsy fiddle-playing with modern jazz, tango with klezmer, Irish jig with palm court. Everything is held together by the virtuosity and wit of their playing, both as individuals and as an ensemble. Violin (Adam Summerhayes), piano (David Gordon), cello (Chris Grist), bass (Jonny Gee) and accordion (Eddie Hession) are blended in music of tremendous rhythmic drive and passion, or of hushed delicacy. There are abrupt changes of tempo, idiom and mood, both within individual tunes and between tunes. Everything they do has an underlying sense of dance - whether a tango by Astor Piazzolla or Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight. A packed audience loved it! (GP)
The Gower Festival
is a member of Gwyliau Cymru, which works with the Arts Council and Wales
Tourist Board to promote festivals throughout Wales