REVIEW

WEYMOUTH SUNDAY CONCERT

WEYMOUTH BAY CHURCH

"A FABULOUS start to the season", said a happy concert-goer after enjoying the concert given by Crispian Steele-Perkins, trumpet, Sophia Grech, mezzo-soprano and Leslie Pearson, piano.

Handel, wrote a good tune, and we heard three of them: Sinfonia to Floridante, ' Let the Bright Seraphim ', and the third movement of the trumpet Overture.

Then followed two pieces from Vivaldi’s Gloria.

Throughout, Sophia’s voice blended well with the trumpet, which acted as a second voice, with the piano in the background, and the rapport between the musicians was obvious as was their enjoyment of performing the music.

Mozart was not known as a trumpet composer, but Three German Dances, composed for instrumental ensemble when he had to provide music for dances and balls at court worked well. We then heard the delightful Papagena, Papageno duet from the Magic Flute again with trumpet and voice, and Sophia sung the Alleluja from Exultate (originally written for a castrato).

The highlight for many of the audience was Crispian Steele-Perkins, a master of the Baroque trumpet, demonstrating how far the modern trumpet has come in producing notes between its natural harmonics. He showed us a basic mouthpiece, to which he added a length of garden hose and played a tune. Amazing! There was too much even to summarise here, you had to be there for this trumpet workshop par excellence.

We then had two movements of Haydn’s popular trumpet concerto, the piano had to work hard to play the orchestral part, and the first half finished with Suite from Bernstein’s West Side Story.

After the interval, the mood changed, the highlight for me being a selection of Sullivan’s songs from some of his operettas, with ' Poor Wandering One ' almost bringing a tear to the eye.

Other items were Novello’s ' We’ll gather lilacs ', arrangements from The Sound of Music and a Henry Mancini medley, the last two being arranged by Leslie Pearson.

The individual members of this trio showed how versatile they and their instruments could be, and the audience could have listened for much longer to music making of this quality.

The next Sunday Concert is at 3 pm on Sunday October 27, with Alexandra Lomeiko, violin and Kumi Matsuo, piano. For further details see weymouthmusic.co.uk or phone 01305 770820.

THOMAS SHERWOOD