MaW’s Blog

I played in this one. Each year my recorder teacher Wendy Hancock puts on a concert in Chilwell which is on the outskirts of Nottingham’s metropolitan area. The concert is always free with a retiring collection for a chosen charity (Marie Curie Cancer Care this year), and the performers are described as ‘Students and Friends of Wendy Hancock’. Another tradition is to finish the concert with at least one very loud piece of music in which everybody plays. In order to accommodate that many musicians, the music is usually a polychoral piece, which leads to some interesting consequences in terms of sound, especially since the church isn’t really big enough for everybody to stand up and play at once!

Nonetheless, it’s all good fun. Last year I played with the university early music group and a solo which was taken from the pieces I was at the time preparing for grade 4 descant. I was terrified, played moderately poorly and vacated the stage as soon as was humanly possible.

What a difference a year’s extra lessons makes. Having passed grade 4 and grade 5 (the latter on treble recorder) since then, and played in a few more lunchtime concerts, I’ve become rather more confident and capable. Again the university group played - one piece by our viol players, and one piece combined strings and recorders, repeating the Telemann sonata for six melody instruments in A minor from our last lunchtime concert, which was a resounding success then and almost a resounding success last night. The audience liked it, but we know how it was supposed to go…

I also played with the Mundy Consort, which was much much easier music that we played better than we’ve ever played it before. Terribly pleased with that, because Rachel at least isn’t at all used to group playing or performance, being only ten. She played very well though, and so did Nadia and Patsy who completed that group for the evening (oh and thanks to Christine Ransom for filling in the fifth part in All In A Garden Green for us in the absence of a fifth member of the consort actually being able to attend).

And so there was my solo. This time it was an unnamed movement from Jacques Paisible’s Sonata 8 in C minor. A nice piece, not too challenging except to actually play well, accompanied by Phillip Weller on harpsichord, and Sarah Cook on baroque ‘cello. They’re both wonderful musicians, and it was a joy to play with them even through the performance nerves.

I actually got what I think might have been some genuine applause, and people told me afterwards I played very well, although they could have just been being polite I suppose. Still, definitely much better than last year. I could get to like this sort of thing.

Then the final pieces were stupendous amounts of fun. We were joined by Sinfonia Chorale, who provided the vocals, and Phillip on the pipe organ, one choir of twenty-ish recorder players and everyone who had a stringed instrument playing that in the other choir. We belted out some South American baroque music, and it’s still going through my head now.

Well, alternating with the UK’s Eurovision entry from last night anyway.