Two weeks after the Senior Music Scholars got the musical performance ball rolling for this academic year, it was the turn of the Junior Scholars to delight a packed audience in the Clive Stevens Recital Hall.
There was ‘standing room only’ for this concert and in addition to parents it was good to see so many pupils in support of their performing friends. There were too many excellent performances to mention them all here, but particular highlights for me were the exquisitely poised and beautifully controlled piano playing of Lina Mazzone in Glinka’s ‘Nocturne’, Kate Wili’s bright-toned and graceful Mozart Flute Quartet movement and Will Grainger’s spirited and confident Curnow ‘Rhapsody for Euphonium’. What was particularly great to hear and see was real development in every single performer.
We also welcomed three new Junior Music Scholars to the fold; Moog Clyde was un-fazed by a mechanically misbehaving saxophone and, following a quick change of instrument kindly loaned by another performer, gave a confident and suitably ‘smoky-toned’ account of Ibrahim’s ‘The Wedding’. Dominic Fellows gave a musically secure account of Bizet’s famous ‘Toreador’s Song’ from Carmen and Sebastian Slater delighted the audience with his accomplished personal interpretation and improvisation on Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’.
We look forward to seeing the development of our new Scholars over the years after such a fine start. As Richard Saxel (Head of Performance) who shared the evening’s piano accompaniment with Marie Ward, said; ‘It was impressive that the Scholars, who all lead super-busy lives around school, were able to put on such a uniformly impressive standard of performance so early in the year: a great tribute to their, and their teachers’, hard work.’
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