Friday evening’s concert marked the opening of the new concert season at Cranleigh, and featured a wonderfully diverse range of music performed by both full-time and visiting music staff. With over three hundred years’ worth of music represented, the breadth of repertoire highlighted the Music Department philosophy in celebrating all genres of music.
Chamber music ensembles were a notable feature, with Oscar Gratton (Violin, UVI, East) joining Mrs Jenny Janse (cello) and Mr Richard Saxel (piano) in a beautiful rendition of Amy Beach’s Invocation, and Mrs Ruth Williams forming a wind quintet to play a stunning arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango for flute, clarinet, oboe, horn and bassoon. Perhaps the highlight of the evening was Mr Eddie Maxwell (natural trumpet) and Mrs Rosanna Vaiani’s (soprano) rendition of Let the Bright Seraphim by Handel; Mr Maxwell’s virtuosity on this most difficult of instruments finding a wonderfully resonant acoustic in the school Chapel.
There were wonderful solo contributions from Mr Scriven (organ), Mr Saxel (piano), Mr Weaver (violin), Mrs Janse (cello), and Mrs Vaiani (voice), embracing keyboard music by J.S.Bach, Richard Wagner and Louis Vierne, string music by Reena Esmail and Andre Lissenko and songs by Frank Bridge and Kurt Weill. Mrs Hunter (voice) gave a stirring account of a number from Frozen The Musical, before Mr Maxwell (guitar) and his writing partner Phillippa Reed performed their own original songs to cap a wonderful evening’s entertainment.
