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Haydn & Joseph, Bedford & Mozart
Jill Kemp (recorder) One of London’s best-kept secrets, the St Paul’s Sinfonia is now in its fourth season of concerts at St Paul’s Church, Deptford – itself another well-kept secret, designed by Thomas Archer (also responsible for St John’s, Smith Square) and recently restored.* The centrepiece on this occasion (just off-centre, coming after the interval, the third of four works) was David Bedford’s Recorder Concerto, inhabiting an exotic and beautiful soundworld all its own and requiring no fewer than five sizes of recorder. These are used progressively to raise the pitch gradually from bass in the first of the five continuous movements to sopranino in the last, giving the impression of there being just one super-recorder of immense range. Each is given a brief cadenza-like phrase at the end of its contribution to the music’s upward path, with the additional delight of two-part passages as the second movement moves on to the third (tenor and treble) and as the fourth movement morphs into the finale (descant and sopranino). With a tempo structure as simple yet effective as the instrumental scheme, the third movement is the magically nocturnal heart on a voyage from fast to slow and back again, featuring an especially haunting passage in which the almost imperceptible fluttering of strings echoes the fluttering of the soloist. Displaying a range of expression beyond what might be considered possible, it was beguilingly and effortlessly performed by Jill Kemp. Before the interval a rare outing for another useful addition to the limited wind-concerto repertoire: the Oboe Concerto by the unashamedly tonal Jeffrey Joseph, in which soloist Alex Birchall brought out with equal aplomb both the quirkiness and the lyricism required of this deliberately unshowy work. The concert was topped and tailed with classical symphonic masterpieces, conducted – as was the entire concert – with superb musicianship and an impeccable sense of style by Andrew Morley, from the imposing slow introduction of Haydn’s 99th to the energetic conclusion of Mozart’s 38th. The credit must, of course, be shared with the musicians of the Sinfonia, many of whom have been members from the start, when it comprised mostly Trinity College of Music students. Now forging careers in the profession and joined by contemporaries from further afield, still they return for love not money to this exhilarating oasis of music-making. (The trumpet section, for example, comprised half the all-female trumpet quartet Bella Tromba, which scored notable successes last year in the Park Lane Group January series at the Purcell Room and at the Cheltenham Festival, while the clarinet section was half of Clariphonics.) Use of the word ‘oasis’ above shouldn’t lead anyone to think that these concerts really take place in a totally barren and inaccessible wasteland. But away from the usual hotbeds of artistic activity on the South Bank, at the Barbican, in Wigmore Street and so on, it’s an even greater unexpected pleasure to find classical music of such high quality as can be heard here (though the church itself has hosted recordings by some very well-established ensembles). There are plentiful trains to Deptford from both Charing Cross and Cannon Street via London Bridge – a trip well worth making not only for the mid-monthly Friday orchestral concerts (till June) but also for the complementary series of chamber concerts. David Harman * There is no comprehensive guide to musical events in S E London and Musical Pointers is grateful to David Harman for bringing this series to our attention. Readers may also be unfamiliar with another architectural prize-winning jewel, a stone's throw from St Paul's Deptford - Laban (linked with Trinity College of Music at Greenwich) whose ground breaking modern dance events are regularly covered in these pages [Editor]
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