On Saturday, a sold-out St Mary’s Barnes (including extra audience to both sides of the stage) played host to a wonderful opening-night concert of the Barnes Music Festival, performed by the conductorless Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Stephanie Gonley.
The programme and indeed whole festival opened with Stephen Dodgson’s Essay No. 7 for strings, followed Britten’s Serenade for Tenor and Horn (Ed Lyon, tenor, Ben Goldscheider, horn), Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb (I still cannot hear the last movement without thinking of Flanders and Swann’s superb parody!) and finished with Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, which saw nine outstanding local students joining ASMF on stage – by no means tagging along but playing incisively, spread out across across the orchestra from front desks onwards.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and student players enjoy richly deserved applause
ASMF brought wonderful rich, crisp textures to their performance, with incredible communication within the group, Ed Lyon plunged and soared around his voice in the Britten including some challenging coloratura conveying dramatic character, great charm, and mastery of his instrument (and he garnered an audible convivial audience laugh at the end of the humorous and vocally challenging ‘Hymn’), and first BMF resident artist Ben Goldscheider showed himself as a superlatively nuanced musician in Britten and Mozart alike, producing a rich, warm tone and coaxing the quietest pianissimi out of the orchestra; and the larger string orchestra – swelled by the young players – brought out all the ever-delightful robust and earthy qualities of the Holst.
I was particularly interested to hear Stephen Dodgson’s Essay No. 7 and had been privileged to attend the afternoon rehearsal too, allowing for further reflections on the piece and the performance. I’d previously heard the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra recording, but the work was all the more striking in live performance, the immediacy of the individual textures standing out more tellingly amid the thick tapestry of interweaving lines, and the vivid sense of being able to both physically hear and see the movement of lines being passed round the different groups of players.
ASMF rehearsing Stephen Dodgson’s Essay No. 7
The piece is very much in Stephen Dodgson’s own voice. Along with its atmospheric major-minor cross-modalities, it is rich with rhythmic interest and constantly shifting cross-rhythms, twos against threes, triplets against semiquavers, then interwoven with more nebulous parts that violinist Matthew Ward described as almost ‘kaleidoscopically coming into and out of focus’ – the pulse and very sense of time almost deliberately lost before finding its way again.
Talking to the young student players, who were listening to the piece, one described it as reminding him of the great epic poems, taking us on a long journey where we encountered different characters along the way. Another felt the sense of journey too, with its ‘highs and lows’, albeit a grounded journey that ultimately had not moved much, the lower strings underpinning it from the start while dissonances ebbed and flowed. Others talked about the different personalities they could hear – almost characters – coming to life as more instruments built up and as new sections with different moods were introduced, from stark pizzicato moments to suspenseful tremolo sections to the more playful, coquettish violin solo. Another commented on the dense texture and close harmonies, and the overarching feeling of timelessness – perhaps the sense of a distant memory – a snapshot of one particular scene in the past?
A personal link – Sir Neville Marriner, founder of ASMF
The concert also touched on two personal notes in relation to the composer. Firstly, Stephen Dodgson, while regularly commissioned and working nationally and internationally, was very much a local Barnes man, and he loved the area, its people and its musical ventures. So it was wonderful and fitting to have the festival open with one of his works. There was also a personal link relating to the orchestra with Stephen Dodgson’s compositions – his musical legacy – coming together with the Academy of St Martin’s – Sir Neville Marriner’s musical legacy: the pair were friends at college and Sir Neville recorded a live broadcast of Stephen Dodgson’s String Trio No. 1 in 1953, along with violist Stephen Shingles and cellist Alexander Kok.
What with Dodgson, Britten, Mozart, Holst, superb orchestral playing including the budding young talent, and fine performances by soloists, it was no surprise that it was a buzzing audience that departed the venue, looking forward to more to come from this year’s Barnes Music Festival.
Leonora Dawson-Bowling
With thanks to Matthew Ward, Clare Hayes, Rachel Robson, Chris West (of the Academy of St Martin the Fields) and student players Jerry, Thea, Nina, William, Kangmin, Matthew S, Richard and Matthew T for their thoughts and insights.
