Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club

Music Committee

Report on 2002

I begin my account of the year's music-making as usual by looking back to the last AGM, in March 2002, when we were commemorating the Walton and Duruflé centenaries with some of the Henry V music and unaccompanied motets.   This year we have already celebrated the centenary of our former President, Sir Lennox Berkeley, with a notable survey of his life and representative works - his Violin Concerto will be heard later this year played by Gudrun Edwards.   Today's concert includes Corelli, born 350 years ago and Prokofiev, died 50 years ago.   (Arnold Bax also died 50 years ago and will also appear later this year.)

Last year's Walton celebrations also included a particularly complete evening of Façade, both its usual version and earlier sections less often heard, and a performance by Lyn Parkyns of A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table, unusually in its orchestral version.   These two concerts also produced two improbable 'doubles' -  the chamber dexterity of Façade was complemented by the extraordinary version of 'Till Eulenspiegel - einmal anders !'  for only five instruments - which reappeared in the chamber concert just last week, having never been heard in the Club before.     The orchestral concert also included the Sibelius Violin Concerto played by Evelyn Chadwick - the slightly longer 'year' than usual has enabled her to fit in the Brahms Concerto too at the workshop last month.

Other fixed points in the year have included the opera in November, an ambitious and spirited account of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades conducted by Edward Kay (who also took over the Orchestral Workshop in September) and the Gala Concert in February, when a piano trio from Cambridge provided a memorable 'Ghost' and Jill House from University College an imaginative group of 'Songs of loss and betrayal'.   The Club's own contributions to the Gala were variously representative: part of a Purcell Birthday Ode reflected an interest in earlier music also shown in a Baroque Concert in March last year (and in later concerts this year) while the Berwald Septet for Mixed Strings and Wind was echoed throughout the year in various such groups, by the mysterious Thierot among others.  

One cancellation, and the unavoidably delayed 'The Songs We Sang' threw our concert numbering into temporary confusion, but I think it is now back on course - and when the Songs We Sang were finally heard in January they gave much pleasure.

Pianists had a concert to themselves in July, and have also appeared both as soloists, and accompanists to a range of singers with inventive repertoire throughout the year.  Chamber groups have ranged widely, from Bach and Beethoven to Koechlin, Ravel and von Einem. 

 In all, 21 concerts since the last AGM show continuing vitality among performers - and sometimes even audiences!

Alan Reddish (Music Committee Chairman)
11^th April 2003