9 into 3 does go

There are 9 current Wesley music scholars and they were to perform at the final Wednesday lunchtime concert for the year but Covid intervened. The revised program had 3 performers!  Not sure it was all from Covid.  Nonetheless, the result was satisfying and really very interesting.  First up was Jess Hill playing a movement of a Haydn trumpet concerto.  That was interesting as a solo trumpet performance and lovely for the classical tone.  Then some inventive stuff from Yona Su playing two contemporary Australian solo viola pieces, strangely similar in technicalities, I thought.  The second was accompanied by a digital drone as a brush with electronica.  Then Ronan Apcar performed perhaps his last gig before he goes to Melbourne and ANAM (congratulations).  Ronan played two of eight etudes from Nikolai Kapustin, hugely busy with jazz chords and extrapolations and fully transcribed but to all intents jazz.  Apparently NK used to import US jazz records into Russia pre-WW2.  Then, interestingly, a take on Brad Mehldau When it rains, partly a reading of a transcription from the Net of the solo components and partly a transcription by Ronan of the strings and other accompaniments.  Fascinating and extravagant for the extensions and substitutions and the like.  So an end to the Wesley lunchtime concerts for this year with a small but effective concert.

Jess Hill (trumpet), Yona Su (viola) and Ronan Apcar (piano) performed at Wesley.