Just how good

Best composition?  I wondered about that but it's a stupid question, especially given my limited knowledge, but my favourite work?  I think so.  I've listed every classical piece I've performed in concert (now 506 with some repeats) and it includes Beethoven 3,4,5,6,7 and plenty more, but my faves are choral and this seems my most memorable of all.  Sitting through Brahms German Requiem by Igitur nos tends to confirm it.  Gloriously rich and attractive, emotionally dense, wonderfully informed bass lines, extensive chromatic and substituting lines, beautiful harmonies in voices to drool over, high sopranos, inventive harmonies and challenging fugues.  I closed my eyes and fell into this density, knowing it well after having played it myself.  I find when I've practised and performed a work, it stays with me, so I know upcoming phasings and predict every line.  Strange that practice, or perhaps performance, can be so permanent.  I can't play from memory but I can revisit and predict a listen.  Hayley did a great job on so many lines, slow or busy as they were.  Otherwise, just a small accompaniment of piano, single strings and woodwinds, 8 players in all in the arrangements, rather than a full orchestra.  And the choir and two soloists, bass and soprano.  Very nice soloists, but I preferred the massed parts, the power and precision and movements of lines in harmony.  My German was nil, so the words were of nothing, but still power remained and glorious, emotional music.  Brahms German Requiem: a work of beauty and huge emotional density.

Igitur Nos performed Brahms German Requiem at Wesley.  Matthew Stuckings (conductor) led a choir of 22 with two vocal soloists, Elsa Huber (soprano) and Colin Milner (baritone) and an octet comprising Rowan Harvey-Martin (violin), Elizabeth Chalker (viola), Alex Voorhoeve (cello), Hayley Manning (bass), Jodie Petrov (flute), Yu-Lan Chan (oboe), Lis Hoorweg (clarinet) and Emily Leong (piano).

Winds of romance

I have great respect for woodwinds.  They don't play so often, unlike the consistent, unrelenting playing of the strings, but when they do, the lines are essential statements of melody or at least of colour and contrast and those lines can be very difficult.  The bass is clumsy and slow if defining, but woodwinds are fast and fleet also definitional in their different way.  So I recorded the Aeolus Wind Trio at Wesley.  They were doing a program with the theme of love.  It appeared in four parts: first attraction; happy in love; lost love; enduring love.  The music was often modern, so Gershwin, Fats Waller, Nino Rota, Lennon and McCartney appeared, although some little Tchaiks and Bach were there too.  But given the tunes, much was arranged by the trio, so there were handwritten scores.  Clarinet Lis was given the task of determining the program because she's a prolific author of romantic and romantic suspense novels under the pseudonym Elisabeth Rose.  Apparently 29 novels to date!  More than an acquaintance, Sally Thorne, another Canberran, who is on 3.  Either way, I am in awe.  The music was pleasant and nicely framed and sometimes complex to spell harmonic colours, very well introduced by David and well played, as expected from this NCO trio.  But this is not music for Llewellyn, but for Goodwin and great as it is.  Very much a wonderful classico-pop crossover outing and I love a decent pop melody.

The Aeolus Wind Trio performed at Wesley.  They comprise Jodie Petrov (flute), Lis Hoorweg (clarinet) and David Whitbread (bassoon).

Hits of 1875

How could you not love a concert with this title, the Hits of 1875.  I was looking forward to this one.  It was the Aeolus Wind Quartet.  I've played with them all, in NCO and MdCC.  They all feature in the woodwinds of the National Capital Orchestra (and, FYI, the woodwinds are held in high regard by the strings).  Aeolus comprises flute, clarinet and bassoon and they've been around for 40 years.  They played some Quantz and Berlioz and Verdi and Milhaud, so there was a modern and playful edge to the classical, but they also played Londonberry air (=Danny Boy) and Campdown races and a touch of jazz with Swingin' Molly (Cockles and mussels...) and even Bach goes to sea which is a take on the Popeye theme, otherwise known as the Sailors' hornpipe.  So it was a mixed bag, as is necessary for a performing band  and with some very informative intros from Dave.  So what of the sound?  It's so different.  The pitches and tones are varied so they remain quite distinct.  The bassoon with its confident blurt at the bottom and the flute with its flightly firmness at top were super distinct.  Just perhaps the midrangy clarinet in the middle could more easily get lost.  But the competence and the interplay were fabulous, all the harmonies and repetitions at diverse pitches and counterpoints, all done with wonderful skill and awareness of the nature of otherwise simple tunes.  For this didn't end up simple, even if the folk originals were.  This was rich: a composite work of three parts in playful interaction.  So, this one was no let down.  Loved this one.  PS. Wikipedia states Aeolus was the name of three characters  in Greek mythology, but you'll probably find him on the Net blowing wind as the Keeper of the winds.

The Aeolus Wind Trio comprise Jodie Petrov (flute), Lis Hoorweg (clarinet) and David Whitbread (bassoon).  They played at Wesley.