1 November 2019

Our Senior Solo Competition this year was characterised by some excellent performances from five of Abingdon’s post grade 8 musicians. The standard was again extremely high this year and several of the performances were given from memory.

Our adjudicator was Mr Peter Foster, who is Director of Music at Oxford High School. A well-established local musician, Mr Foster had the unenviable task of comparing a wide range of musical instruments and repertoire.

Our pianists included music scholar, Daniel Zhang (Mozart’s Sonata in Bb), Will Bywater (Schumann’s Intermezzo from Faschingsschwank Aus Wien) and Nicholas Raptakis (Hindemith’s Preludium from Ludus Tonalis).

We also had the pleasure of hearing the fine cello playing of Oliver Simpson (Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata, 4th movement) and the exciting and nimbly played saxophone of Josef O’Connor (Monti’s Czardas).

In his adjudication Mr Foster gave some generous compliments to all the performers and found lots of interesting points of development for them to consider. We were kept guessing until the end as he found it difficult to separate the top three performances. 3rd place went to William Bywater, 2nd to Oliver Simpson and 1st prize and the cup to Nicholas Raptakis.

Our thanks must go to all the performers, their teachers, our accompanists, Lynette Stulting and Mr Simpson – and to our adjudicator for a wonderful evening of music making.

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