30 September 2022
On Tuesday evening we witnessed the first concert of the academic year and we were struck by the quality of the music making only three weeks into the start of the term. We heard a great variety of instruments from performers at different stages of musical development, but the large majority were of an advanced and very high standard.
Yubo Gao set the tone with a lovely performance of Debussy’s First Arabesque. There then followed a good number of further piano performances – Burgmüller (Justin Mi, Toby Williams and Jamie Williams), Bach (Harish Sivakumar), and two advanced Schubert Impromptus played by Thomas Zhang (in Eb Op 90, No 2) and Walter Liu (in Gb Op 90, No 3). We also heard a Beethoven Ecossaise (Gustav Andrian). Rudolph Flossmann played a Clementi sonata and Laurence Peverall performed Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G sharp minor Op32, No12.
Other performances included clarinet ones by Henry Roseff (Colin Evans’ Lotus Talk) and Ben Tate’s Summer from A Kitchen Garden. We also heard a Mozart Violin Sonata (Karsten Cheung), a Courante from Bach’s Cello Suite in D minor (Yubo Gao again) and Pierné’s Solo de Concert for bassoon played superbly by Josef O’Connor (bassoon).
At the end we thanked all the students for delivering such a wonderful set of performances and Miss Stulting for organising, accompanying and filming these solo performances. We hope that these performances will be enjoyed by parents living overseas as well as the audience that was lucky enough to hear the concert performed live.