Barbican Music Trip
To wind down at the end of a busy Enrichment Week, some of our musicians attended a concert of Mendelssohn and Beethoven at the Barbican. One group enjoyed a pre-performance talk on the evening's repertoire from the conductor Laurence Cummings, focusing on the programmatic nature of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Another group took advantage of the fine summer's evening to experience a mini-walking tour taking in the graves of John Bunyan and William Blake, the memorial to Daniel Defoe, and the house of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The boys were very disappointed that we could not see the grave of Isaac Watts (writer of O God, our help in ages past amongst other hymns) but enjoyed Mr Fraczek's lectures on 17th and 18th century Church history very much indeed.
Reconvening for the concert, once again we noticed that both Messrs Bentley and Bainbridge (instrumental teachers and leaders of their eponymous brass ensembles at school) were bolstering the brass section of the Academy of Ancient Music; several boys immediately spotted the period instruments being played, such as natural trumpets. As well as admiring the virtuosic performance of the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, we noted the slightly different sounds made by the authentic instruments and how these led to the balance of the orchestra being a little different to what we might have been used to from recordings (for example, the smaller size of the cello section helped make the bassoon part in the Hebrides Overture much more prominent).
In the second half, we were treated to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony with its vivid evocation of the countryside. It was marred a little by an audience member's phone sounding loudly and at interminable length throughout the entirety of the delicate climax of the second movement with its interplay between the solo woodwind instruments. A learning experience for the boys on the dangers of forgetting to switch off one's phone! Happily, after the applause had died down at the very end, the conductor turned to announce that they would perform this little section for us again - in order, as he diplomatically suggested, for it to evoke the emotions that Beethoven intended, rather than those we might have felt the first time round! This was a lovely way to finish the evening and indeed the week.
