Sinfonia return to Festival of Chichester
Playing in the Festival of Chichester is always a great pleasure for Hampshire Recorder Sinfonia.
Their conductor, Helen Hooker, is a Cicestrian, taught for many years at the Prebendal School and runs two courses a year at West Dean College. She’s also a member of the Parnassian Ensemble who are also playing during the Festival.
For this year’s Hampshire Recorder Sinfonia concert Helen has chosen to premiere a composition by Steve Marshall, who also happens to play with HRS. It’s called Three Paintings by Millais. The concert is at 7.30pm on Friday June 28 at St George’s Church Whyke, Cleveland Road, PO19 7AD. Tickets £10 from The Novium Box Office or £12 at the door.
Steve explained: “Some time ago the Hampshire Recorder Sinfonietta asked me to write a large piece of music to celebrate the Sinfonietta's 30th anniversary. If someone is nice enough to commission me, I try to write something that reflects their part of the world. I remembered that the early life of the painter John Everett Millais was spent near the south coast, and I also remembered that he produced some rather dramatic paintings. So, as inspiration, I kept copies of three of his works on my desk, and I like to think that the resulting music is also rather dramatic. Dramatic is not a very easy style for recorders, but I'm delighted to say that HRS will show that it can be excellently achieved!
“The three paintings are very well-known. The Northwest Passage (1874) shows an old sailor and his daughter. Millais is probably suggesting that the sailor attempted the notorious sea route round North America via the Canadian Arctic. Many died in appalling conditions in a freezing and frightening place. In my music I have imagined how these two people, now in comfortable surroundings, might cast their minds back to times when the sailor was gone for years on end while his daughter was awaiting his return, with no news, and perhaps little hope.”
The second painting is
Ophelia (1850): “In Shakespeare's play, Ophelia's father has been murdered by Hamlet and she is driven out of her mind, falls into a stream and drowns, dragged down by her heavy and wet garments. She seems oblivious to the danger she’s in and sings 'snatches of old tunes'. I wanted to capture the eeriness of this scene, and that music is also hinted at elsewhere in the piece.”
The third painting is The Boyhood of Raleigh (1870): “After two pieces packed with drama, we finish with something more straightforwardly rousing! This painting shows a Genoese sailor spinning yarns to the two boys, Walter Raleigh and a friend. Raleigh is clearly listening carefully.”
The programme also offers music by Bach, Dowland and Gabrieli, as well as reaching into the 20th century with music written specially for recorder orchestra showing off the wide-ranging, mellifluous sound, plus an arrangement of a sentimental piece by American jazz and swing pianist Erroll Garner. HRS invites you to hear eight sizes of recorder in symphonic harmony.