REVIEW: Pudding Chare Music Festival, Newcastle
Young musicians impress
If you caught the National Youth Orchestra at the BBC Proms a few nights ago (it was televised so still available see) you will know that musical brilliance is not the preserve of the seasoned performer.
The same could be said of the opening concert of this year’s Pudding Chare Music Festival which was an absolute bobby dazzler.
If you’re not familiar with the festival, I’d advise you to make its acquaintance – and don’t hang about because, despite an extra concert this year, it’s a weekend affair and over in a blink.
Thursday evening’s opener in the music room at the Lit & Phil was a showcase for a group of impressively accomplished young musicians, all in their early twenties and friends of artistic director Seth Collin… who we’ll come back to.
First there was a piece by the precocious Amy Beach, who died in 1944 having blazed a trail for female composers in America.
After introducing her Romance as “a beautiful, lyrical, heart-felt piece”, violinist Tabitha Appel (shortly off to the Guildhall School of Music) then justified her description with a wonderful account of it alongside Royal College of Music graduate Sophia Lim at the grand piano.
Tabitha was straight back under the metaphorical spotlight (the actual light in the room was soothingly low) to perform Three Madrigals by Bohuslav Martinů alongside Isobel Neary-Adams (currently at the Guildhall) on viola.
I didn’t know this work either but you couldn’t have had a better introduction. You’d swear this pair played together every day, so deftly did they negotiate its lightning rhythms and melodies.
“It’s a really, really fun piece to play,” Isobel had said by way of introduction. And also, I can vouch, to listen to.
Janáček’s Violin Concerto brought Sophia Lim back to the piano and young Austrian violinist Magdalena Riedl seized her chance to shine, delivering an accomplished rendition of a piece written at the outbreak of the First World War and full of depth and contrasting moods.
The concert’s second half was taken up with a scintillating performance of Dvořak’s String Quartet No. 3 in E-flat major with violinist Alma Vink (soon to start a master’s course at the Royal Academy of Music) catching the eye alongside Tabitha Appel, Isobel Neary-Adams, fellow viola player Matthew Hayes (from the North East and studying at the Royal Northern College of Music) and, on cello, Cameron Walls who studied at The Glasshouse for 10 years and is now at the Royal Academy.
All that education, natural talent and dedication blended in a gem of a concert which perfectly demonstrated why this little festival is back for its third edition.
Back to the young man who started it all, Seth Collin, who started playing the cello at a ridiculously young age and in 24 years has accomplished more than most people can dream of.
As the son of Kyra Humphrys, for many years co-leader of Royal Northern Sinfonia, he has a good musical pedigree but went to Cambridge to study medicine before – as he told me before the concert – the idea of giving up music proved too hard to bear.
He is currently studying at the Guildhall but, like his celebrated mum, is also in demand as a performer and teacher.
But, reminiscent of Jonathan Bloxham, the cellist-turned-conductor from Whickham who founded Northern Chords, that’s not quite enough.
He loved coming back to the North East, he said. The festival gave him another excuse to do so.
“This is the third year with the official festival name (Pudding Chare being across the road from the Lit & Phil) but we organised a couple of concerts a year or two before that and they were quite popular.
“We thought it would be nice to add more concerts and have more musicians playing.
“They’re all people I know. A few of us are from the North East and know each other from playing in youth orchestras. Sophia, the pianist, has just moved to Newcastle and there are musicians I know from studying.”
Seth, who also performs with the award-winning Trio Havisham with Magdalena Reidl and pianist Zany Denyer (due to perform on Saturday), is a former member of Young Sinfonia and the National Youth Orchestra.
But he is an organiser, too. Keen on the festival idea, he enlisted the support of James Smith, music librarian at the Lit & Phil, and Deborah Thorne, Corbridge-based cellist and teacher, who are festival trustees.
He secured funding, mostly from the Community Foundation but also from trusts and private individuals, which together with ticket sales sustains the festival.
And he enjoys the programming process.
“It’s always a bit of a jigsaw and done in collaboration with everyone who’s coming to play.
“It’s nice to programme things people want to play from their repertoire at the time and I think that also means you get the best quality of performance.
“It’s quite an enjoyable puzzle. It’s nice to have some starting points with pieces that we want to have and then to build programmes around that.”
As for the future, the possibilities would seem to be endless. But the present is busy enough and Seth, whatever the future holds, reckons it will continue to reflect his love of the chamber music being showcased to such good effect here.
There are concerts at the Lit & Phil at lunchtime today and tomorrow (August 14 and 15) and one this evening (August 14) at Jesmond United Reformed Church, Burdon Terrace.
Check the Pudding Chare Music Festival website for details.