Tag: Joaquin Rodrigo

Laura Snowden, Lunchtime Concert, St John’s Smith Square, 1 December 2016

A planned, much needed break in the middle of a busy day in a busy week.

First stop, Lock and Co. to replace my sorely missed Vermont hat. No blame attached to whatever happened during our Royal Academy evening a few weeks ago; merely to say that Daisy should stick to driving duties and avoid hat-stand duties; while I should retain full responsibility for my own hats whatever other duties I am undertaking.

Then on to St John’s Smith Square for the lunchtime concert.

selfie-with-new-hat-and-enormous-organ
Selfie With New Hat and Enormous Organ

I messaged Daisy with the above picture and caption, to let her know that I had replaced the hat and to show off the fact that I was taking a substantial enough break to take in a lunchtime concert on my tod. The reply:

What the…?

The concert was lovely. We saw Laura Snowden at SJSS a couple of years ago; a very talented young guitarist who comes across very nicely.

The centrepiece of this concert was a new work by Wally Gunn, an American composer who seems to have written this piece especially for Laura under commission of a young composers/performers scheme.

Laura show-pieced the new work by framing it with works by better-known composers, although not especially well-known works. A beautiful Dowland to start. Then Villa-Lobos’s preludes; I realised I knew the first well but had never heard the others before.

I enjoyed the Wally Gunn piece; it was based on Darwin diaries and had some very evocative passages, although the whispered words didn’t really float my Beagle, as it were.

Then a couple of Barrios waltzes and finally a short piece by Rodrigo.

Here is a link to the SJSS site page for the concert…

…and in case SJSS isn’t archiving as it should, here is my permanent link of that page.

Perfect way to set myself up for an afternoon of grind and also for an evening of jamming with DJ on my baritone baroq-ulele. Although, after listening to a virtuoso like Laura Snowden, my own pluckings and strummings are brought into perspective.

 

Xuefei Yang, Wigmore Hall, 6 February 2009

Even by our enthusiastic standards, three visits to the Wigmore Hall within three weeks is going some.

Xuefei Yang is a superb guitarist, though and this was a very interesting programme:

A real mixture of stuff.

We really liked all of it. And we really liked Xuefei Yang too.

This concert was a very relaxing end to (by the looks of it) a pretty full-on working week.

Carlos Perez, Purcell Room, 1 June 2007

This geezer could play.

Janie was on one of her classical guitar kicks at that time (pretty much perennial, they are, but she was especially on one of those that year), so we booked this Purcell Room concert, even for a Friday night.

It was very much part of a cultural programme through the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Society (LACCS) and the Chilean Embassy, so the great and the good from the Chilean community were out in force.

Friday evening after work, but the stresses of the week soon faded away as we listened to this wonderful music.

Did I mention that this geezer could play?  Well, you can decide for yourself, as the LACCS maintains an amazing archive – so you can hear some clips on this link…

…or if you would simply like to look at the programme and the programme notes, the LACCS has spared me the trouble of amateurish scanning by providing the programme here.  Jolly decent of them, as my dad would have put it.