Tim Rumsey, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 21 One can just sit and listen to what the music sounds like but there’s benefit to be had in knowing what it signifies. Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is based on the baroque keyboard music of...
- November 22, 2023
16 November, Petersfield Festival Hall The major work in the Petersfield Orchestra’s November concert was Sibelius’s 1st Symphony, something of a challenge to rise to the demands of this major work from the orchestral repertoire – and the players acquitted...
- November 19, 2023
Anthony Gritten, Portsmouth Cathedral, Nov 16 Anthony Gritten’s fluent, authoritative Prelude and Fugue, BWV 552, entirely justified our gamble on the inclement weather as it sashayed its way over its groaning ground bass until reaching a middle section that was O, God Our Help...
- November 18, 2023
Elisabeth Turmo and Elena Toponogova, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 14 There are a lot of notes, words and chess moves but only so many. Eventually, one might think, then, all the possible music and poetry will one day have been written...
- November 15, 2023
Chichester Chamber Concerts series, 9 November Another dazzling concert of chamber music was provided for local music lovers here in Chichester’s Assembly Room on Thursday 9th November, hosted, as usual, by Chichester Chamber Concerts. Two astonishingly talented young musicians, the...
- November 10, 2023
Holy Trinity, Gosport music events, 5 November Last Sunday’s Tea-time concert certainly lived up to its name of ‘Fire, Water and Fantasy’ and was hugely appreciated by a full audience. Hampshire Recorder Sinfonia, led by Helen Hooker, brought us a...
- November 10, 2023
Katie Wilkinson, Portsmouth Cathedral, Nov 9 What goes on in the pub, or what one overhears, at the ‘after party’ stays in the pub. I’m not concerned with technical imperfections. Some years ago I saw Tasmin Little in Portsmouth’s Square...
- November 9, 2023
Miriam Wakeling and Ben Socrates, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 31 There was an autumnal mood about much of the music in Chichester’s lunctime programme today with Miriam Wakeling’s cello rich over the fluent passages of the Ben Socrates piano. Farewell to Granada, veryMoorish,...
- November 1, 2023
St Peter’s Church, Petersfield, Saturday 28 October Ignoring the lure of ‘Strictly’ and the prospect of a rainy evening, the Renaissance Choir’s loyal followers turned out in force for Saturday’s concert. ‘Sold out’ signs were on display and in his...
- October 30, 2023
Outstanding Duo Chichester Music Society was pleased to welcome back Pavlos Carvalho [cello] and Miriam Teppich [violin] on 10 October at the University of Chichester in the intimate music venue, The Cloisters. This was an ideal location for the programme...
- October 27, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, Oct 24 Overheard in the Oxfam bookshop beforehand was somebody saying they’d read a certain book and it was ‘unusual’ which immediately made me wonder what was ‘usual’. Elgar and Haydn seem to me fairly usual but they...
- October 25, 2023
Thomas Howell, Holy Trinity, Gosport, Oct 16 In 1705, Bach famously walked 250 miles to visit Dietrich Buxtehude in Lubeck. Today, in order to pay similar tribute, I walked maybe 5 miles to hear some of his music played. It...
- October 16, 2023
Brighton Chamber Ensemble, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 10 This year’s Chichester Cathedral lunchtime concerts series autumn programme contains within it a mini Elgar Festival by way of what must be entirely due to different artists discretely deciding on him and Chichester...
- October 12, 2023
Castalian Quartet at Chichester Chamber Concerts 5th October 2023 A full-house at Chichester Assembly Rooms proved an attentive and appreciative audience for an exciting evening of chamber music from the Castalian Quartet: Mozart, Mark-Anthony Turnage and (late) Beethoven. The Turnage...
- October 7, 2023
Ivory Duo, Portsmouth Cathedral, Oct 5 Read a profile of the Ivory Duo. Panayotis Archontides and Natalie Tsaldarakis returned to Portsmouth and found a much better sized audience than for their previous visit. Maybe their reputation is deservedly growing quite...
- October 6, 2023
Continuum, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 3 One waits all year for days like these and then they are soon gone so it’s best to seize them while one can. That is what Continuum did today as they ‘soave s’il vento’-ed their...
- October 3, 2023
“Dance in the Street” The workshop this year was a slightly different venture from the norm. Instead of studying works to be sung in the Festival, as is our usual custom, we spent a day singing from the ‘Bob Chilcott...
- October 2, 2023
Sparkling Champagne! The Chichester Music Society’s 2023 Autumn programme opened on 12 September at the University of Chichester with a return visit by The Champagne Quartet. The Quartet, including soprano Erin Alexander, a former CMS prize-winner, are now in their...
- September 21, 2023
Valentina Seferinova, Portsmouth Menuhin Room, Sept 9. By Menuhin Room concerts. Following the all-Chopin programme in the cathedral on Thursday, a different Portsmouth audience were taken further into the Romantic piano via some landmark pieces in Valentina Seferinova’s story. The...
- September 11, 2023
Varvara Maggs, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 7 By Portsmouth Cathedral music events. At Chichester Cathedral on Tuesdays one can see in advance not only who is playing but what they are playing whereas at Portsmouth you know who but not what....
- September 9, 2023
5 September It might have well rained until September and it did put in an effort to but, having arrived here, we find a minor heatwave like a side who think they’ve bowled the opposition out but then the last...
- September 6, 2023
The Chichester Music Society concert on 13th June with The Endymion Ensemble proved to be a hugely enjoyable event and a fitting tribute to the Society’s late Chairman, David Tinsley. A large audience, including David’s family and many of his...
- August 7, 2023
Summer Concert – Festival of Chichester, St. Paul’s Church, Chichester, 8 July 2nd review Each year the Chichester Symphony Orchestra performs its Summer Concert at St. Paul’s Church as part of the Festival of Chichester. The festival’s marketing helps to...
- July 21, 2023
8 July 2023, St Paul’s Church, Chichester 1st review St. Paul’s Church in Chichester was the location for the annual summer concert by Chichester Symphony Orchestra – founded in 1889 and still going strong over 130 years later. Over 150...
- July 11, 2023
St Paul’s, Chichester, July 9 Handel, and Messiah in particular, is one of the Wonders of the Musical World. One can admire David Bowie but never love him as much as Marc Bolan, it has long seemed to me, and something similar...
- July 10, 2023
Southsea, 8 July There was much to take away from The Renaissance Choir’s “Byrd Song” programme which proved to be so much more than a celebration of William Byrd’s recent 400th anniversary. Indeed, this ambitious and generous programme was packed...
- July 9, 2023
Valentina Seferinova and Catherine Lawlor, Portsmouth Cathedral, July 6 Two of the most memorable musical events across the region so far this year have featured Catherine Lawlor and her violin, in Szymanowski and Shostakovich. I’m resistant to any but the...
- July 9, 2023
Ida Pelliccioli, Chichester Catheral, Jul 4 It is often for the best for a concert programme to have a theme or thread like today’s ‘journey from Spanish keyboard music to the Viennese Classic Style through the worl of Manuel Blasco...
- July 7, 2023
Portsmouth Baroque Choir warmed up for next week’s Messiah with a programme of anthems From Lent To Easter, their appetite for such music needing large helpings of it to be satisfied. Peter Gould moved from organ to guest conductor with Malcom Keeler featuring as...
- July 3, 2023
Stanford Chamber Chorale, Portsmouth Cathedral, Jul 1 Horace, Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick are among those best known for encouraging us to ‘carpe diem’, seize the day, to get on with it. On a day of piled-up fixture congestion across the...
- July 3, 2023
Danny Driver, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, July 1 A few weeks ago on the wireless Danny Driver was described as a ‘cerebral’ pianist and soon after, as if to prove the point, was the guest on Composer of the Week talking about the...
- July 2, 2023
15th June 2023, Petersfield Festival Hall Petersfield Orchestra concerts frequently feature outstanding young solo players, and their June 2023 concert was no exception. Here we were dazzled by Mathilde Milwidsky’s sensational performance of Saint-Saëns’ virtuosic third violin concerto. Her full-toned...
- July 1, 2023
Portsmouth Choral Union at St. Mary’s, Portsea, 24 June 2023 It was fitting that on the day which celebrates the birth of John the Baptist that PCU should perform St. Nicolas by Benjamin Britten which includes the phrase ‘he climbed...
- June 26, 2023
Richard Allum and Lis Peskett, Portsmouth Cathedral, June 15 We have had some viola round these parts in recent months so for once it’s not such a rarity. The viola’s relationship with the violin is vaguely like that of Johann...
- June 16, 2023
The Plaegan Piano Trio, Chichester Cathedral, June 13 The stories seem to suggest that Brahms was a ‘glass half empty’ character, being disappointed that he wasn’t Beethoven. For anybody else the glass would surely have been full to the top...
- June 13, 2023
Southern Pro Musica & Pavlos Carvalho, 13 May CMS had been invited to join with Southern Pro Musica for their May 13 Concert at St. Paul’s Church in Chichester to hear a splendid programme of orchestral music. Conducted by talented...
- June 7, 2023
James Lisney (piano), Portsmouth Menuhin Room, June 3:Beethoven 33 Variations on a Waltz of Diabelli, Op.120 There are two reviews, read David Green’s first then Diana Swann’s. If Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations were a horse they’d be by The Art of Fugue out of A Musical...
- June 4, 2023
Fumi Otsuki & Sarah Kershaw, Portsmouth Cathedral, May 25 Last year in Lunchtime Live! Sarah Kershaw played Fumi Otsuki’s Piano Sonatina no. 1 and I was at least half expecting no. 2 today but things move quicker than that. It...
- May 30, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, 23 May Mozart’s operas are enough to put him among the greatest composers, even if they were all the music he’d written, so dense are they with such wonderful tunes. It comes as no surprise that Beethoven saw...
- May 25, 2023
A significant feature amongst the covid-related cancellations in the St Nicholas 2020 celebrations was a concert performance by the renowned Hampshire Police Male Voice Choir. How wonderful it was that three years later, and almost exactly to the day, the...
- May 19, 2023
Portsmouth Cathedral, 11 May One doesn’t generally know what’s going to be played at a Portsmouth Lunchtime Live!, only who will be playing it. Today Emmanuel Bach (pictured) and Jenny Stern gave a programme of Scandinavian composers. Grieg’s Sonata no. 2, op.13...
- May 12, 2023
Part of a new series of Saturday lunchtime recitals in Portsmouth’s Menuhin Room. Cordelia Williams, 29 April 2023 As we emerged from the Menuhin Room last Saturday, we were all aware that we had been privileged to enjoy the performance...
- May 9, 2023
Neil Crossland, Chichester Cathedral, May 2 Last week a traffic accident prevented the bus from getting to Chichester so I had an unplanned walk to Bosham. This week there was no such problem and so it was ‘music to my...
- May 2, 2023
This new series of Saturday lunchtime recitals in Portsmouth’s Menuhin Room took no time at all to establish itself with a high standard of performance and an engaging programme of events. Somehow, Cordelia Williams took on the enormous challenge of...
- April 30, 2023
Hampshire Police Male Voice Choir, Portsmouth Cathedral, April 27 ‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo, What have we here? It’s not often we get a male voice choir for a lunchtime concert round these parts and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen...
- April 29, 2023
The latest Petersfield Musical Festival took place from 17 to 25 March 2023. It comprised: 700 performers2,000 audience members10 days of concerts1 brass band5 choirs4 orchestras11 schools9 conductors2 chamber groups9 guest soloists Download the latest newsletter with reviews and articles about...
- April 25, 2023
Shostakovich Piano Trio, April 22 There were more reasons than usual to look forward to today’s Menuhin Room concert. Shostakovich is always an occasion and, after Catherine Lawlor’s Szymanowski in the cathedral was such a memorable highlight of the year...
- April 23, 2023
Los Ladrones, The Spectre Knight, St. Faith’s, Havant, Apr 12 It’s said a change is as good as a rest and so while the local cathedrals were taking a rest from lunchtime recitals, St. Faith’s provided some light operetta for a...
- April 13, 2023
The latest concert by the Portsmouth Philharmonic raised £575 for Aurora New Dawn and was attended by the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth, whose chosen charity was the beneficiary. Featuring soloist Karen Travers, who performed Hayden’s Trumpet...
- April 9, 2023
A large audience greeted The Renaissance Choir, under its conductor, Peter Gambie, with Zoe Barnett, guitar at St. Peter’s Church, Petersfield on 1st April 2023. The concert consisted of the best of the Renaissance Choral Masters Series, which had been...
- April 3, 2023
St. Mary’s, Fratton, April 1 As chance would have it, in the morning I heard the contemporary composer, Bent Sørensen, on the wireless quoted as having written, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is maybe the greatest work of art in any...
- April 2, 2023
Julia Bishop was the guest of the Chichester Music Society on 7 March at the University of Chichester when she gave a fascinating concert entitled “The Devil’s Instrument.” This was the name given to the violin after the Reformation by...
- March 30, 2023
Petersfield Orchestra, 23 March Cordelia Williams, a rising star in the world of classical piano and Hampshire resident, thrilled the audience in her sold-out concert with the Petersfield Orchestra on Thursday 23 March. She played the famous Schumann Piano Concerto in A...
- March 25, 2023
Portsmouth Cathedral, Mar 23 Music rarely benefits from being put into categories. You might find Simeon Walker filed under ‘Contemporary’, a term so meaningless that one can do what one wants. And that’s what Simeon does. He plays his own...
- March 24, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, 21 March The homework I did yesterday on Beethoven’s Archduke Trio will perhaps be useful another time. The English Piano Trio were incomplete due to illness and so cellist Pál Banda took on the audience of about 300 on his...
- March 21, 2023
Portsmouth, 18 March One thing we don’t give up for lent is music. It’s best to give up non-essentials. I don’t give up Music in Portsmouth, either, without which I might have walked to Southsea on a fool’s errand unaware that...
- March 19, 2023
Menuhin Room 11 March 2023: The Monington Duo I came away from Saturday’s lunchtime concert feeling that this new series of concerts is putting this lovely concert hall back on the Portsmouth musical map. It gives fine local musicians such as...
- March 13, 2023
We have enjoyed some amazing performances and wonderful programmes of music over the past three weeks at Holy Trinity, Gosport. On February 20th we enjoyed a really interesting lunchtime programme with music from Karg-Elert, Handel, Jongen and Lefebure-Wely played superbly...
- March 11, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, 7 March Happy Birthday, Maurice Ravel. He would have been 148 today, had he lived. He’s a popular choice for solo piano recitals in these parts. We did have his Jeux d’eau here last year when I wrote, I’ve never...
- March 8, 2023
The Solent Symphony Orchestra presented a heartwarming programme entitled ‘Spring Classics ‘ at St. Thomas’ Cathedral last Saturday. The three works are certainly stalwarts of the repertoire, and for good reason, possessing as they do a wealth of creative inspiration....
- March 6, 2023
On 23 February the young but highly experienced Armida String Quartet gripped and transported its audience with the third string quartets of Schumann and Brahms, flanking the UK premiere of the Second String Quartet by the Serbian composer Marko Nikodijevic....
- March 1, 2023
Miriam Teppich (violin), Pavlos Carvalho (cello), Jakob Fichert (piano), 7 February Pavlos Carvalho (cello), together with old friends Miriam Teppich (violin) and Jacob Fichert (piano) were reunited on 7th February at a Chichester Music Society event for what turned out...
- February 28, 2023
Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Feb 11 Andrew McVittie and Helen Morris set this new series of recitals in motion with a hugely enjoyable shared programme billed as ‘carefully selected piano sounds designed to soothe the mind and body’. Andrew was first...
- February 12, 2023
Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ was the chosen work for this year’s ‘Come and Sing’ hosted by Portsmouth Choral Union on Saturday 28th January. The choir was delighted to welcome the large number of enthusiastic visiting singers that joined them for...
- February 9, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, 7 February Women composers are hopefully, if somewhat belatedly, no longer a curiosity. At one time the prevailing attitude to them might have been like that of Dr. Johnson to women preachers, Sir, a woman’s preaching is like...
- February 8, 2023
Portsmouth Cathedral, Feb 2 Szymanowski for lunch was a rare treat served up with some relish by Catherine Lawlor and Valya Seferinova. Portsmouth and its catchment area are well catered for in musical talent and they are two of its...
- February 3, 2023
Portsmouth Cathedral, Jan 26 It’s always useful when performers say a few words of introduction about the pieces they perform and James Gaughan was particularly good at that, beginning by pointing out their watery theme before I’d noticed its appropriateness...
- January 27, 2023
Chichester Cathedral, 23 January Peter Mallinson and Matthias Wiesner are two viola players, and Evgenia Startseva is the piano engine room, a combination I’ve not seen before, playing pieces arranged for such a trio but one specially written for it....
- January 25, 2023
Today’s programme sung by Rachel Barrett and Hannah Gunga, accompanied by Karen Kingsley, on a theme of ‘strong women’ was inadvertently the more appropriate following the announcement by Jacinda Ardern that she is stepping down from the position of New...
- January 19, 2023
Concert on 13 December The Chichester Music Society’s Christmas 2022 Bursary Holders Concert was held at the University of Chichester on 13 December. This annual event has become a favourite among our members, not least as the programme is highly...
- January 16, 2023
Lunchtime Live! 12 January 2023 There was no possibility of taking a walk today, one might have thought, the weather being inclement. The journey across town was uninviting and one for the hardy. But not the foolhardy. If music and...
- January 13, 2023
The Angels Approved The angels looked down from the roof of St. Mary’s, Portsea as over 100 young musicians of The Hampshire County Youth Orchestra and nearly 100 singers of Portsmouth Choral Union performed to a packed audience (concert on...
- December 12, 2022
Andy Quin, 4 December ‘Now that was our Handel organ as we’ve never heard it before – well certainly not since Andy Quin’s last performance here at Holy Trinity in (we think) 2018! Today, Andy talked about how fortunate he...
- December 5, 2022
17 November, Petersfield Festival Hall The 96th season of the Petersfield Orchestra opened with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. The performance was characterised by well-sustained climaxes, and precise fast rhythmic passages featuring impressive playing from percussion and timpani. I especially...
- November 24, 2022
Mateusz Rettner, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 22 It was fitting, for what is likely to be the last concert I attend in a rich and busy year, to arrive at The Well-Tempered Klavier. It is like an index to all music, the most...
- November 23, 2022
The University of Chichester Chamber Orchestra, under the musical direction of Crispin Ward, played for the Chichester Music Society Concert on 8 November at the University. The highlight of the evening was a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major...
- November 19, 2022
Duo Dorado, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 15 The history of Western Classical Music is a succession of glorious ages. Some more glorious than others perhaps but none more so than the C18th baroque. We might like to think we can tell...
- November 17, 2022
Richard Allum, Portsmouth Cathedral, Nov 11 One waits patiently through the long summer for an autumn that’s all too brief and then it’s gone. Gladly, there’s compensation in the warmth of the lunchtime music in a quiet corner of Portsmouth....
- November 10, 2022
6 November 2022, Holy Trinity Gosport Today’s Tea-Time Concert was simply lovely! We were entertained by music from across the globe – all of it delightful! I gave the concert the title of ‘Sounds of Morning Tide’ but a more...
- November 8, 2022
Chichester Cathedral, Nov 1 After the intensity of the Rachmaninov Vespers on Saturday, Charlotte Rowan and Charlotte Stevenson’s programme today was pure enjoyment rather than a long, dark night of the soul. Outside it was breezy, bringing in the authentic November chill...
- November 2, 2022
