News and Reviews

Welcome to our 82nd season! The season starts and ends with special charity fund raising concerts, but the main theme of the concerts is "Time for Trios" which celebrates music written for three performers and includes concerts with two piano trios, a string trio, a wind trio and an ensemble of baritone, cello and piano. As well as music by Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms we will be featuring music by Slovenian composers and no less than three world premières! Details are on our concerts page. We have also embarked on a fund raising venture for our Society in which unwanted jewellery is collected for recycling, with profits going to the Society. We supply envelopes for this at our concerts and these are sent direct for recycling post free or returned to us at the next concert so that we can arrange collection. We have been very pleased with the response to this which has already generated extra much-needed funding for the Society. Please enquire if you would like to take part.

The concerts so far!

Our 82nd season started earlier than usual with a special concert on 22 September by the Carducci Quartet to raise funds for the Carducci Music Trust - a charity which enables the members of the quartet to bring music to thousands of schoolchildren. The members of the Carducci Quartet are old friends of the Society, and so it was a great delight to have a good audience for this concert. The programme, which featured quartets by Haydn, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, was performed with immaculate attention to detail, and virtuosic playing did not obscure the freshness of approach and beauty of tone which continue to be an outstanding feature of this talented young quartet.

The Lendvai String Trio is made up of three musicians, each of which has a huge international reputation, but as an ensemble they produce the most exquisite string playing which was shown to full advantage in the programme on 13 October which featured music by Sibelius, Dvorák and Beethoven. They brought with them a film crew from Holland - the first time we have had any of our concerts filmed, so quite a novel experience!

On Thursday 17 November we welcomed the Amael Piano Trio from Slovenia. This was a special concert in collaboration with the Spectrum Festival, Slovenia, which was founded by the Amael Piano Trio, and which included music by Slovenian composers Skerjanc and Lazar. Special guests included the Sherrif and Deputy Mayor of Gloucester and the Cultural Attaché and a colleague from the Slovenian Embassy. An outstanding concert was followed by a reception attended by all the audience, with delicious food provided by the ladies of St Mary de Lode. A wonderful way to end our concerts in 2011!

Our first concert of 2012 attracted much interest and a large audience, many of whom had travelled some distance! This was on Thursday 19 January when the performers were the Rautio Piano Trio, which presented a challenging programme of music by Beethoven, Frank Bridge and Ravel. But for many, the main attraction of the evening was the world première of "Ithaka" - the first piano trio written by Gilbert Biberian. The concert received the following review in "The Citizen".

The Rautio Piano Trio, St Mary de Lode Church, Gloucester, 19.1.2012

You may be wondering about Gilbert Biberian's absence from the concert platform of late. However, it seems that the Charlton Kings based guitarist has turned his mind to composing. All was revealed when the the Rautio Trio gave the world premiere of his new Piano Trio for Gloucester Music Society. Entitled Ithaka, the eight movement work is inspired by a poem by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy and felt like a musical journey, albeit an inward one. Although I was expecting the music to represent Biberian's Greek Armenian roots, these were embedded within the music rather than evident on the surface. This is a work of considerable variety with a declamatory start and several dramatic outbursts along the way. But the excitement was balanced by a silvery nottorno, a dance which reflected the sinuous rhythms and melodies of Asia Minor and a heart-felt Alleluia. The composer tells me he is now working on a string quartet and a guitar concerto, which we look forward to hearing in due course. The Rautio Trio, whose members hail from Russia, Israel and the UK, also demonstrated their demonstrated their exceptional versatility and musicianship elsewhere in the programme. The Piano Trio in G composed by the 25 year old Beethoven abounded in youthful exuberance with pianist Jan Rautio taking care not to overwhelm his colleagues. The stimulating second half placed special demands on the players who gave an warm, affectionate account of Frank Bridge's prize winning Phantasie Trio, with its rhapsodic melodies . Ravel's Piano Trio completed the evening with the young musicians revelling in its its fascinating sonorities and adventurous rhythms. From the mysterious, plaintive melodies of the first movement and the exciting scherzo to the grandeur of the passacaglia and the orchestral sounding finale they never put a foot wrong.

Roger Jones

Reviews from our 81st season.

After the wonderful concerts which celebrated our 80th anniversary year, the new season began with two outstanding but very different concerts. Patricia Rozario and Craig Odgen gave a superb recital on 14 October with our second concert on 18 November proving challenging for both performers and audience alike! This was a programme of music by Bach, Beethoven and Boulez played by the French string quartet Quatuor Parisii which received the following review from Christopher Morley in the Birmingham Post on 25 November.

"In more than 40 years of reviewing, I doubt I've ever been to a more enterpriseing and brave music club promotion than the one to which Gloucester Music Society tempted me slightly outside the confines of our normal boundaries last Thursday.

The performers - the Quatuor Parisii - were illustrious enough, and are always an immense draw in themselves, performing with such charm and persuasive communication. But their programme here was extraordinary, brilliantly constructed, emotionally satisfying, and at the same time spectacularly cerebral - and the unintimidated audience loved it.

Cornerstones (an appropriate word for this ancient building in the shadows of Gloucester's imposing Cathedral) were excerpts from Bach's Art of Fugue, unfolded with clarity and appreciation of their sheer musicality as well as profound contrapuntal genius, and Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, its many-sided, almost cosmic character hypnotically conveyed (it remained an ear-worm for me all through the night).

And interspersing all of this were most of the movements from the Livre pour Quatuor by Pierre Boulez, one of the most unbending works penned by this now so genial octogenerian during his angry-young-man period. Textures, attacks, dynamics and heaven knows what else are all rigorously controlled. There is no melody, nor any sense of developing rhythm, but the colours and sheer gripping inevitability of these pieces make their own impact. Concentration and mutual listening from these amazing players could almost be sensed dripping from these walls which have heard so much over the centuries. Nothing could ever have equalled this triumphh."

Our first concert of the New Year was also our first percussion recital when international percussionist Andrew Whettam brought a varied programme which included the amazing Marimba Sonata written by his father, the late and much missed Graham Whettam. This was reviewed by Colin Burrow in Gloucester Citizen:

"Events at Gloucester Music Society are keenly anticipated for several reasons, not the least of which is the setting. St Mary de Lode's beautiful interior complements its acoustic, ideal for small-scale music-making. Nowadays, maybe because of escalating costs, chamber music is often played in halls large enough for orchestras. This church has the advantage of size. It is small. The atmosphere is intimate, with the audience close to the performers - or, as here, the single performer.

St Mary de Lode is in essence a large room, certainly not a concert hall. The sweep of a Norman arch makes a fine backdrop for the performances. Such is the close rapport between audience and artists that the latter draw raffle tickets after the interval. But could a solo percussionist maintain a whole concert? At least for the most part, yes.

Much of the music was performed on tuned percussion - marimba and vibraphone - but tuned percussion instruments are not without limmitations. With the marimba, but not with the metal vibraphone, the same wooden slat must be hit repeatedly to prolong the note. The concert gave some insight into the ways by which composers have attempted to minimize this limitation. The performer was Andrew, the son of the composer Graham Whettam, who lived his last years near Lydney. His verbal introductions were pitched at just the right level. Original repertory is not large. Diversity was provided by the range of musical styles, from Bach to John Lennon, mostly in arrangements by Andrew. The one improvisation, on vibraphone, evoked the great Milt Jackson.

Bach's Prelude and Fugue, with its short quick-fire notes, worked particularly well. Andrew played his father's Marimba Concert. This substantial work, a challenge which pushes the instrument to its limits, generated absorbing musical patterns. The player has to hold not four, or five, but six mallets. Dazzling manual dexterity, accompanied by arm movements at the speed of sound, was also evident in the rapid hemiolas of Black and White Rag. But the marimba did soft and mellow as well. A novel and adventurous programme, entirely in tune with the tradition of enterprise of the Society."