A Morning At Sinfonia Newydd 2011
Today (28th June, for those of you who come from the future) there was a special event at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. This event was called Sinfonia Newydd.
Sinfonia Newydd was founded in February 2010, and since then, has produced twenty-five premiere performances. The aim of Sinfonia Newydd is to showcase the talents of young composers, conductors, instrumentalists and vocalists, among other things.
New Music for All the Strings
The first concert of the day was New Music for All the Strings, featuring three world premieres of music composed and performed by young people, and one piece based on the themes of some pieces from Ralph Vaughan Williams' collection of folk songs.
The opening piece was a duet for viola and piano called Pandora, written and (half) performed by David Harrington. Joining him on the viola was Toks Dada, the artistic and managing director of the event. They played very nicely together, and the piece was rather nice. The programme calls the piece "dream-like and sorrowful", and while the piece wasn't exactly cheerful, I think it was a little short of being all that the programme promised it would be.
The second piece was Anything For, a duet for cello and piano, written by Callum Nicholls, who, like David Harrington, played the piano for his composition. The cellist, Tania Drewitt, was fairly average as cellists go. Not bad (and definitely better than I am), but nothing spectacular. I don't think that she's a future Steven Isserlis (or at least, the female equivalent). In both this piece and Pandora, the piano was far too loud. The cello in this case and the viola in Pandora were both being drowned out completely at times, which is not what you'd expect for a duet. The piece itself was rather nice, although again, it didn't live up to its description in the programme. It was allegedly extremely romantic, but I didn't get any of that from the performance. It was good, just not as good as the programme made it out to be.
Piano Trio No. 1 was the next piece to come along. I'll be honest, when I read the words "Piano Trio", I thought that we were going to have two more pianos squeezed into the tiny room, but I read on and was somewhat disappointed when I read that what was meant by piano trio was, in fact, a piano, a cello and a violin. Again, the piano was far too heavy in this piece, but I can forgive them that, because this piece was outstanding. For once, the programme didn't do it justice! There would be short, lyrical melodies that were very lovely, that would suddenly be interrupted by a very harsh rhythmic motif. Of the first concert, this piece was my favourite.
The final piece was English Folk Songs by Lewis Furber, and the only piece in the concert that wasn't a world premiere. It featured melodic ideas from Ralph Vaughan Williams' collection of folk songs, and it was rather lovely piece. This piece also brought along the return of David Harrington and Toks Dada, who played together much more nicely in this piece. Toks' tone was much nicer, and David seemed to have worked out that the piano had been a little overpowering, as the balance was much better here. It was a lovely end to the first concert.
Everything & Anything
The second concert began not long after the first had ended. It had no world premieres, unfortunately, but all of the music was still good. The first piece was, in fact, two pieces. It was called Two Pieces for Messiaen, and it was a nice fun piece. Something that caught my attention particularly was that the conductor didn't check tuning first, which is always important, even if you've tuned backstage. Luckily for him, the instruments were all perfectly in tune, and played wonderfully. The violinist liked to flick her hair a lot, but it didn't seem to affect her playing at all, so I'm not complaining.
The next piece was 2 Oboists, 1 Score, a piece with a very interesting idea behind it. The idea was that both oboists were playing from the same score, but one was reading it upside down. It led to some very interesting sounds, it must be said. It was done very nicely, and I think the female oboist, Alice McArthur, had a very nice dress. The point where the oboists crossed over was rather interesting, and there was a clear crossing point. Overall, though, I think the piece was a little too short, but it was nice while it lasted.
The next piece was called Table Score, by the same composer as the last piece, Daniel Jones. He seems to like playing around with scores, as in this piece, the score was a big square and the players, all oboists, say around a table and turned the score by 90 degrees each time they reached the end of a section. This piece, unfortunately, dragged on a bit, and while it was a great theory, the piece itself was not great. I didn't like the harmonies at all.
The final piece was called N Il Gliydun Ths. The idea was that when listening to a song in a language you don't know, you'll start picking up on the phonemes and characteristics of the country's language and culture. To test this out, the song is written in a completely made up language, from a completely made up country. Here are the lyrics for you:
N il hy gliydun ths,
A stm ryal jho sei.
N il me kraowil ths,
A stm ryal oen uyl.
N il Grelweiyn hwost,
Bvenna tam n a mil.
I decided to have a go at translating the lyrics by listening to the song and trying to understand what mood the soprano was trying to convey. Here's my translation for you.
There goes a yellow boat,
Taking fish to sea.
There goes my favourite boat,
Taking fish from land.
There goes Mr Mackrel,
Let's eat him for dinner.
I think that sounds about right. If you have any alternative translations, I'd be interested to hear them, so please leave a comment. It will save me from my loneliness...
Overall, the day was very enjoyable, and I'd recommend going if you get a chance in the future and if you're super quick the final performance is at 8pm tonight.
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