Programme:
F.Liszt – Paraphrase on Ernani
J.S.Bach – Prelude and Fugue no.16 Vol II
F.Chopin – Etude Op10 no.8
Available to watch on our Facebook page bit.ly/
or on our website https://www.
Garsington Opera is delighted to announce the launch of Music for the Eyes – a weekly online documentary featuring music from Garsington Opera and images from the National Gallery of London. It will be premiered at 6pm every Wednesday in May on Garsington Opera’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. The first 30 minute episode appears this Wednesday 6 May.
Each week a panel of experts led by Johnny Langridge and Imogen Tedbury will take an
operatic theme and explore its context within visual art, literature and more.
The first episode is centred around Le nozze di Figaro and features director John Cox,
conductor Douglas Boyd (Garsington Opera’s Artistic Director) and Caroline McCaffrey-
Howarth (18th Century Curator at V&A).
Future guests will be announced weekly.
‘A gentle walk through the arts in their broadest sense, focusing each week on an
operatic theme and taking time with leading experts to look at its context within
visual art, literature and more.
A collaboration between Garsington Opera and Dr Imogen Tedbury (Curatorial
Fellow, National Gallery of London), we aim to draw unexpected and playful
connections between arts, taking a wider view of particular historic moments
through culture.
By looking at opera and art side by side we can discover unexpected points of
connection that can bring solace through reflection in our current situation.’
Johnny Langridge, Director of Communications, Garsington Opera
Last Friday, the weekly concert from HIPF during this lock-down period was given by the 2019 Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition Prizewinner, Alexander Yau.
On of the fascinating aspects of this series has been the range of venues from which the young players are performing. On this occasion Alexander Yau was in his music room in Sydney, having got back home from the Julliard School in New York just before the lock-down came into effect. On this occasion the sense of intimacy was overwhelming, as we were standing right by the piano and – had he been playing from the score – we could have turned over for him.
This closeness has its slight discomforts as every little additional sound, from his finger-tips on the keyboard in longer runs to the squeak of a pedal, is magnified far more than it would be in a concert hall or larger studio. However this is inconsequential compared with the sense of involvement it gives us with the music-making.
He opened with Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s Der Muller und der Bach. This was reflectively romantic, heightened by Liszt’s warmth, but never straying too far from Schubert’s original song. Liszt came into his own with the Concert Etude No2 La Leggierezza though even here the opening is reserved, with the occasional florid touch, before building in excitement and pace, before returning to a quiet, almost sombre, conclusion.
If these two works may have been less familiar, the concluding Barcarolle in F sharp major Op.60 by Chopin brought us on to headily romantic ground and an extended moment of wallowing indulgence. Alexander Yau phrased this with passion and intense involvement without ever lapsing into sentimentality, leaving us wanting more. Let us hope we are able to hear him again soon live, not in his music room.