Review: Presteigne Festival, at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne
There was a strong Lithuanian thread running through last weekend’s Presteigne Festival, and it was fascinating to have the opportunity of checking out what’s happening in terms of musical composition on the edge of the Baltic Sea.
The first music from that country we heard was Music of Silent Thingsby Ramunas Motiekaitis, a work of well-built string sonorities and one which effectively belies a Pseuds’ Corner programme note (perhaps things don’t translate well).
Artistic director George Vass conducted the Presteigne Festival Orchestra with meticulous care for detail.
This Thursday opening concert also brought the Festival-commissioned premiere of Night Interludes by Joseph Phibbs, the product of an ear well-attuned to earlier string orchestra masterpieces, with many expressive nuances but sometimes bewildering textures.
There was also a genuine string masterpiece in Bartok’s Divertimento, and a scintillating account of Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings.
Huw Watkins was the incisive pianist, Heidi Bennett’s trumpet discarding its guise of spectre at the feast to tumble and chatter in the finale’s romp.
Huw Watkins was the commanding presence in a rewarding song-recital on Friday afternoon, his own Five Larkin Songs delivered with piercing insight by soprano Helen-Jane Howells (who caught the acoustic here more comfortably than the soloist in the work’s premiere last year in the Ludlow Assembly Rooms), the composer at the piano.
Howells moved easily from the Purcellian coloratura which opens Britten’s On this Island to the cabaret wit which concludes it. More Britten came with some of his folksong settings. the soloist’s eye-contact and body-language such effective vehicles.
We also heard the premiere of Julian Philips’ busy, testing and organically unified Love Songs of Amy Lowell, and Sonnet III “Alla Luna” by the eminent Lithuanian composer Zita Bruzaite, clearly and simply structured, Howells’ radiant soprano joined by deft oboist Helen Barker in the evocation of a medieval Italian frottola as Watkins continued to supply well-weighted accompaniments coloured by a composer’s empathy.
Saturday’s memorial concert for Presteigne stalwart Judy Hiam was more than a sell-out, efficiently handled by the willing staff, and one which proved the finest concert I have ever heard in my long experience of the festival.
