Q Reviews
St James Church
Milton, Portsmouth
Saturday 3 October 2015
Luke Elkington’s solo in My Way bringing
the evening to a stylish close. Leaving the
car park resembled Tetris in reverse, but
everyone made it out in good humour with
the music still ringing in their ears.
Match day in Portsmouth, and the Quiristers
had a fixture of their own: a concert in the
beautiful Edwardian church of St James in
Milton, a ten-minute walk from the lively
Pompey stadium. The concert had been two
years in the planning after Malcolm Archer
gave an organ recital in the church in 2013,
but it was worth the wait.
Lucy Stewart, Q Parent (yr 5)
Quiristers Instrumental Concert
Sunday 15 November 2015
This year the Quiristers returned to the
Music School Hall at Winchester for their
Informal Instrumental Concert where they
were joined by parents, grandparents, siblings
and friends.
The boys processed into the church singing
the plainsong Kyrie from Missa de Angelis,
beautifully led by Tristan Wigley’s solo,
and followed by diction-perfect renditions
of Purcell’s Evening Hymn and Handel’s
Where’er You Walk. The audience was treated
to solos from two potential Choristers of
the Year 2015: reserve finalist Tom Burkill
with a velvety performance of If with all your
hearts from Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and finalist
Angus Benton’s pure tones in Michael Head’s
The Little Road to Bethlehem. After the glories
of Stanford’s A Song of Wisdom and A Song
of Freedom, we were treated to Mozart of an
exceptional standard from the Winchester
College String Quartet.
There was a terrific variety of music, from
Beethoven to Burgmuller, Bernstein and
beyond. The boys started off with two piano
pieces, Hamish Rogers playing a spirited
but precise Indian Pony Race by Glover,
followed by Thomas Burkill’s melodious and
accomplished Minuet & Trio by Beethoven.
There was more piano playing from Luke
Elkington with his calm and confident
performance of Estevez’ Cancion para dormir
una muneca.
These instrumental concerts are a wonderful
opportunity for the younger boys to see
how far it is possible to take their playing in
just a few years. The four probationers all
made their piano debuts interspersed with
the warm tones of Chubbs Bailey playing
Handel’s Where’er you walk on the
euphonium, Tristan Wigley’s Air de Danse
Napolitaine for the cello by Tchaikovsky,
Hamish Rogers’ tuneful playing of A Knight’s
Tale by Sparke on the french horn and an
extremely musical performance of two
pieces by Galliard from Luke Elkington on
the bassoon.
Cesar Franck’s perennial favourite Panis
Angelicus set a gentler pace in the second
half of the concert, and the room fell quiet
as Malcolm dedicated Faure’s lyrical Pie Jesu
to the church’s recently deceased organist
Brian Webb, who had never missed a Sunday
in twenty-one years. The probationers
were introduced to the audience, and
congratulated on holding their own during
their first concert – well done, boys! And
in traditional secular spirit, the concert
concluded with joyous arrangements of Try
to Remember by Harvey Schmidt and Jerome
Kern’s Just the Way You Look Tonight, with
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