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Another review I would like to write is about the piece Toccata performed by Thomas Risley. This was a very interesting performance to listen to as I had never heard of the piece or the composer before. The music had a beautiful melody that came around in the music quite a few times and really utilises all the piano to bring forth the sound in this music. This was performed at the lunchtime concert on the 22nd of March and proved to be a very memorable performance. This work was composed in 1932 by Katchaturian and this was during his studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Myaskovsky. This piece ‘Toccata’ seemed very natural to Thomas when he was playing it and to be able to play it alone and to the standard that he did was quite amazing. He managed to make a memorable performance for everyone and provided entertainment for everyone there.

I feel like the way that Thomas performed this piece should be a learning point for me with performance. The way he was calm and collected as he went on stage and the way he managed to gauge the audience’s attention was incredible. His piano playing combined with the sound of the Steinway took everyone aback and made sure that he got the applause he deserved at the end of his performance. It is a whole different style of difficulty performing alone compared to performing with ana accompanist, the fact that there is nobody to support you with what you are playing is a frightening concept for me. I feel like if that was something I could attempt to cover on my own then another set of anxiety would be taken away from myself when I perform anything. I imagine that there was a lot of hard work put into his practice both for the music that he had to perform but also the way he showed himself on stage in the way that he performed for the audience.

If there was going to be another performance, the only thing I would say is to maybe come off a little more professional to the audience as a recital like this, for classical instruments, might need to be to a more classic or professional standard. He did walk up to the piano and sit, play his piece and stand up then bow and leave. However, there can be more of a performer standard added to when he was there, such as engaging with the audience. This doesn’t mean stand up and communicate with them but show them with your music and body language how you are trying to engage with them. This was my only trivial argument I had with his performance as the music was performed amazingly and I would love to hear him perform again.

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I did end up putting a bit more time into my orchestra pieces as I wanted my last concert for the university to be a good one and the pieces that were being played were some of my favourites. The pieces were the Haydn Symphony no.94 'The Surprise' and Dvorak Symphony no.9 'From the New World'. These pieces sound beautiful when played together by an orchestra who can manage the difficulties of the pieces with minimum faults. It is a shame, however, that the concert ended up getting cancelled as train strikes would stop everyone from getting both to the concert and leaving afterwards. I think that this concert would have been one of the best ones we would have performed, and it is a shame that we were not able to perform it.

I did go and listen to these performances online by other orchestras and these proved useful in learning the pieces and just enjoying the music. My favourite was listing to be the NOVA filharmonija playing the Surprise symphony at the Grand hotel Union in Ljubljana on the 19th of January 2017. I thought it was particularly beautiful l the way they managed to play it all collectively as a group. I wish to carry on with my Orchestral playing even after leaving the orchestra as the experience is like no other and I cannot compare anything to playing beautiful pieces in a talented group of instrumentalists.

The way that the pieces of the orchestra made me want to go off and practice, I feel, should be the way I practice with any music I am given, and this is what I will strive to do in the future. I believe playing in an orchestral setting had made me a better performer, and an overall better musician and would like to make sure this carries over into the future.

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Over the course of this semester, I was not great in terms of coordination and practice. There was a lot for me to do such as my Research project and the two other modules I was taking this semester. This led to me not practicing as much as I should have and leading to a struggle in the last few weeks before my performance. Throughout the semester it had taken me a lot longer than I would have hoped to choose pieces that I wanted to perform, and this led to less time to practice the chosen materials. I did end up with a nice program that I thoroughly enjoyed practicing and performing but the effort it took in the minimal amount of time I had was not ideal. This was my fault as I had a lot of time over the semester I should have put aside for these issues, but my time management skills are not as great as they should be. For the pieces I ended up choosing, my favourite was the Berceuse by Amy Beach. I think the way the piece slowly moves throughout is just beautiful and hard to replicate this feeling anywhere else and I just loved performing it. I did end up going and looking to different recordings of this piece as I wanted to know how others made this sound and looked to find out my favourite was a performance I found on YouTube by Trio Fibonacci where the violin playing the beautiful melody was intertwined with the piano and just made for a lovely performance.

Caroline Balding has been my violin teacher during my three years at the university and she has done an amazing job helping to reaching my full potential on the violin. She has also assisted in providing me with the best music to suit my different strengths as well as giving me some other pieces that proved difficult but rewarding if I put the time and effort into practicing them and performing them. At the start of the semester, Caroline provided me with a few different examples of pieces to play that she thought I might enjoy playing as well as being slightly more difficult and providing me with something different to play. She is how I got to my final program, and I am very grateful.

I feel as though going to different performances through the semester and helping out with concert management has helped me as a performer as well, as I have witnessed first hand what it is like for tother people to go through the same things I do when I perform and it is nice to know that I am not the only one who feel the way I do when I perform. Nervousness and stress hits everyone in different way and it is the main difficulty that performers must deal with. However, going and watching these other talented individuals perform to the best of their ability and providing an amazing concert experience is something that I will always remember and try to provide whenever I perform in the future.

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Chamber Choir 9th May  LTR Programme (1)

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During this semester I managed to coordinate two different concerts. The first concert was the lunchtime concert on the 22nd of March. This concert involved Michelle Wong, Shannon Do, Thomas Risley and Sophie Gurney.  The other concert was the ensemble concert on the 9th of May. For both events there was a good amount of communication before the concerts via emails between the management staff, Shiv Varma and the performers. A lot of things needed to be discussed before the lunchtime recital on the 22nd of March as many of the performers who were originally listed to perform did not end up performing. This was okay as there were quite a few people meant to perform that day and all the cancellations were made clear with plenty of time before the day of the concert. I also asked all the performers what they were going to perform, the dates of the composer (birth and death), and the name of the composer as these details would all need to go on to the program that would be handed out to the audience before the concert. For the concert on the 22nd of march I asked Shiv if he could move some of the acts from one side of the program to the other to make it look more presentable and nicer to look at for the audience. This was just a small detail, but I thought it might be something to look at as there is more to a concert than just the performers on stage.
Overall, both concerts ended up running very smoothly and with zero hiccups throughout both events. The only problem I could have seen occurring would have been if nobody was on the doors and somebody walked in mid concert, but I had my assistants for both concerts on the doors to make sure this did not happen. I decided to put myself on the door for the green room to bring on and take of performers to the stage as this was the only other job required for the concerts. I also went on the stage during the Ensemble concert to move items around on stage such as music stands for the performers that needed them in different places. The main time I did this was for the ensemble concert 🤬 the second act on was the University of Surrey Voices Choir who did not need any stands and needed more space on stage to get all the performers on there at once. So, I moved the music stand from the first performance to off stage so there was more space for all of them to fit.
I think that the concerts went very well for both the management staff and the performers. All the acts did a wonderful job and performed very well, and the management did a good job of making sure nothing could go wrong and everything went as smoothly as possible. Coordinating a concert is always a fun but challenging task that requires a lot of communication with a lot of different people but if you can rise to this challenge, it is defiantly a lot of fun. I hope to be able to do this again in the future.

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My first critical review is of the Band made up by Eva Yang Skarratts, Duncan White and Kym Jasmin. Eva was singing, Duncan was playing the piano and Kym was playing the electric guitar. Kym Jasmin’s band played during the ensembles concert on the 9th of May in PATS Studio One. They played three original songs from their album ‘In Pursuit of the Ethereal’. The first song they played was ‘Something Unknown’ and this song showed Eva’s talent as a singer as her vocals in this are particularly amazing especially with the backing of the piano and the guitar. The harmony between all three players was quite spectacular and it could be seen that they had been practicing together for quite a long time. This first song was quite long, seeming to be about five minutes, but I was entranced the entire time as the vocals, piano and electric guitar made an amazing group together with a sound that could be reminiscent of jazz and early 2010’s pop music. I later went to listen to the music again on Spotify and found that the concert version of the song seemed to be a bit more personal and favourable to me, as the performers seemed to pour their heart and soul into their performance and made the in-person concert very worth attending.
The next song they performed was ‘Fire of Fantasy’ and I think that this was my favourite piece of theirs that they performed. The only grievance I have about the song is that I went to listen to this song after the concert as well and found out the original had violin and cello playing as well. I felt that these two other instruments gave the song a different bit of character that could not be seen in the concert. The held notes in the string matches perfectly with the short quaver playing in the piano as well as the singing. If the concert could have incorporated strings into it as well it would have made it even better, however this piece was still my favourite that they performed that night as the synergy between all three players was quite amazing, this could be seen very well as partway through the piece Eva sings ‘stop’ and this brings a pause to the music that is followed by everyone and they then all enter together again afterwards showing the practice and communication that these players must have been through to get their performance to this standard.
The last piece they performed was ‘Joy laced with sorrow’ and this, yet again, showed the players abilities in terms of communication but also their capabilities with their respective instruments. The electric guitar would seem not as necessary with this piano and voice arrangement but fits in quite well and provides a sombre addition to the music. Overall, I really enjoyed the whole performance and would like to hear them perform again live somewhere but would love it if they could incorporate the strings into their ‘Fire of Fantasy’ song as they add a completely new texture and harmony to the music that can’t be heard otherwise.