Concerts In The West
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Lumas Winds, Beth Stone (flute), Chris Vettraino (oboe), Rennie Sutherland (clarinet), Benjamin Hartnell-Booth (French horn), Florence PIane (bassoon), performed a mix of original and arranged repertoire emanating from 20th century.
Gyõrgy Ligeti Six Bagatelles originated from a set of piano pieces, Musica ricercata (1953)… These terse and concentrated musical episodes, played with taut precision, proved to be an excellent starting point for the Lumas programme.
Following on from Valerie Coleman’s innocuous Vocalise (Afro-Cuban Concerto 2001), Lumas Winds performed a transcription of Dvorak’s ‘American’ String Quartet… if the listener can set aside the understandable recall of Dvorak’s original instrumentation and listen with a ‘new pair of ears’, then this transcription can be a very satisfying experience.
After the interval we were treated to a medley of popular pieces taken from film scores and ballets by Shostakovich and arranged by the Lumas horn player, Benjamin Hartnell-Booth. This provided the individual players of Lumas Winds to shine as personalities as well as being players of notes.
The programme ended with the classic of wind quintet fayre, namely, Carl Nielsen’s 1923 Quintet…
“From the opening Ligeti Bagatelles to the last note of the Nielsen one felt that Lumas Winds is not only a quintet with tremendous individual technical capability but a group that projects great character into its performances.”
As an encore, Lumas Winds played a lively arrangement of traditional American songs, leaving the foot-tapping audience with a spring in their step as they headed home on what had been a very rewarding summer’s evening.
