As always, this year's chamber and orchestral concert provided an opportunity for pupils to perform their own compositions, as well as the possibility of incorporating some pieces by other composers who might otherwise, by their nature, not have been included in more mainstream orchestral concerts. As such the Chamber and Orchestral Concert is always a varied and colourful event due to the wide range of unpredictable diverse styles juxtaposed in one evening. The compositions by pupils come from members of the Upper Shell, Sixth Form and Remove and many formed part of the pupils' A level and GCSE submissions.
The evening began at 7:30pm with Meera Kumar's Variations on 'Lauda Jerusalem' arranged for string octet led by Clemmie Burton-Hill. This was an interesting approach to such a task in its orchestration and thematic development and the small ensemble of players was very effective due to the close proximity of many members of the audience. The first half was in fact dominated by compositions for small ensembles or soloists such as Paul Bailey's highly contrapuntal and rhythmically varied Sonata for Oboe and 'Cello, Jonathan Sells's stunningly performed Trio for Flute, Oboe and 'Cello and finally Benjamin Lehmann's Fantasy No 1 for Piano which was very well received as well as being fiendishly technically difficult; indeed, the soloist, Jonathan Katz commented that the composer 'requires the performer to have twelve fingers'! Interspersed between these pupil compositions were The Lamb by Tavener, authentically sung by the Henry VII Singers, despite its pure refined use of such techniques as retrograde and Weber's Overture to Peter Schmoll, op 8 sensitively arranged by Kenneth McAllister for wind ensemble.
After the interval Toby Benton's complex piece Love/Persecution was performed, interestingly scored for voice, guitar, strings, woodwind and percussion. However, unfortunately the acoustic of School did not do it justice. William Robertson's highly ambitions piece Metamorphosis surprised everyone with its totally unexpected piano entry and was followed by Ed Stevens's varied and ephemeral Nimbus and Daphne Harvey's Study for String Quartet which was mildly atonal and technically demanding. The penultimate piece, Jenny Haydock's Lament for string ensemble, horn and flute, contained some beautifully performed solos and was rhythmically original. The Sibelius Swan of Tuonela op 22 no 3 was exceptional in the beautifully phrased and sustained cor anglais solo and the orchestra, in particular the timpani, maintained the tension, dramatically released in the moving climax.
The success of the concert shows, once again, the great musical talent of certain pupils at the School, and the result was a thoroughly impressive evening.
Tim Vale (College)
In a year when the centenary of Bertolt Brecht's birth was largely ignored in this country, it was admirable to see Westminster recognising some of this remarkable man's achievements by inviting the renowned cabaret singer Eva Meier to perform some of his poems in arrangements by Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler. The audience who packed School enjoyed a most thought-provoking evening.
The fascinating programme, which Ms Meier has been performing all over the world to great acclaim, gave a real insight into the different aspects of the man and his times. Each song was preceded by an English translation read by an actress - anathema to those from Richard Stokes's German classes, but no doubt a great help to many in the audience.
Songs which the Nazis labelled degenerate like Barbara's Song from the Threepenny Opera and the Bilbao Song show a humorous desire for imperfection and vice (after all it is the Germans who say that a woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful) and were relayed with charm and seductiveness. Other songs from the 1920's, like Pirate Jenny and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, continued the theme of the hedonism of Weimar democracy. Others however varied from the sentimentality of the Matrosen Tango (which nonetheless manages to slip in Brecht's atheism) to the absurdity of Mother Beimlen and Jakob Apfelbšck, but Ms Meier seemed totally in control of the subject matter at all times.
Of course a large proportion of Brecht's output was socialist didacticism and it was here that one could really see that Ms. Meier was very much an actress who sings rather than the other way round - as Brecht would have wanted. Songs such as A Horse Complains and Supply and Demand - the first tragic, the second witty and cynical, compose a passionate attack on capitalism. As the dark years of Hitler's rise to power approached Ms Meier reached a new level of interpretation in Eisler's setting of the gloomy but haunting Lullabies from a mother to her unborn children. It is ironic that Brecht treated women so sympathetically in his poems but in real life treated them quite differently.
At no time was Brecht as eloquent and moving as when describing the Third Reich. The evening had begun with Brecht's own recording of To Posterity, recited in the manner of the author's alienation theories, which, for me, was one of the most penetrating attacks on the Nazis ever written. Eisler's settings of his other anti-Nazi poems were similarly scathing: the Song of a German Mother and the Ballad of the Nazi Soldier's Wife look at the war from points of view not often explored. They were a shocking end to this absorbing evening.
We are indebted to Richard Stokes for arranging this evening to celebrate the life of an outstanding artist, and to Eva Meier for bringing his work to life.
Neil Fisher (Milne's)