A Characterful Bassoon Recital

Ivor, a Form 7 music scholar, gave a fantastic bassoon recital in this week’s Music at Lunchtime concert, accompanied by Head of Piano, Anne Bolt.

Ivor began his programme with the first two movements of a bassoon sonata by Johann Freidrich Fasch, a German baroque composer. Following the expressive Largo, the second movement Allegro was animated and spirited and the lively articulation and stylistic ornamentation made for a very idiomatic performance. Ivor then performed the slow movement Adagio from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Sonata in G major. This showed off the richness of the bassoon’s tone, with long melodic lines which sung across the whole range of the instrument. To end the recital, the audience were treated to ‘The Playful Pachyderm’, a witty piece by the little-known British composer Gilbert Vinter, capturing the different sides of the pachyderm – a hippopotamus or elephant. Ivor brought across the joyous, care-free character in the staccato main theme, their limbering grace in the legato passages, and at the end, the air of mystery that surrounds these animals. It was an imaginative performance of an entertaining work, which concluded a recital of great character and musicality- congratulations Ivor!

Next week’s concert is a recital of arias by George Frideric Handel given by students Hattie, Charlie and Simi.