This week’s Music at Lunchtime concert was given by Form 7 student, George, who treated the audience to a varied programme of vocal music.
George opened his recital with ‘Flow my tears’, a vocal favourite by Renaissance composer, John Dowland, before moving onto two core works from the classical song repertoire by Schubert and Britten. George’s performance of Schubert’s Lied ‘Gute Nacht’ was aptly powerful, taking the audience through the protagonist’s journey of loneliness, before moving on to his striking rendition of Britten’s setting of Thomas Hardy’s ‘At day-close in November’.
The second half of George’s programme paired two contemporary musical theatre works: ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’ from Les Misérables and Zina Goldrich’s ‘Taylor’s Rebuttal’. Schönberg’s powerful music speaks of the grief and desolation of the song’s protagonist, Marius. Ending on a lighter note, Goldrich’s ‘Taylor’s Rebuttal’ tells of the woes of a coffee-shop barista who is the unfortunate object of a customer’s increasingly desperate attempts to date him. Entertaining, witty and laugh-out-loud funny, it was a great finisher to a rounded and polished recital!
Our final Music at Lunchtime concert is next week, and is a piano recital given by Form 6 Music Scholar, Ethan.
The recording from today’s recital is available here.
