Classics in June continues to please

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

For the seventh year, the Soroptimist Club of Jamaica has organised a concert of mainly classical music, called Classics in June.

On Sunday, the latest in the series was held in the University Chapel, Mona. As has been the case over the years, the concert was delightful.

In her opening remarks, Soroptimist president Maxine Wedderburn reminded the audience that the aim of the concerts - the brainchild of the late Leila Thomas - was the raising of funds for the National Children's Home and other Soroptimist charities. The emphasis was helping at-risk children, she said.

Mezzo-Soprano Christine MacDonald-Nevers, who led off the performances, never fails to please her audience. Her first three songs where not only beautifully delivered in her rich, perfectly controlled tones but they were expertly ordered, in that they called for singing in an incrementally lively manner.

The first song was an aria from Handel's Rinaldo, the second an aria from Gluck's Orpheo ed Euridice and the third (in English, unlike the others) was Charles Gilbert Spross' Let All My Life Be Music. Even those who don't know that a great deal of the singer's time is, in fact, devoted to music would have been persuaded that was so by the sincerity with which the song was sung.

MacDonald-Nevers again sang at the end of the concert's first half, but then the three Frank Bridge songs - Far, Far From Each Other, Where is it That Our Soul Doth Go? and Music When Soft Voices Die - did not go down as well as the earlier ones. They are very 'arty' and contrived when compared with the more free-flowing earlier ones.

Pianist Stephen Shaw-Naar sensitively accompanied MacDonald-Nevers on both occasions, but in the second there was an "added attraction". This was in the form of Steven Woodham playing superbly on his viola to provide additional accompaniment.

Two other instrumentalists performed in the first half, flautist Laurice Barnaby - the chairperson of the concert's organising committee - and student violinist Miranda Prescod. Not surprisingly, their playing was not up to the standard of the professionals, but they did get appreciative applause from the audience.

Barnaby played the Bach/Gounod version of Ave Maria and a piece from Bizet's opera Carmen. Prescod played the third movement of Sonata No. 3 by Delius and two movements from Dvorak's Romantic Pieces, Op. 75.

In a second half devoted to instrumental music, an item of particular interest was the only original composition in the evening's programme, one of a set of three concert etudes by Shaw-Naar. The composer told The Gleaner that the etudes, which were completed last year, were based on a theme he had composed as a teenager.

They were at one time written for playing by flute and piano but in 2010 they evolved into a work for a piano. The five-minute-long etude played, Waltz Fantasy, is the second of the set of three.

Composes sometimes

Asked about his interest in composition, Shaw-Naar, who is currently staff accompanist at Long Beach City College, Florida, said he composes whenever he can find time in his busy schedule.

"Composing is a part of me I can't let go," he revealed.

On his own, Shaw-Naar also played an etude by Franz Liszt, Mazeppa, one of the composer's Etudes d'execution transcendante. The long, complex piece with its many moods - some energetic and dramatic, some gentle and lyrical - gave Shaw-Naar a chance to show his versatility. He was the 2001 recipient of the Prime Minister's National Youth Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Emcee Dervan Malcolm could only gasp "Wow!", though the audience was more expressive and gave extended applause, when Woodham ended his passionate, dramatic playing of his violin with Rodion Shcherdrin's In the Style of Albeniz, Op 52, and Astor Piazzolla's Milonga sin Palabras.

For the final pair of items, he returned to partner two other lecturers in music, Jose Carlos Oxamendi Vicet (violoncello) and Edison Valencia Mohome (piano), both of Northern Caribbean University. The two culminating pieces were highly anticipated since, like Woodham, Vicet and Mohome earlier established themselves as excellent performers.

This was with their playing of the sublimely beautiful Meditation from Jules Massenet's Thais and then the livelier, drama-filled Allegro Appassinato in B minor, Op. 43, by Camillle Saint-Saens.

For that matter, the audience had also just heard Woodham playing the delightful Piazzolla piece mentioned. That meant a combination of Woodham, Vicet, Mohome and Piazzolla should be magnificent, the audience would have been thinking.

It was, and as the trio ended the two Piazzolla pieces, Oblivion and Primavera Portena (from Cuatro Estaciones Portenas), there was enthusiastic applause. As it died down, Malcolm exclaimed, "What a refreshing evening this has been!"

It was apparent that the audience agreed, which meant that many will fulfil Soroptimist Barnaby's hope that they return next year.