the skylark in flight – copyright Quartl

A Summer concert to enthral

On Friday 10 July, at Christ Church, St Leonards, there is to be a
recital for violin, tenor and piano – a programme which includes violin and piano sonatas by Brahms and Cesar Franck; songs by Debussy, Faure, Poulenc, Villa Lobos and Samuel Barber; the highlight of the evening is The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, in the violin and Piano Version, writes John Read.

Hastings couldn’t ask for a more impressive group of virtuosi to perform this recital: Aysen Ulucan, international violinist, who wowed audiences last year with her Brahms’ violin concerto in D at a Hastings Philharmonic Choir concert. Aysen’s  husband, Marcio da Silva, hardly needs introducing as a brilliant  tenor and exciting young conductor of Hastings Philharmonic Choir. Francis Rayner’s impressive career as an accomplished pianist and local chess champion was described in a previous HOT article.

The Lark Ascending was inspired by a poem of the same name by George Meredith, and begun shortly before the outbreak of the First World War but not completed until Vaughan Williams returned from active service in France. like other works of its time, for example Butterworth’s Banks of Green Willow, it seems to hark back to a peaceful and idyllic rural Britain in Summer that was broken up by war.

It is still Britain’s favourite classical music piece having topped the Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame’ chart for the second year running and the sixth time since the chart began. It will be performed as it was originally heard, for violin and piano, when first performed near Bristol in 1920.

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur, and shake,
All intervolved and spreading wide,
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls.

(The Lark Ascending – George Meredith)

The recital begins at 7.30pm on Friday, 10 July at Christ Church, Silchester Rd, St. Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0JB. Tickets, at the door £8.

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