Masterful music for our troubled times

THE opening piece in this Vale of Glamorgan Festival concert was sadly and starkly relevant to the troubled days in which we live.

Matthew Hindson’s short composition, Lament, was “an attempt to capture the feeling of immense sadness” at the memorial service for the victims of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia, in which 35 people were shot dead by a lone gunman.

It was in many ways a depiction of the shock and grief felt by communities who have experienced such atrocities in recent years. This account by Matthew Jones, who played viola in the first half of the concert and violin in the second, and pianist Annabel Thwaite was measured and deeply felt. The audience listened in reverent silence.

It was followed by Bent Sorensen’s The Lady of Shalott, inspired by a painting by Victorian English painter John William Waterhouse and, of course, Tennyson’s poem.

Its technical challenges were surmounted with ease by an assured and confident Jones who also captured the haunting atmosphere of the piece throughout the mere seven minutes it lasted.

There was a captivating lyricism to Jones’ playing in Libby Larson’s Viola Sonata, complemented by some alert and deeply felt playing on the piano by Annabel Thwaite.

Composer Philip Glass was featured in this concert with a six-minute extract from his opera Einstein on the Beach, called Knee Play 2, while John Adams’ contribution was his 1995 composition, Road Movies.

This sort of oh-so-clever minimalist music can be enticing but also rather tiresome.

Both pieces were impressively played by musicians in this concert, and the audience was duly impressed.

However, the piece that was the most enjoyable and satisfying of the evening was a simple and beautifully crafted composition called Dreamtides, by Steph Power.

The one-movement composition explored the kind of movement and stillness experienced in dreams. It was an enchanting and charmingly beautiful piece of music, free of artifice and contrivance.

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