A very special private concert….
On Thursday morning, April the 2nd, Tony Woollard (cellist) and I gave a little impromptu recital at the Wimbledon home of Theo and Kitty Wyatt, where the local U3A music appreciation group meet every other week. We performed a programme of works for Violin / Cello duo by Beethoven, Dotzauer, Giordani and Fiorillo.
The 13 members of the audience were highly appreciative and it was lovely to play in a domestic setting where the audience and performers were all within a few feet of each other, rather than being up on a distant stage in a formal concert. This is the sort of situation chamber music was often written for - played in an intimate setting with the audience able to interact with the musicians. Perhaps in the future, a trend might emerge where music can be once again a form of domestic entertainment - with house concerts performed for small groups of music lovers in peoples homes, rather than audience members having to travel to concert halls where it may be harder to connect with the musicians.
Theo and Kitty are both musicians themselves and through their indefatiguable work collecting rare and out of print chamber music, they have made available over 3000 chamber works by a myriad of composers who are frequently neglected, yet who composed some real gems. In short, they have their own library of pieces which are all out of print, so can be legally and cheaply copied and distributed to musicians seeking to rediscover music outside the standard repertoire. Their home publishing business is called Merton Music and I can highly recommend them.
It was (as always), a real pleasure to play duets with Tony - his generosity of spirit kept the audience entertained almost as much as his beautiful playing.
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