Riverside Coffee Concert Review by Helen Hurrell
Those of you who were at Riv-erside for the Coffee Concert on Saturday February 5th received a real treat, from seeing the charming publicity picture taken in the Britten Theatre of the Royal College of Music, to the end of the all-too-short concert, when we were invited to have a closer look at the instruments.
Beth Stone (flautist) and Danny Murphy (lutes and guitars) formed ‘Flutes & Frets’ only a year ago. They enjoy exploring a huge spectrum of repertoire, spanning five centuries, playing on instruments authentic to the periods. For the flutes, this meant moving from the gentle wooden Eliza-bethan flute which is a plain wooden tube making a very quiet and soft sound in the beautiful John Dowland songs, through the larger more decorated still keyless tube of the early baroque flute which was used for the delightful 18th century traditional folk songs. For both these items the fretted instrument played was the beautiful pear-shaped lute.
In the Marais sonata, we were very excited to see the giant theorbo. This plays like a lute but has a double length fingerboard/neck so that it can play a whole range of notes includ-ing bass. This piece was originally written for violin and continuo, but this arrangement for the flute and theorbo with beautiful and intri-cate melodies on both instruments, made it sound as if it had been composed for them.
For the Sor and Paganini pieces (18th and 19th centuries respectively), the flute played looked a little more like a modern flute, as although it was still wooden it had 8 keys. With the flute was a guitar, and in the case of the Sor, Danny played an original 18th century guitar. It is smaller than a modern guitar, but beautifully decorated, and with a lovely sound. It was surprising to hear that apparent-ly the guitar was Paganini’s second favourite instrument, as usually one hears of him play-ing nothing other than the violin. This play-ing was certainly worthy of the composer.
The Bartok Romanian Folk Dances and Yes-terday by the Beatles, were played on modern metal keyed flute and modern guitar, together with a piccolo in the Bartok. The modern instruments have a brighter and also louder sound, and both items were very excitingly played. It was wonderful to see and hear, so close up, such delightful playing. The differ-ence between the wooden and metal flutes, the subtly different sounds of the different stringed instruments, the variety of tone and expression, was a treasure.
Beth and Danny introduced the music, and they are great communicators, both with the audience and obviously with each other. This is a Duo which we shall be inviting back!
The next coffee concert at the Riverside Arts centre is on 10th April at 2.30pm.