Soundscape at School of Music ‘an evening to remember’

Last Sunday evening’s concert at the Edna Manley College’s School of Music was one which a young Gaynstead High School student said she would remember for the rest of her life. She was one of a group of the high-school students who, School of Music Director of Studies Andre Adman told the audience, were special guests at the concert.

The show, Soundscape in Black and White, comprised work played on two grand pianos by the school’s faculty and a special guest performer. Classical composers on the programme were Mozart, Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré and Franz Liszt. Jazz and popular music composers were also featured.

Speaking to The Gleaner after the recital, Adman said the intention of the organisers was “to engage audiences in a different [unusual] way. It focuses on what we do here at the School of Music – educate and entertain”.

Of the project with Gaynstead, he said, “We’re trying to educate the students, and the community, about the extensive repertoire of fine music we have at the school and in Jamaica.”

I don’t know what aspect of the recital the Gaynstead student considered unforgettable, but I will long remember two extraordinary, half-hour-long items among the other very good, shorter pieces. The first was a jazz medley by world-renowned pianist Dr Orville Hammond, which on the programme was listed simply as Musings.

That name suggests the variety of moods Hammond created for the audience during his playing, but he offered us an alternative name, For Thunder. This came to him because, while he was practising the piece, his dog, Thunder, came up, listened until the rehearsal was finished, then left.

Hammond said he was quite pleased, as he reasoned that the dog found the piece interesting enough to forsake the many other things he must have had to do. Still, it’s probably that the dog didn’t enjoy the masterful playing and numerous musical allusions to composers foreign and local as much as we did. Hammond ended with melodies by George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

The second extraordinary offering was Stephen Shaw-Naar’s playing of Liszt’s controversial Sonata in B minor (1853). Though initially the work was not well received, Shaw-Naar told us, it is now highly regarded and, in fact, a model sonata. I had not heard it before and my research showed that volumes have been written on the complex, multi-layered composition.

Critics have widely varying – even contradictory – interpretations. Some see it as an allegory set in the Garden of Eden, with both divine and diabolical characters. It is also supposed to be autobiographical with its musical contrasts springing from the composer’s personality and, additionally, based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Asked why he liked the composition, Shaw-Naar said, first, that Liszt was his favourite composer.

“This piece shows how much depth he has. It went against the culture of his time, but it has stood the test of time.”

He also admitted to its sentimental value, for he first played it at his undergraduate recital.

The evening started with a delightful duo on the two pianos – with School of Music lecturer Allison Wallace pairing with guest pianist Maxan Russell for the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata in D for two pianos. Later, playing a duet (on one piano), they gave us Fauré’s Dolly Suite Bercuse.

The second item saw School of Music Dean Dr Roger Williams playing one of Beethoven’s “show off” compositions, 32 Variations in C Minor. Though repetitious, the variations came thick and fast and I was not the only one, I learnt later, who didn’t recognise each individual one.

Williams later closed off the musical part of the programme with George Gershwin’s Three Preludes for Piano (1926). It was the perfect antidote to the intense concentration that the previously played Liszt sonata required. The first prelude was jazz-flavoured and cheerful, the second, soothing, and the third, again jazzy.

Adman’s vote of thanks closed the excellently structured and presented programme.

entertainment@gleanerjm.com