The McLellan Arts festival reached its climax with the final two days in the hands of the Northern College of Music from Manchester
Tim Pomeroy
Friday saw the Gala concert in the High School at times rock the fittings as the sweet and powerful voices of our talented visitors and festival supporters floated through and caressed the auditorium. All the singers had prodigious talent and, as in life, what distinguished them one from another, was their different characters. And character extended beyond the voice and into the quality of the accompanists which was striking. The sensitivity of the new baby grand piano was matched only by the lightness of touch and note-holding daring of the pianists. The piano itself was no small star in the proceedings and it is a great thing that Dr Colin Guthrie’s donation has helped purchase it. The real gift, and the one that moves the heart, is that he has given the gift of music to generations of children yet to be born. We who recognise this salute him.
In the first half, this reviewer is happy to pick Aimee Toshney’s Song to the Moon by Dvorak as particularly moving. The music, obviously but the singer’s extra mile, definitely. Rhys Jenkins as Don Giovanni was especially colourful as the Don in the first half and showed great stage presence in the second, rocking those aforementioned fittings with the Road to Manadalay. Ben McKee’s version of Vaughan Williams Vagabond was heart-warming and Gwenellian Elias delivered a breath-taking rendition of Aaron Copland’s Little Horses. Young islander Oisean Gold, under the gentle direction of Peter Wilson, gave a sweet rendition of Drink to me Only. In the second half, Amy Webber and Hanna-Liisa Kirchin performed the ever-popular Rossini Cat Duet complete with hissings and scratchings. Aimee Toshney raised a tear with If I Loved You from Rogers and Hammerstein ‘s Carousel and Hanna-Liisa Kirchin was a perfectly reluctant model singing from Sondheim’s Sunday in the park with George.
On Saturday, Lamlash Church was the perfect setting for Mozart’s Requiem. The able bodies of the Lochranza choir augmented the voices for this tour de force of the choral canon. The evening was again divided in two halves the Requiem taking all the second half. The preamble to the main event was itself no light weight sketch with, among others, Mozart’s Ave Verum, Handel’s ’Let the bright Seraphim’ and a virtuoso Bach organ solo. Arran’s own man of brass, Dave Payne, contributed very sweet soprano trumpet that was a beautiful compliment to the organ and chorus – completely at home in the vaulted ceiling of the church. But it was the massed voices of the Lochranza choir and visiting soloists that brought this year’s Mclellan Festival to its final crescendo. If a composer lives every time his or her music is played, then that night, despite requiem-status , Mozart was alive and visiting Lamlash. Northern College of Music.. to quote a weel-kent musical ..’fare thee well but be back soon.
To find out more about the Royal Northern Colledge of Music see http://www.rncm.ac.uk/
