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The fifth Young Artist Showcase concert, hosted by Chamber Music Weymouth (formerly Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts) took place at St Mary’s Church, Weymouth, on Sunday 6 July.

Devised by CMW Artistic Director and concert pianist Duncan Honeybourne and Concerts Manager Frances Wilson, these events offer young musicians who are still in full-time education or are just embarking on a professional career the opportunity to perform in a formal concert setting. They also offer audiences a chance to enjoy a range of music, performed by these talented young people.

This year’s concert included a varied and impressive range of music and talents. Opening with Michael Howell, a composer and singer from West London who was a finalist in Channel 4’s The Piano (season 2), the audience were treated to Michael’s own compositions, which blend influences from both classical music (especially Bach) and jazz, together with his extraordinary, other-worldly countertenor voice.

The Alma Trio from Poole/Bournemouth impressed with their confidence and musical maturity in Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1. It was especially fitting that this work, written when the composer was just 18, yet already showing immense talent and emotional depth, was performed by a trio of very poised young musicians of a similar age and equal talent. All three are heading to music college in the autumn.

Edie Wells, a pianist studying with Duncan Honeybourne at the University of Southampton, treated us to her Diploma programme, which presented a range of music, from Bach to Gershwin, and allowed Edie to showcase her ability to handle works of different styles and eras. I particularly enjoyed her Beethoven (Piano Sonata in E major, Op 14, No 1), but the highlights were the two pieces by George Gershwin: the romantic The Man I Love followed by I Got Rhythmn, which got the audience’s feet tapping!

Finally, Lia Matos Wunderlich, a prize-winning teenage cellist who performed in the CMW Young Artist Showcase in 2024, gave a vibrant, heartfelt performance of Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro op.70, accompanied by Duncan Honeybourne (with whom she studies piano at the Junior Royal Academy of Music). Ending with a spirited flourish, Lia brought this splendid recital to a close.

Michael Howell
Lia Matos Wunderlich

Chamber Music Weymouth was founded in 2002 by Duncan Honeybourne. Monthly lunchtime concerts take place in St Mary’s Church in the centre of Weymouth, together with a short summer season of Sunday concerts. Find out more here

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It has, as they say, been a bumper year for Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts. We have seen record audiences (consistently around the 80-90 people mark) and a wonderful range of music and musicians. In keeping with the founding ethos of the series, our programmes mix well-known repertoire with rareties and lesser-known works. This year we were introduced to the music of Jessie Reason in an atmospheric piece for cello and piano, performed by Joseph Spooner and Duncan Honeybourne. We were also treated to a new work for piano by composer Ben Gaunt, inspired by The Sand House in Doncaster. The piece was masterfully performed by Matthew Schellhorn, with accompanying film which gave the audience a tour of The Sand House and illustrated the music.

In addition to our monthly lunchtime concerts, we also presented a Young Artist Showcase featuring students of Duncan Honeybourne from the Royal Academy Junior Department. It was wonderful and inspiring to see these talented young people perform with so much maturity, poise and professionalism, and we look forward to more concerts of this type in the coming seasons. We will also broadening the remit of the series, with a rebrand, to enable us to present more varied concerts and related activities.

Unlike certain other concert venues and promoters, we have never felt the need to do audience satisfaction surveys, tell the audience when they should clap, how they should listen, or what they should wear to our concerts…. Instead, we make everyone feel welcome and maintain a high level of trust between audience and artistic director (read more here). The pre-concert lunches, provided by a small team of volunteers, undoubtedly contribute to the Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts experience!

We are looking forward to 2024 with an exciting roster of performers, including Helen Kuby (French horn), Joseph Tong (piano), Lewis Kingsley-Peart (piano), Ruth Henley (cello), Marie-Louise Taylor (piano), with our season finale given by Artistic Director Duncan Honeybourne.

A big thank you to our guest artists, our friends at St Mary’s Church who help to make our concerts run smoothly and enjoyably for all, our volunteers, and of course our audience, without whom there would be no concerts.

Find full details of Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts here

Frances Wilson (AKA The Cross-Eyed Pianist), Concerts Manager, WLCC

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The De Kooning Ensemble, Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts, Wednesday 27th October 2021

Fresh from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, this young piano quartet presented a sumptuously programme, with two dramatic and unashamedly romantic works by Frank Bridge and Josef Suk bookending a highly contrasting contemporary piece  by young Iranian-American composer Darius Paymai. Pianist Will Bracken stepped in for the Ensemble’s usual pianist Lewis Bell.

Opening with Bridge’s Phantasy Piano Quartet in f-sharp minor, a single-movement work composed in 1910, which embraces sonata form with its exposition and reprise separated by andante and scherzo sections, The De Kooning Ensemble matched this work’s fluency, variety and lucidity with a lively, committed and imaginatively-nuanced performance.

After the passionate flourishes of Bridge’s Phantasy, Darius Paymai’s Piano Quartet offered a complete contrast in both mood and textures. A work comprising only a handful of notes, its dynamic range often barely above piano, it owed something to the music of Arvo Pärt in its haunting simplicity. It was performed with immense control and sensitivity, and provided an absorbing, meditative interlude in the middle of the concert.

The De Kooning Ensemble are recipients of the Ivan Sutton Prize for Chamber Music  and their performance of Josef Suk’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in A minor revealed exactly why they were awarded first prize. Throughout we were treated to very tight, perfectly coordinated ensemble playing but also an opportunity to enjoy each individual instrument. From the elegant lyricism of Jessica Meakin’s violin to the warm sonority of Freya Hicks on viola, the mellow cantabile of the cello (Evie Coplan) to the sweetness of the piano (Will Bracken) in the second movement, this was a performance brimming with character and command.

Watch the livestream video from St Mary’s Church, Weymouth

Meet the Artist interview with The De Kooning Ensemble

Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts series continues on 17th November with a performance of music by Malcolm Arnold and Ludwig van Beethoven by Peter Fisher (violin) and Margaret Fingerhut (piano). Details here

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The 2020/21 concert season has been difficult for all of us, from the largest venues and orchestras to small, local festivals, music clubs and concert series like the Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Series (WLCC), which I co-organise with pianist Duncan Honeybourne.

Because of the coronavirus restrictions, we managed only three concerts in 2020 – one in February, before the first lockdown, and just two further concerts in October and December. Our autumn concerts were presented in accordance with government Covid guidance, which meant we could only admit a limited number of audience members (it goes without saying that the financial implications of reduced audience numbers are stark). But, like so many other musicians, promoters, venues and cultural organisations, WLCC adapted to the “new normal”: we have initiated an online and telephone booking system, and present two shorter recitals to allow as many people as possible within the current restrictions to attend. Our audience have adapted too, returning to our live concerts with enthusiasm, albeit in smaller numbers.

After five months of silence in 2021, our series resumed in June with a lovely performance by Duncan Honeybourne of piano sonatas by Schubert and Beethoven. It was a double celebration – the resumption of live classical music in Weymouth and also WLCC’s 200th concert (watch the livestream here).

On 7th July, pianist James Lisney closed our 2020/21 season with a generous, poetic performance of Schubert’s D935 Impromptus and selected Liszt transcriptions of Schubert’s Schwanengesang.

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Schubert composed two sets of Impromptus, written late in 1827, the year before he died, and he numbered the D935 set 5, 6, 7 and 8, suggesting he intended them as a continuation of the D899 set.

The entire D935 is a much more substantial suite of pieces than the first set, and this is especially true of the f minor Impromptu, the first of D935, whose tone moves between quasi Beethovenian drama and assertiveness in its opening section to a contrasting, almost dream-like fragmented duet in the central sections. It is these sections which really tear at the heartstrings, yet James Lisney was careful to avoid too much introspection or sentimentality through sparing use of the sustain pedal, lively rhythms and tasteful rubato.

By contrast, the second Impromptu is serene and good-natured, its opening section reminiscent of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12, which is also scored in A-flat major. A middle section of burbling triplets moves from warmth to regret with the introduction of the minor key and thence to resignation before the opening theme returns. A more lively tempo and bass highlights emphasised the waltz rhythms of this Impromptu.

The third, in B-flat, is the most famous of the set. A set of variations, its theme resembling the incidental music Schubert wrote for the ballet Rosamunde, this Impromptu is graceful and mercurial, occasionally tongue-in-cheek, and James brought an appealing sense of warmth and wit to the music, especially in the later variations where the textures grow increasingly florid, though never dense.

The final Impromptu of the set is a wild, stomping Hungarian dance, with brilliant passagework, rapid scales and arpeggios, trills, off-beat accents, and cross modulations which take the music to unexpected places, thus creating vibrant shifts in mood and tone. The piece ends with a rapid plunge down the piano, in a scale “which tells you when to clap” (James Lisney). It was lively and boisterous, with supple tempi and improvisatory flourishes.

James Lisney has a long-standing affinity with the music of Franz Schubert, and it shows in his naturally flexible tempi, lyrical treatment of melody and songlines, an appreciation of the essential drama and introspection in Schubert’s music, and an acknowledgement that the interpretation of this music is not settled, that it is in a state of flux. He brings clarity to this music through a thorough appreciation of Schubert’s phrasing and architecture, but also finds the essential “soul” of this music through an eloquent sensitivity to the tiniest details of the score, often revealing inner voices or unexpectedly piquant harmonies.

Liszt’s great skill as an arranger, and his sensitivity to the originals, is very evident in his beautiful transcriptions of Schubert’s songs, but this is also very much his own work in the way he changes the piano texture to provide a personal commentary on the original song text and the music. Liszt sometimes takes Schubert very literally, at other times he adds flourishes and embellishments, but he always retains the essential melodic structure of the song. These three love songs were contrasting, tender and intimate – appropriately, given the small size of the audience – and we might have been in Liszt’s salon, such was the intensity of feeling, closeness and poetry portrayed in these miniatures.

This was an extremely special close to the WLCC 2020/21 season, and a fitting prelude to the new season, which will celebrate the piano – as both a solo and a chamber instrument. The season launches on 15th September with a recital by Penelope Roskell, which will include Schubert’s final piano sonata. All being well, there will be no restrictions on audience numbers and we will revert to our usual practice of a single recital of 60 minutes at 1pm.

Watch the livestream of James Lisney’s recital here

Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts were founded in 2002 by pianist Duncan Honeybourne. Concerts take place once a month on a Wednesday at St Mary’s Church, Weymouth. Visit the WLCC website for full details and to join the mailing list.

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