View from the Green Room: Young players celebrate end of year
Saoirle Dennehy plays Dance Espanol at the SETU Budding Bows Concert accompanied by Una Connery.
It’s the end of the academic year and it’s time for choirs, orchestras and stage schools to shine. Tonight it’s the turn of the SETU Strings to put their stamp on the work of the year with a public performance.
Public performances matter. They build character, strengthen resolve and nothing improves like a public performance where there’s no going back and where the macro concept of the performing arts is condensed into a single performance where all is all.
The Budding Bows Orchestra for young players has been in full swing for over 40 years and the list of talented string players that have begun in that musical stable is huge.
Individual tuition combined with ensemble performances is the musical scaffolding of this SETU school where community and university combine.
Tonight we have some fine individual performances from very young players. Cian Mulhall impresses with long legato bows over tricky rhythms in Legend. Ellie O’Farrell’s Israeli Concerto has a sombre folkish feel to it with a slow/fast construction alternating throughout the piece. It’s quite the tricky piece that allows Ellie’s talent shine through. Aidan Newcott impresses with The Deserted Garden; a poetic composition that leans on the senses.
Saoirle Dennehy has just celebrated her eleventh birthday with a wonderful personal achievement – Grade 4 with distinction no less on the violin – and her beaming smile tells all. Her Dance Espanol from the quill of Benoni Lagye is a very demanding composition with its tricky skipping rhythms and complicated and rapid fingering. It’s a piece that needs attack from the off but also requires empathy for the romantic interludes that follow. Saoirle’s playing is a delight and her finale is right on the money.
Elizabeth Griffin’s Students Concerto on fiddle is a delight. It’s full of tricky fingering, strong bowing with descending arpeggios and is a real crowd pleaser. Aisling Crowley’s confident and assured playing is a delight. Her Sometime Maybe on cello proves another audience favourite with lovely legato bowing in a romantic setting and a huge sound that fills the College Chapel.
Stephanie Sansom’s performance of Salve is also confident and assured despite the technical difficulties of the piece. Stephanie allows the composition to flow naturally and her high notes come with ease. A strong interpretation with a natural feel for the work constantly comes through.
Budding Bows and the Junior Concert Orchestra under the baton of Eimear Heaney combine for a big ballyhoo of a finale. Amber Shamshad leads on Disney-Pixar’s Brave. It’s a great piece that features the angst of highland lords and ladies when confronted by a feisty princess. The music swirls around the sections of the young orchestra and Amber’s playing is magical with solos that soar over the orchestra in a tour-de-force performance. The Songs from Amadeus that follows is challenging and typical Mozart with layered Baroque entries all over the shop.
The Ashoken Farewell is moody and elegiac but the Skipping to Boston has a marvellous feel of Pirates and daring-do as the ship skips over the waves and the sails billow as the wind blows. Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Tumblers is a fun way to bring the evening to a close. In August, it will all kick off again.
Well done SETU Budding Bows and Junior Concert Orchestra for a splendid concert.
