Trio Sōra's recital at St John’s Smith Square on 16th November 2017 marked the start of their UK tour with eclectic performances of Haydn, Kagel and Chausson. The 2017 Parkhouse Award winners are three female musicians who met during their studies at the Paris Conservatoire and are set to take over much of the UK classical …
Continue reading REVIEW: Trio Sōra at St John’s Smith Square
Saturday 13th January was my first experience of the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. One thing and another sadly prevented me from hearing the first half of the concert's Genesis Suite, but luckily arrived in time to hear the incomparable Concerto for Orchestra by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. I …
Continue reading Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra- A Poetic Response
Having started the cello much later to most other musicians, I found myself battling the fear of performing at the same time as facing an insecure self-image that often comes with being a 12 year old. I believe this made the issue far greater than it would've been, had I been performing at an earlier …
Strings are to a musician like ballet shoes are to a dancer. Just as each dancer is very different and requires different size and softness of shoes, every cello is vastly different and requires different strings to compliment the resonance of the instrument. My cello has an especially bright and powerful quality, especially on …
Etched emotion opened A basic can opener some tainted past Revealed, oppressed depressed Stark compression released, deceased Speaking to break the silence, altered Alive not alone Far from the floor But escaping the lifeless lies through a stiffening door
Following a hectic final term at school, my return home last Friday was greeted with the excitement of both the women and men's Wimbledon finals. Throughout the whole of the tournament this year, I couldn't help but compare the lives of tennis players with our lives as musicians, and how tennis may be revealing …
I believe it is now widely accepted, or at least should be, that the soul of great music and a great artist is not solely created in the practice room. We use the practice room as a place to learn how to interpret a composers emotions though our instruments. The practice room is used to …
Continue reading “Play it like something you hear down by the river”
For Christamas this year, I bought Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiography, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, for my pianist friend, Jasmin. I thought I would interest Jasmin because of Jeanette's inspirational story and her connections with Oxford, (Jasmin is awaiting a response from her Hartford interview!) and so it did. So much so in fact that …
Sometimes our thoughts can be far more destructive than the events surrounding us. Of course these two things are often interlinked, but not exclusively. If we have a specific worry plaguing our minds, no matter how laid back our life may seem, often the internal anguish can be far more warring and destructive. On …
Continue reading Always choose the better life- mental health and musicians
If you only played the dream And sang nothing but the love, The spirit and the depths of the soul If nothing mattered but the pleasure And all you wrote rang in perfect harmony What would you do in order to forget? Plagued with the boundary of infinite joy Would you live here with me …
Hattie Butterworth 