27th March 2025: Galliard Ensemble

Chichester Chamber Concerts Season Ends on a High Note

The closing concert in the 2024/25 Season of Chichester Chamber Concerts took place in the Assembly Room on Thursday evening [27th March].   The performers were the highly talented Galliard Ensemble and the large audience were richly entertained by their varied programme, their wit and, above all, by their wind playing of the highest calibre.  The Ensemble comprised Kathryn Thomas (flute), Owen Dennis (Oboe and Cor Anglais), Sarah Thurlow (Clarinet), Richard Bayliss (Horn) and Helen Storey (Bassoon).

The first half of their programme featured four works written for other instruments or combinations and arranged for wind quintet.   The first of these was a witty arrangement of Rossini’s Overture from the Italian Girl in Algiers by the bassoonist Graham Sheen.    Short, light-hearted, but with some very tricky fast fingering, this was an ideal opener, introducing the audience to each of the instruments in turn.    This was followed by Mozart’s Adagio and Allegro in F Minor for mechanical organ, K.594 in a 1950’s arrangement by Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer.    We were told that Mozart disliked the pitch of the mechanical organ and  preferred this arrangement to the original as it was in a lower key.  Whether true or not, this is a fine piece of wind writing which was given a thoroughly satisfying performance by the Galliard.

Slightly less satisfactory for me was the arrangement of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin by American horn player Mason Jones, or, more specifically the opening of it.  The Galliard cleverly prefaced this by playing the Rondeau from “Les Moissonneurs” in an arrangement by Mordechai Rechtman to highlight the skill with which Ravel fused the baroque of Couperin with his own early-twentieth-century ideas of orchestration.   In the Ravel itself the familiar melodies of the opening movement were rather obscured by the denseness of the arrangement, but the later movements, particularly the Rigaudon, were delightful and the piece included some exquisite clarinet playing by Sarah Thurlow.

The sole piece in the first half that was written specifically for this combination of instruments brought us to the interval.  This was a breezy and technically demanding Sherzo, op. 48 by French composer Eugène Bozza which involved all the players in the execution of a number of rapid scale passages.

The second half of this fascinating concert began with the most substantial piece of the evening – The Wind Quintet Op. 43 by Danish composer Carl Nielsen.     Written in Gothenburg and given its first public performance in October of that year, the work was written for five specific musicians.  Nielsen himself wrote that in it he “attempted to render the characters of the various instruments” by allowing the instruments to be heard sometimes on their own, sometimes in duos and trios in different combinations and sometimes all together.  The work has three movements, Allegro moderato, Menuet and Praeludium.  The last movement is particularly impressive.  It is based on one of Nielsen’s own chorale tunes Min Jesus, lad min Hjerte faa en saaden smag paa dig (My Jesus, make my heart to love thee) and features eleven variations featuring each of the instruments in the ensemble.  The whole concludes with a dramatic restatement of the chorale tune.   The Galliard’s performance of this major work for wind quintet was compelling, giving each player the opportunity to display their considerable skills.

Two pieces by Percy Grainger followed to lighten the mood – Walking Tune and Lisbon and the concert ended with a rollicking performance of Malcolm Arnold’s Three Shanties for Wind Quintet Op. 4.  This piece, great fun for listeners and players alike, is based on the shanties What shall we do with the drunken sailor, Boney was a warrior, and Johnny come down to Hilo.  Written in 1943, this is a work of great skill and ingenuity and proved a great concert closer, along with a swinging Charleston by Norman Hallam that the Galliard Ensemble played as an encore.

This was a much appreciated evening of interest, humour and, and above all, masterly musical performance.

The 2025/26 season of Chichester Chamber Concerts begins on October 2nd with an appearance by Ofer Falk and the English Chamber Orchestra Graduates Ensemble with music by Holst, Dvorak and Beethoven.

Peter Andrews