Cheltenham Festivals news archives

6 months ago

From Meurig Bowen
Music Festival Director

Listen to the winning performance on BBC Gloucestershire.

More about the HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival 2–17 July.

The negative noise out there about young people and classical music is hard to avoid. There was the story recently about how a Derbyshire school successfully uses Mozart as the soundtrack to after-school detentions — behaviour rates have improved hugely apparently, such is the deterrent factor. And there’s all the stuff about dumbing-down, lack of classical fibre in the GCSE music curriculum, and indifference to attendance of live concerts.

Attending the finals of Gloucestershire Young Musician at the Pittville Pump Room is a great antidote to all this. Last night, we heard five instrumentalists — three violinists, a guitarist and a tuba player — each playing 15 minute recitals of great accomplishment. Aged between 16–20, their polished, confident performances were clearly the result of 100s of hours of hard practice. It takes raw courage to stand up there, in front of 250 people, and put yourself on the line like that, and they all deserve our admiration.

This was a good old fashioned competition. No hysterical audience interaction. No humiliating jibes from a showboating jury. Just a simple parade of talent and accomplishment, and one winner (though the jury did wish to highly commend the tuba player Andy McDade, whose engaging stage persona led to a stunning performance of ‘Fnugg’ by Oystein Oaadsvik — great name!)

The winner was Thérèse DeSouza. She’s leader of the Gloucestershire Youth Orchestra, and studies at Pate’s Grammar School in Cheltenham. Pate’s is clearly a music hothouse: last year’s winner, pianist Jonathan McNaught, and the 2009 Keith Nutland Award winner, Rosie Breckon, are fellow Patesians too (if that’s the name). Thérèse played some solo Bach, and respectively soulful and sparkling music by Bloch and Wieniawski. She has a lovely tone, great intonation, and a full emotional involvement with the music.

Thérèse’s win means she’s going to be particularly busy in July. She was already lined up to play the violin solo in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with the Gloucestershire Youth Orchestra at their HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival concert on Tuesday 13 July. She will now give a solo recital — shared with pianist Rosie Breckon — on Friday 16 July, and gives a concerto appearance with GYO during ‘Youth Makes Music’ at Cheltenham Town Hall. Apparently Thérèse wants to be a Vet — so she’ll have a bit of school work to fit in too…

We’ve tagged this post with Gloucestershire Young Musician, Meurig Bowen, music, Pittville Pump Room, Thérèse DeSouza on Thursday 4 March 2010.