Friday, September 28 will be a big night for Marlborough College’s music scholars – they’re giving a special concert at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon. It promises to be a taxing programme of music from the ancient to the very modern – and they’ll only have been back at College for just over three weeks.
The concert will precede the scholars’ annual charity concert at the Royal Overseas League in London which raises money for the charity Future Talent which finds, funds and monitors gifted young musicians whose financial circumstances prevent them fulfilling their potential.
Similarly, all proceeds from the College scholars’ Bradford on Avon concert will go to Wiltshire Music Centre’s work with young musicians. The concert will be introduced and compered by the College’s Artistic Director, Philip Dukes.
Marlborough College has about forty music scholars and a significant number of them go on to read music or become choral scholars at university – and some go on to study at the conservatoires. Philip Dukes told Marlborough News Online that giving such a high profile concert so early in the school year is difficult: “It’s dangerous, but it sets the bar high and gets the students going.”
The scholars have the advantage of some thirty visiting music teachers – many from the country’s leading orchestras. And, unique to the College, they have an annual visit from the Southbank Sinfonia of London who give a series of concerts and one-to-one lessons – culminating in a side-by-side orchestral gala with the Marlborough College Symphony Orchestra.
Their concert at the Wiltshire Music Centre is a great opportunity to see some exciting young musical talent in action. The programme includes a brass quintet playing an arrangement of music by the seventeenth century English composer Giles Farnaby; the College’s saxophone quartet play Andante et Scherzo by the French composer Eugène Bozza; and there’s a clarinet quintet by Mozart.
Seventeen year-old virtuoso double bassist and principal double bass of the National Youth Orchestra, Henry Williams, plays a solo piece B B Wolf by the American bassist and composer Jon Deak. Bulgarian student Zhivka Ivanova, who Philip Dukes describes as an outstanding pianist with a wonderful personality, plays a Beethoven sonata.
To round the evening off there’s what Dukes calls the “razzle dazzle finale”. The College’s renowned eighteen piece Big Band will play an arrangement of the Coldplay number God put a smile on your face and Birdland the 1977 jazz-fusion instrumental composition by Josef Zawinul of the American group Weather Report. Stand by for a roof raising performance under the direction of Alex Arkwright, the College’s head of woodwind and brass.
Philip Dukes admits that it is difficult to find time in the busy school timetable and with curriculum pressure for practice and rehearsal time. Dukes, who is an eminent international viola soloist and conductor, has to find time to make sure all the music scholars are on top form for the concert: “It’s challenging, but it’s good to blood them with a live concert.”
He is just back from a tour of Germany. Before Christmas and besides his College duties, he has concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall with the Nash Ensemble; he is recording a new Brahms CD for Chandos with English mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly; and he conducts the London Mozart Players with Robert Powell as narrator, in one of the Marlborough College Concert Series performances (that’s on November 4.)
In the last five years the Marlborough College music scholarship programme has relied on a much more rigorous programme aiming to “monitor, mentor and provide specialist coaching.” The result has been the level of musicianship has gone up: “We have a greater quantity of quality. And these pillars of quality pull the others up – they are inspired by them.”
If the applicants are not of a high enough standard, not all the scholarships are awarded each year. For this year’s Shell entry five were awarded out of the eight available; and for the lower sixth entry four were awarded out of the eight available.
It’s tough being a young musician. But it’s glorious to hear new young talent playing for an audience.
Tickets £14 with under-18s £7 – call 01225 860100 or www.wiltshiremusic.org.uk
By car, Bradford on Avon is just over an hour from Marlborough.
The concert starts at 7.30 pm and tickets include a pre-concert talk by Philip Dukes at 6.30pm.
