Of everything I have seen and heard in Petersfield during the past year, it is performances by young people that remain most firmly etched in my mind. We hear so much criticism of our youth, their binge drinking and vandalism, that their achievements should be publicised as well. In April I was quite amazed by the fervour with which the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra played the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. This music describes feelings of passion and yearning that few of them can have experienced, yet here, in the Festival Hall, we heard intensity and fervour that was unimaginable.

Quite different was a performance at Bedales Summer Concert of the entire Mad Scene from Donizetti’s Lucia do Lammermoor by sixth form student Sophia Larssen. We had a foretaste of her talent at the Festival Youth Concert, when she joined Churcher’s Alice Cairns in a moving account of the letter Duet from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, but it hardly prepared us for the twelve minute tour de force we heard at Bedales, which encompassed power, delicacy and immaculate coloratura, not to mention stamina.

Many of Elizabeth Gotto’s Petersfield Youth Choir took part in Malcolm Williamson’s children’s opera The Happy Prince at St. Peter’s - an imaginative production brought from Aldeburgh, featuring highly accomplished and touching performances from Jenny Mohan as the Prince and Rosie Condrup as the Swallow.

And of course there was Petersfield Youth Theatre, a star in the firmament if ever there was one. Not one production, but three: Summer Holiday, with its electrifying dance routines, and for the younger members, The Jungle Book, with a host of memorable characters in a truly magical stage picture. And then there was Sian Donovan in School Journey to the Centre of the Earth to complete PYT’s hectic fortnight.

The one hundredth Musical Festival was a somewhat low key affair, though it was good to notice the improvement in the choirs since Paul Spicer has taken over as conductor. We had two performances of a special commission, Sing Alleluia, by Ian Schofield, a moving one of the late, lamented Michael Hurd’s Shepherd’s Calendar, and a graceful, devotional sounding one of Fauré’s Requiem. Petersfield Orchestra excelled in Dvorak’s D minor Symphony, the only time I heard them play, as the press are no longer habitually invited to their concerts.

Outside the Festival I enjoyed The Merry Wives of Windsor from Opera South at Haslemere, Carlo Curley’s outstanding recital on the new organ at Bedales, the Occam Singers in Mozart’s Requiem at St. Luke’s, Grayshott, the Petersfield Chamber Choir in Mozart and Arvo Part at St. Peter’s and Jonathan Willcocks’ performance of the Unfinished Symphony for the Southern Orchestral Concert Society.

Roger Wettone’s production of Kiss me Kate for the Hi-Lights Society was notable for Lisa Eddy’s choreography and for Mark Perry, Amanda Crehan and Jayne Elsey in leading roles. He also directed HMS Pinafore for the Petersfield Operatic Society and, although I was unable to see it, I understand that he restored much of the slickness that had been lacking in Patience last year.

The Winton Players gave us two well contrasted plays at the Festival Hall: Alan Aykbourn’s Ten Times Table, which had us trying to identify all those little Hitlers, and Richard Harris’s comedy Party Piece. Both were notable for very contrasted performances from Cindy Graves. The highlight of the Lion and Unicorn Players’ year was November’s production of Present Laughter, with a magisterial performance from David Wynn and highly attractive debuts from Elsa Donovan and Katherine Wootton.

Both The Studio at TPS and the Olivier Theatre put on a number of visiting professional productions. I particularly remember two at the Studio: David Benson’s tribute to the late Kenneth Williams and the Watermill Theatre’s production of The Garden of Llangoed, a moving romance set in North Wales, a show in which everything gelled to produce an evening of unalloyed pleasure.

The visual arts scene is just as well catered for, especially in the regular exhibitions at the Bedales Gallery. It was the lithographic reproductions of works by Matisse and the prints by Picasso (the latter at Grayshott’s Gallery One) that were perhaps most memorable, yet for the general public it seems that the annual PAinT Week, with its allied music and drama, and especially the exhibition by the Petersfield Arts and Crafts Society in August still dominate the scene, even if there seemed to be less exhibits this year.

I know I have missed a great deal out - it is impossible for one person to see all that happens in the Artsworld in and around Petersfield, and I am only too well aware that I have made no mention of the Jazz and Blues scene.

I always end this review with my Christmas Turkey. I feel that this year I may be in a minority, but what on earth Lost Property at the Olivier back in March was about I really haven’t a clue! Physical theatre, it was called, and Tangled Feet, an energetic, even hyperactive young company, had received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe. But it meant nothing to me, perhaps I’m just too old!



Tom Muckley, December 2006

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

tommuckley.co.uk