I’ve been racking my brain to remember the outstanding arts events in and around Petersfield during the past year, but somehow it hasn’t seemed as easy as usual.   Is this because there has been less in the way of quality or that I have missed a great deal?   I feel that the answer .may be a bit of both. First, I must congratulate two young artists who appeared at this year’s Music Festival who went on to win major national and international awards.   Firstly, the diminutive violinist Ruth Palmer, who gave a spell-binding account of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Petersfield Orchestra, won a Classical Brit Award for the best Young British Classical Performer.  The soprano, Elizabeth Watts won the Rosenblatt Award at the Cardiff Singer of the World, and there were many who thought she should have won the major prize.   Her singing, and her communication with the audience, may have come as a surprise to some who heard her in Petersfield, where her Bach and Vivaldi sounded comparatively lack-lustre. But it is dramatic works, both musical and otherwise, that remain most vividly in my mind this year.   The Petersfield Youth Theatre had a great success with Nik Ashton’s production of West Side Story, and even among its excellent teamwork, Charlie O’Reardon and Isabel Younane stood out as the ill-fated young lovers, their beautiful performances as clear in my mind today as they were back in September.  On a different level, PYT’s production of The Wind in the Willows was an hour of pure enchantment.

 Roger Wettone’s production of My Fair Lady for the Hi-Lights was equally successful in many ways, but I found it very drawn out with tiresomely long scene changes.   However, the song and dance routine of Get me to the Church on Time was terrific, and Amanda Crehan was certainly a beautiful Eliza.

 Before passing on to opera, I must mention the very creditable production of Oliver! at TPS, which was quite like old times.   The enterprising Grayshott Concerts brought Opera Box from Wales to give a delightful open air performance of The Barber of Seville on one of the few balmy evenings during July, and Opera South delighted large audiences with another tuneful Italian opera, Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, at Haslemere Hall.

 As far as chamber music is concerned, The Rosamunde Trio playing Beethoven’s Archduke trio at the Olivier Theatre back in March remains a vivid memory, as does a performance by Angela Zanders and three local musicians of Messiaen’s fascinating Quartet for the End of Time at St Peter’s.   We seem to have heard endless music for solo cello, and easily the most interesting was the recital by Sebastian Comberti on a baroque cello, with Maggie Cole on the harpsichord, at Blackmoor Church.   It was a refreshing change  to have a violin recital in the Library by Marina Solarek and the indefatigable Zanders, with the César Frank Sonata as the highlight.

Chorally and orchestrally there has been less of note than usual this year.   I did not find the choral contributions at the Festival particularly inspiring, and my most vivid memory is Froxfield Choir’s fine performance of Mozart’s C minor Mass, which was greatly enhanced by Hilary Brennan’s lovely Et incarnatus est.   Petersfield Chamber Choir’s performance of Allegri’s Miserere during Holy Week was similarly haunting.   More recently we heard a fine performance of Karl Jenkins’ controversial The Armed Man by the Occam Singers at Grayshott.

The Petersfield Orchestra raised the roof of the Festival Hall with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, though the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra’s performance of Shostakovitch’s Fifth for S.O.C.S. lost something in the huge space of Churcher’s College Sports Hall.

 Our dramatic Societies were as busy as ever, the Winton Players with their traditional pantomime followed by a dramatic interpretation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, with the fine double act of Justine Jenner as the Governess and Vivien Pike as the Housekeeper.   I may be in a minority, however, but for me the Ghosts didn’t quite work.   The French farce, Don’t Dress for Dinner, could not have been more different, and featured another memorable duo, Phill Humphries and John Whittaker.  

The Lion and Unicorn Players revised and revived their Pageant depicting the history of Petersfield, and followed it with a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, which I did not see.   But possibly more than anything else I enjoyed John Owen Smith’s Flora’s Peverel, an endearing dramatisation of Flora Thompson’s years as Postmistress at Liphook, given as part of the Bordon and Whitehill Arts Festival and subsequently taken on tour.  I’ve only scratched the surface, I know.   There has been a full programme of visiting drama at both the TPS Studio and the Olivier, regular jazz concerts, including the veteran Kenny Ball at the Festival, art exhibitions by both amateur and professional artists and evenings of poetry.   On top of all this, almost every pub in the town regularly features local bands, so what town of Petersfield’s size can possibly match it, in terms of quantity and quality?  Oh yes, my turkey of the year?   Difficult, but I think it must go to the Petersfield audience who failed to turn out for the stunning recital by the percussionists, O Duo, at the Festival Hall.   Row upon row of empty chairs did them no credit.

Tom Muckley, December 2007

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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