Cultural Dessert

My first experience of Music in the Brickhills – the local group established to present live music in the Brickhill villages to the South and East of Milton Keynes in order to raise money for local and national charities – was as a member of the audience for last year’s Brickhill Messiah (reviewed here in October 2010). Last weekend I got my chance to perform at St Mary’s Church in Great Brickhill as part of the ‘Music in the Brickhills All-Star Wind Ensemble’ (still thinks it makes us sound like the Harlem Globetrotters!). It was great to get a chance to play Mozart’s ‘Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments’ (the ‘Gran Partita’). I seldom play any Mozart and rarely play any chamber music: both require quite a different approach to the larger-scale orchestral works that I am more used to playing. In this context every note is vital and you need a high level of concentration throughout. The Serenade is a substantial work with some sublime moments and I think we gave a really good performance under the baton of David Knight. Although we only had one rehearsal as a group it was clear that everyone had either been practising individually or already knew the piece very well – or else they were all excellent sight-readers! The first half of the concert featured the excellent Kaznowski Quartet (reviewed here in January 2008) augmented by players from Milton Keynes Sinfonia to play Brahms’ ‘Sextet no 2 in G’. It was a lovely concert which raised more than £1000 for Macmillan Nurses.