Baroque Delights For A Summer’s Evening at the Festival of Chichester

SussexWorld

The Parnassian Ensemble are promising Baroque Delights For A Summer’s Evening at their Festival of Chichester concert in the Priory Church, Boxgrove, PO18 0EE on Sunday, June 30 at 7.30pm.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers and also

00:06Chairman of the Festival of Chichester. In both capacities, it's lovely to speak to Sophie

00:11Middleditch, who is coming to the Festival of Chichester this summer with the Parnassian

00:17Ensemble. Now, you're offering Baroque Delights on Sunday, June the 30th, and it's an important

00:24concert, isn't it, because you are so passionate about the recorder, about the way we regard

00:29the recorder and about the respect that the recorder deserves and, well, sometimes doesn't

00:34get, does it? Thank you very much, that's absolutely true. We're really passionate about

00:40the recorder and its repertoire because there are so many beautiful, fantastic and virtuosic

00:46pieces that most people, you know, would not get to hear on a regular basis. So it's actually

00:53a really good opportunity to come and hear something a bit different and in a beautiful,

00:59wonderful setting and fantastic acoustic. Flying to the recorder, your feeling is you

01:05have to wade a little bit through people's grim memories of school days, don't they,

01:10and recorders in plastic tubs and Milton fluid and all being rather disagreeable, but that's

01:15not the experience, is it? That's not the experience, no. Yeah, it's, that is true.

01:23There are people who are still sort of suffering the trauma of childhood recorder class lessons,

01:30but I have to say that wasn't my experience, but I understand that a lot of people did

01:33have that. And so the other thing I should mention is that we're playing three different

01:38sizes of recorder. So we're playing, most of our 18th century repertoire is on an alto

01:45recorder. So that's a slightly mellower, longer, deeper sound than the Descant that people

01:52would be familiar with from their school days. Helen is also playing the equivalent of a

01:57Baroque tenor called a voice flute, which was really popular, especially in England,

02:02but throughout Europe during the 18th century. And we're actually playing a pair of special

02:08commissioned instruments that are Descants, but they're a little lower than you would

02:15normally expect to hear. They're beautiful instruments made especially for us by a French

02:22manufacturer, a recorder maker called Vincent Bernalan, and his instruments are becoming

02:28very well known amongst professional recorder players. And they're very interesting because

02:33instead of being built from a block of wood, they're still handmade instruments, but they're

02:41made from a solid block of resin. So the outside is a very, very dense material and the block,

02:50the bit that makes the actual quality of the sound of the recorder, is still made of wood,

02:54it's pine, and they are beautiful. And it's modelled on an instrument of the late 17th

03:02century. And so that goes with some of the earlier pieces that we'll be playing in the concert.

03:09Sounds fabulous, you're saying the whole thing will be enhanced by the beautiful venue.

03:15Where are you playing? So we're playing in the Priory Church at Boxgrove Priory, so it's the

03:22Priory Church of St Mary and St Blaise. But most people will know it as Boxgrove Priory, but we're

03:29playing in the church, not in the ruins. Fantastic. And this will be on Sunday 30th

03:36of June for the Festival of Chichester tickets through the Festival of Chichester website.

03:41Sophie, really lovely to speak to you again. Thank you very much.

03:44Thank you very much for speaking with me. Thank you.

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