Winterplay, a mini-arts festival based in the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh and directed by the city's own Susan Tomes, took place this year on 16th February, and I had the pleasure of attending a lovely programme of words and music from the writer Janice Galloway and Ms Tomes herself.
Tomes based the afternoon on Tchaikovsky's set of piano pieces The Seasons, which curiously contains twelve, each representing a different month of the year. Galloway, meantime, read twelve short poems, novel extracts and even a Telegraph newspaper article to complement each piece in turn.
I'd never seen either Tomes or Galloway in the flesh before, although I do treasure my CDs of Susan Tomes' piano quartet work with Domus. Neither disappointed at all. Galloway is a lovely reader/performer of the work of others: I particularly liked her rendition of the Scots works – Liz Lochhead's I wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine or Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child in Winter-Time. Tomes was consistently, effortlessly excellent: she started a couple of pieces on the left hand without even looking at the keyboard. I'm currently learning to play the April piece, Snowdrops, but one thing I've learned when attending any concert is to do my own miserable piano practice beforehand – I'd be too depressed otherwise.
They performed an encore – a Schiller poem and a piano piece that I recognised but neither identified; I wish someone had. But it was all wonderful, and it was a shame that more people weren't there to hear it. I'd pay to hear it all over again.
It wis a fair treat.
Tomes based the afternoon on Tchaikovsky's set of piano pieces The Seasons, which curiously contains twelve, each representing a different month of the year. Galloway, meantime, read twelve short poems, novel extracts and even a Telegraph newspaper article to complement each piece in turn.
I'd never seen either Tomes or Galloway in the flesh before, although I do treasure my CDs of Susan Tomes' piano quartet work with Domus. Neither disappointed at all. Galloway is a lovely reader/performer of the work of others: I particularly liked her rendition of the Scots works – Liz Lochhead's I wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine or Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child in Winter-Time. Tomes was consistently, effortlessly excellent: she started a couple of pieces on the left hand without even looking at the keyboard. I'm currently learning to play the April piece, Snowdrops, but one thing I've learned when attending any concert is to do my own miserable piano practice beforehand – I'd be too depressed otherwise.
They performed an encore – a Schiller poem and a piano piece that I recognised but neither identified; I wish someone had. But it was all wonderful, and it was a shame that more people weren't there to hear it. I'd pay to hear it all over again.
It wis a fair treat.
