Galliard Wind Ensemble Concert 14 June

[Robin Orton]

At the Dolphin, very good, more virtuoso players who really breathe as one, as it were. Highlights were the Mozart C minor quintet which I know from the string quintet version but which is even better on winds, and the Nielsen quintet, a complex-sounding but accessible work which I didn't know but would love to hear again. The lighter items were an arrangement of Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers, arranged by Graham Sheen, principal bassoon with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (who used to live next door to us in Sydenham and I think now lives in Forest Hill); some very attractive short pieces by Ibert; a film score suite by Milhaud called Le Cheminee du Roi Rene, which I must admit I found a bit charmless; and Westerly Winds, by Paul Patterson (who was there to introduce it and take a bow afterward): it's a fun piece based on West Country folksongs (well, sort of - is Linden Lea a folksong and is Villikins and His Dinah, or Farmer Giles, as Patterson calls it, a West Country tune?) and you could describe it as rhapsodic, and it's full of minor sevenths (OK, I made the last bit up).

[kennyb2]

Altogether I find there is a lot of wind about lately.