The concert last night at St Mary's, organised by Hay Music, was absolutely wonderful.
The performers were Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux on violin, and Ben Tarlton on cello, and they spent the morning in local schools doing music workshops with the children.
The music they played was mostly unfamiliar to me - which is the main reason I go to concerts. I want to discover something new.
The first half was heavily Eastern European, and early 20th century, music from Reinhold Gliere, Bela Bartok and Erwinn Schulhoff. I'd heard of Bartok, of course, but I didn't know about his work collecting folk music around Hungary. The music played was a selection from his duos for two violins, arranged for violin and cello, and written as a series of lessons for violin, from easiest to most difficult.
The other two composers were new to me. Gliere was a Soviet composer, though the piece that was played came from before the Soviet Union, in 1909 - and my problem here is that I don't know how to describe music. I can only say that it was beautiful and I'll be looking out for recordings by the composer in future.
Schulhoff was Czech (that's been a bit of a theme this week!), and is described in the concert notes as a virtuosic tour de force, which seems accurate. They played fast; they played slow; they plucked the strings - it was incredible to watch. Another composer I'll be looking out for in future.
The second half was made up of two pieces, one by Mozart and one by Ravel - so I was familiar with the composers, but not these particular pieces. Charlotte explained that they had chosen the Ravel piece to end the concert because of the relationships between it and the Schulhoff piece - so another virtuosic tour de force, which was recieved with rapturous applause.
As an encore, they played a short tango, which was lovely.
The next Hay Music concert will be part of Hay Winter Festival, and after that there is the Christmas Concert by the Choir of King's College London on Saturday 14th December at 7pm.