High Tide Magazine

Performance

Coast to the world and back again

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

What can you say about a man that can produce not one but two masterpieces, within a month? That was the achievement of Mozart in an extraordinary blizzard of writing in March 1786. Not only that, his opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered that same month.

Mozart probably performed the first of these masterpieces, the piano concerto no. 23, that spring in Vienna, and it’s remained among his most popular works ever since – though the acclaim is not quite universal. Film buffs may remember hearing it in Funeral in Berlin, when spy Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) asks, ‘Who's that playing the piano with his elbows?’

A more appreciative audience this month will have a chance to hear soloist Gary Matthewman playing it with the Scarborough Symphony Orchestra. Gary grew up locally and played trumpet with the youth orchestra, recalls Stewart Thorp who was his conductor. ‘He showed great talent even then. He was a soloist for a trumpet concerto,’ he says.

Now based in London, Gary travels the world performing classical music and specialising in chamber music recitals. ‘He is gaining an extremely high reputation as an accompanist of singers and soloists,’ says Stewart. Artists he has accompanied include Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Simon Keenlyside (baritone), Sally Matthews (soprano), Toby Spence (tenor), and Geraldine McGreevy (soprano).

Before Gary’s appearance on 14 March, the symphony orchestra will play Panufnik’s Sinfonia Elegiaca, written after the Second World War in protest and anguish for all war victims. To finish, they will lift the audience with Brahms’ joyous 2nd symphony, sometimes known as his Pastoral.

Scarborough Symphony Orchestra, Eternal Life, Saturday 14 March, Spa Grand Hall

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