Audience was in presence of greatness, performers and composers alike

THIS is the seventh year of the Chiltern Arts Festival and there is no shortage of innovative ideas.

For this, the second event, saxophonist Huw Wiggin, pianist Noriko Ogawa and harpist Oliver Wass were joined by festival founder and creative director, Naomi Taylor, reading wonderful poems interspersed with the music.

The first half was full of cities’ night shadows, opening with Debussy’s glorious Rhapsodie for saxophone and piano, performed with attack and energy.

Naomi sustained the mood with Rhapsody on a Windy Night, T S Eliot’s unsettling commentary on night hours.

Night Paths by Joseph Phibbs followed: music that moved from darkness to upbeat jazz, then descended back into the dark. At one point, Huw turned round from the Jesus Chapel venue to play into the full church, the sinuous melody filling the space.

City of Poetry by Maria Luisa A Cariño was Naomi’s next eloquently read poem about “writing a city”.

Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody was the plaintive and insistent close to the first half, with its many rapid saxophone trills and dancing rhythm.

Piano and sax were perfectly balanced in this series of highly demanding pieces, played with immense passion. We returned after the break to a lighter tone set by the rapturous poem Paris in Spring by Sara Teasdale and a pithy reflection on love, Liquorice, Mint and Seasalt by Pádraig Ó Tuama.

Harpist Oliver joined the performers to play the gorgeous Someone to Watch Over Me and Summertime, composed by George Gershwin but arranged by Huw and Oliver.

The poem Tower by Vanessa Lampert ends with the line “and grief would never dare to touch my life”.

Bach’s Largo from the Concerto in G Minor reinforced this feeling.

However, Simon Armitage’s A Vision overturned the mood, his closing commentary on city plans that come to nothing: “All unlived in and now fully extinct”. Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion seemed to emphasise this but the excitement and possibilities presented by cities was encapsulated by Talking to the Sun in Washington Square by Nick Laird, then Rhapsody in Blue in which Huw played solo sax for the lyrical passages, switching to tenor for the overtly jazzy.

He seemed to embody Rhapsody’s flamboyant spirit, leaping in his energy, and embellishing this piece for the sheer fun of it, with Noriko’s virtuosity the perfect foil.

The audience erupted at the end. We had been in the presence of greatness, performers and composers alike.

Jane Redley