The senior pupils who performed at the lunch-hour concert yesterday of the Rhodesian Academy of Music sustained a high level of accomplishment. Two performances were outstanding:
Anne Oldham (violin) has been conscripted into the Municipal Orchestra, and her playing has a new-found confidence and sense of purpose. The larghetto from Handel’s First Sonata was probably a shade slow, but the long phrases were firmly, expressively enunciated without emotional over-statement.
Sandra May (piano) played the Bach Prelude and Fugue in E. major (Book I) with a similar sense of conviction. It is arguable that she overdid the dynamic contrasts in the Prelude, but it was meaningful, committed playing.
Susan Oldham (piano) is another who gains with every appearance. Her tasteful, ordered account of a Haydn Sonata probably did not make all it might have of its humour and its constant play of mood, but this predicates a self-assurance which she does not yet have.
Lynette Barklie is clearly an able pianist, but I question the choice of Brahms’ B flat minor Intermezzo. A teenage girl is bound to have some difficulty communicating the introspective musings of a lonely old man.
Gay Robertson sang pleasingly in a song by Parry. Her problem, if any, at present seems to be to conserve enough breath to take a long phrase without a break.