Respighi and Schumann for the OrKidstra

I mentioned this subject once or twice before in my blog this year.

Chris and I were at a private concert last night where money was raised to fund the OrKidstra for children of low-income families in Ottawa, in the presence of one of its initiators, Margaret Munro Tobolowska. She spoke to us in passionate tones about how she believed classical music should be accessible to every child, not just the gifted and privileged ones—preaching to the converted as far as I'm concerned—but wasn't the soloist at John's house; that was another 'cellist, Paul Merlyn, who like her had once progressed through the old and trusty "system" that's taken such a knock from recent governments blinkered by short-term financial exigencies who slash the funding for such things and make some of us very angry indeed. Mr Merlyn, having played in a local youth orchestra, got into the (British) National Youth Orchestra, then the European Youth Orchestra and now teaches 'cello here, in Ottawa.

He was accompanied by Fred Lacroix at the piano, playing the Adagio con Variazione by Respighi and Schumann's Cello Concerto with the orchestra part arranged for piano. Paul Merlyn talked about the Schumann concerto, written towards the end of his creative life when he was fighting the onset of madness. Does the music give an inkling of Schumann's loss of mental control or was it an effective antidote that kept it at bay for a while? Mr Merlyn was inclined to think the latter. He played the whole thing from memory, very well indeed.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the concert and keen to support the children, we bought a DVD of the film that inspires these people, Tocar y Luchar, which I'm intending to watch all the way through this evening. Watch this space for a rave review by tomorrow evening because, from what I've heard about it so far, I expect to be impressed!

Incidentally in John's kitchen after the concert I got talking to a lady whose winter occupation is house-sitting in Dawson City in the Yukon. She usually stays there till June and told me that although the city is small, it's a real centre of culture. Now there's some interesting food for thought ...