2016 - Weekend One

Well the first weekend of the 80th consecutive Harrogate Competitive Festival for Music, Speech and Drama is over. After all the planning and organising, from this volunteer's standpoint, it went well.

There were over 100 classes between the Friday and Sunday evenings, covering everything from woodwind, piano and string solos, through verse speaking, prepared reading and acting, to the Year 13 and Under Concerto Class, the new Virtuoso Class and the Thomas Trophy for strings. There was an afternoon and evening of excellent harp music, the performers of which bring their own roadies! Lots of very young children performed, most of them apparently without any nerves and we may have seen some stars of the future. The young woodwind performers at the first Chapel session were particularly good, producing sounds out of all proportion to their stature - very impressive.

The six adjudicators on duty this weekend certainly had their work cut out and they did a fabulous job, often having to decide between a number of equally excellent performances. The adjudications were generally well balanced, informative, encouraging and friendly and performers will learn a lot by taking the adjudicators' advice on board. They were all novices once!!

This year we had the new Virtuoso Class, for the Elizabeth Hopkins Trophy. Performers had to use two different instruments from different disciplines, both to a high level of difficulty (at least grade 8 for the first and grade 6 for the second). We saw Alexander Abrahams singing and playing the piano; Olivia Robinson on piano and accordion (a very rare treat; it is instantly foot tapping!!); Grace Caton on recorder and singing and, the eventual winner, Cordelia Newbery on the flute and singing.

This was an excellent class but we could have done with a larger entry and audience, the latter generally being a reflection of the former. More friends and family please!

Finally, in the penultimate class on Sunday evening, Maria Marshall repeated her 2015 success by winning the Thomas Trophy, this year with a spell-binding performance of the 1st movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto.  This brought tears to at least one volunteer's eyes and made all the hard work even more worthwhile. Maria will now go through to the Final of the Young Musician of the Festival Competition, to be held in the Final Concert on 13th March.

Thanks are due to all performers, their teachers and families, to the adjudicators and all the volunteers and to those who assist us at Harrogate Ladies College. The caravan rolls on to next week now. See you at 6pm on Friday 4th March.

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