Weak at the knees over this gig


28 January - a legend - concert room 7.30 - a legend
Paolo Pandolfo viola da gamba

A legend. I've had members of the public weak at the knees over this gig. You won't have heard of him as you are music students but don't let that or good natured sarcasm stop you from coming. FREE FREE FREE for MUS students


That's what the University of East Anglia School of Music internal flyer said, and for once the hyperbole was justified. Like his viol da gamba teacher Jordi Savall, Paolo Pandolfo is a legend. Pandolfo's concert last night, with its seamless transitions between the 17th and 21st centuries, confirmed his status. The evening was crowned by one of the pinnacles of classical musiuc, Bach's Fifth Cello Suite in a transcription for viol, after revelatory interpretations of music by Tobias Hume, Le Sieur de St. Colombe, Marin Marais and Pandolfo himself. The music students may not have heard of Pandolfo, but there was standing room only with the widest range of ages that I have seen at a concert since last summer's Faster Than Sound.

My photo above captures some of the magic of the evening, and there is more magic in the brutalist 1960s architecture of the UEA music room in which it was taken. Paul Hillier's first recording of Stockhausen's Stimmung, made for Hyperion with Singcircle, was recorded there in 1983. Which may explain the interesting similarities between my header photo and Richard Friedman's 1971 shot used in my recent Stimmung post, and no comments, please, that we were both struggling with available light.

Paolo Pandolfo is one of a a disappearing breed - a musician with views on more than his next recording contract and music directorship. Read about them in Baghdad's Spring.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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