Thursday

25th November 2021

12.30 lunchtime


Phil Hopkins
chromatic harmonica

Stuart Whatton
piano



Programme




Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
Liebesleid    Love's Sorrow  (1905)


George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Medley from Porgy and Bess (1935)
    It Ain't Necessarily So
    Summertime
    I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' (arr Hopkins)


Film Themes
John Barry Prendergast OBE (1933-2011)
    Midnight Cowboy (1969) (arr Hopkins)
    Dances With Wolves (1990) (arr Hopkins)

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
    The Entertainer (1902) (Joplin)


Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (1921-1992)
Oblivion (1984)


Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924)
Berceuse Op 16 (1878-9)     [or is it from Dolly No 1 Op 56 ?]

from Trio Mélodies (1870-78)
    1 Apres un Rêve (Levati sol que la luna' elevata)
           After a Dream  (In a slumber enchanted by your image)


Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Flute Sonata in Eb BWV 1031 (attrib CPE Bach H545)
    1 Allegro Moderato
    2 Siciliano
    3 Allegro
 


Concert duration approx:  40 minutes


Please donate to help fund these concerts at: cafdonate.cafonline.org/14455

Stewart Whatton


Stuart Whatton’s musical education began at Canterbury Cathedral Choir School and later took him to University College Oxford, where he was organ scholar from 1981 to 1984.

After 14 years in the Civil Service, including two years as Private Secretary to the Attorney General (his original degree having been law), he decided to follow his heart into music full-time, and this led to a BMus with 1st class honours from King’s College London, where he also won the Purcell Prize.

Following PGCE studies at Cambridge, Stuart spent the best part of a decade in schoolteaching, running school music departments in Dorset, Essex and Scotland, before diverting into a more freelance musical career.  

A Fellow of both the Royal College of Organists and the Royal Society of Arts, Stuart has been Director of Music at Esher Parish Church since 2011, and he is also Head of Keyboard at the Jonas Foundation, a south-London based charity offering free music tuition to inner city children.  

He oversees Music-at-Hill, one of the longest running series of chamber concerts in central London (now based at the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields) and has been Artistic Director of the St Lawrence Jewry Summer Music Festival at the Lord Mayor’s Church in the City of London.  

Stuart has over the years been Assistant Organist to the Parish of Waterloo, Organist of the Ealing-based Questors Choir, and Director of Music at St Matthew’s Church, Southwark. 

His varied performing exploits have included appearing in a jazz piano sketch on Channel 4’s Banzai!, singing grace for the Archbishop of Canterbury,  accompanying an international youth choir at a plenary session of the United Nations in Geneva, and performing at the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as part of Danny Boyle’s “cast of thousands”.   

To mark his 50th birthday, he undertook a unique 3,000 mile pilgrimage around all the cathedrals of England, visiting 61 Anglican and Catholic Cathedrals in the space of 22 days, and he is just starting to plan what he might do for his next round number birthday!


Phil Hopkins


Phil was a music scholar at King’s School Canterbury, graduated from Oxford University and studied chromatic harmonica with the great classical harmonica player, Tommy Reilly.

In a thirty-eight year career as a professional musician playing percussion and/or harmonica, Phil has played for more than 120 London theatre productions spanning over 4500 performances across the West End, Royal National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company.

Chromatic harmonica performances include: the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta at St John Smith’s Square, and West End musicals such as The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Savoy Theatre), Sir Tim Rice’s From Here To Eternity (Shaftesbury Theatre), the London premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, and Gone With The Wind (New London Theatre).

Phil has toured the USA many times with various artists including performances at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, and Symphony Hall, Boston. In 2018 he played the percussion part in the worldwide cinema broadcast of the Broadway production of The King and I from the London Palladium. He has recently been working on the Broadway production of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre.

Other West End shows Phil has played for include The Phantom of the Opera, Blood Brothers, Miss Saigon, Matilda, Oklahoma!, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. He has been performance musical director for 21 productions at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Phil has recorded for films such as Iris, Anonymous, The Merchant of Venice and Dance of the Steel Bars, as well as many TV productions including Only Fools and Horses, Wolf Hall and Allo Allo, along with a harmonica solo on This Morning with Phillip Schofield on live TV.

Phil’s harmonica recording of the theme from the film Midnight Cowboy has had more than 127,000 plays on the streaming service Spotify.

Phil has coached many actors to play harmonica for London theatre shows including The Night of the Iguana, Peter Pan, Girl from the North Country, and Assasins. He has played harmonica at many private parties for celebrities including Cameron Mackintosh, Victoria Wood and Sir Mark Rylance.


Recordings of the works in today's concert

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
Liebesleid    Love's Sorrow  (1905)    (3m10)

Although we expect a better performance this week, we though you would enjoy this recording for harmonica with guitar. Masumi Suzuki plays the chromatic harmonica, and Tetsuo Isono the guitar, in the Little KARIN Hall. Google has failed to tell us where that might be, but we can agree it is 'little':
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Medley from Porgy and Bess (1935)
    It Ain't Necessarily So    (2m05)
    Summertime    (2m18)
    I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' (arr Hopkins)    (3m27)

Let's take each number one by one here. First here is It Ain't Necessarily So with Yoonseok Lee, harmonica accompanied by Hangil Kim:

It is not often we get a chance to include an excerpt from a Michael Parkinson Show, but should you be ready to hear a couple of legends performing Summertime live, here come Larry Adler, and Yitzhak Perlman. There really is nothing more to say here:

Here is Sammy David Jnr with his particular take on I Got Plenty o' Nuttin:

Film Themes

John Barry Prendergast OBE (1933-2011)
    Midnight Cowboy (1969) (arr Hopkins)    (2m50)
    Dances With Wolves (1990) (arr Hopkins)    (4m08)

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
    The Entertainer (1902) (Joplin)    (2m42)

The first of this group of familiar film melodies is the harmonica theme from Midnight Cowboy, performed by the legendary Toots Thielemans:
Dances with Wolves features another great John Barry theme tune, and here to perform it is the Film Symphony Orchestra, during their 2018 FSO Tour
Here's a familiar face. It's Yoonseok Lee who we heard with It Ain't Necessarily So. This time he plays Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. Compared to a lot of performances Yoonseok and Hangil Kim keep up a good pace.
Let's have a midway pause here, an interval if you like, in which we turn to a young harmonica tutor who will fix some of your beginner's mistakes, in a pleasant way. Like that natural tendency to blow far too hard.

This comes from Tomlin Leckie's Tomlin Harmonica School. He uses unfamiliar harmonica vocabulary so we shall have to ask Phil Hopkins to explain those terms:

Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (1921-1922)
Oblivion (1984)    (3m33)


Our performance of Oblivion comes from the excellent Trio Lews who are Jean-Claude Jaillet, solo, Gérald Mocellin, chord, and Bernard Okoumouchian, bass. The clip includes some terrific close-ups of the instruments too, with perhaps the surprise of just how large the bass harmonica turns out to be!

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924)
Berceuse Op 16 (1878-9)    (3m41)

from Trio Mélodies (1870-78)
    1 Apres un Rêve (Levati sol que la luna' elevata)
           After a Dream  (In a slumber enchanted by your image)



This performance of the Berceuse Opus 16 proves to be a present for Mothers everywhere, from Kerson Leong, with his own mother at the piano:

For Après un rêve we turn to our guest today, Phil Hopkins, recording video in his own garden in Dorking:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Flute Sonata in Eb BWV 1031 (attrib CPE Bach H545)
1 Allegro Moderato    (2m13)
2 Siciliano
3 Allegro


At the risk of turning this into a tribute concert for one player, we have chosen the harp and harmonica performance of the first movement by Yoonseok Lee, with harpist Sun Young Bang:

Bonus Items

We have not had a bonus item for a few weeks so here is Fauré's other Berceuse, the one from the Dolly Suite. Are you sitting comfortably? Yes? Then violinist Jacques Thibaud and pianist Alfred Cortot can begin to play on their June 1944 recording:

Phil Hopkins has own his channel on youtube for which - click here

The concert recording Phil and Stuart made for us during 2020's Mole Valley Arts e-Live Festival is still available - on this link. The recording opens with a complete performance of the Bach Flute Sonata.


Next Thursday's concert
Tailleferre Ensemble, - click here
Last Thursday's concert
The two classical guitars of Francisco Correa & David Massey - click here