{"id":38,"date":"2015-09-17T15:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T14:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/188.166.168.151\/2015\/09\/17\/encore-meets-lawrence-power\/"},"modified":"2020-05-20T19:43:27","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T18:43:27","slug":"encore-meets-lawrence-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/encoremusicians.com\/blog\/encore-meets-lawrence-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Encore meets Lawrence Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

We caught up today with violist Lawrence Power to talk about his upcoming West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival, and why it’s one of the best-kept secrets in the classical music world.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lawrence Power is a musician who hardly needs an introduction. Since leaving the Juilliard School at 20, he has risen to the very top of the viola-playing world, turning down an invitation to lead the Berlin Philharmonic viola section in favour of pursuing a career as a soloist and chamber musician. As well as being a dedicated performer of the existing viola repertory, he is a keen champion of contemporary music, premiering concertos by such leading compositional lights as Krzysztof Penderecki, James MacMillan, and Mark-Anthony Turnage.<\/p>\n

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Lawrence plays a Antonio Brensi viola from c.1610 <\/small><\/center>But this weekend you\u2019ll not find him treading the boards of metropolitan concert halls. Every September for the last five years Power has retreated to the small village of West Wycombe in South Buckinghamshire to curate his own chamber music festival. Each evening local enthusiasts make the pilgrimage up West Wycombe hill to the beautiful (and very aptly named) Church of St Lawrence to hear musicians play who ordinarily would sell out the Wigmore Hall.<\/p>\n

So what is it that draws Lawrence each year from the high-octane lifestyle of international touring to a small village nestled in the Chiltern Hills?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It began very simply: I was organising a memorial concert for my grandmother, who lived in the area, and I was fortunate to know a lot of incredible musician friends who I invited to come along and play. It somehow felt like a wasted opportunity to just perform a one-off concert in such a lovely place, so we met up again the next year to play two concerts and called it a festival (which is the minimum number of concerts that you can call a festival!). After that it\u2019s grown a little bit each year. I\u2019m not fussed about getting the radio and critics there, one has enough of that during the year. You meet so many lovely people on your travels, it\u2019s nice to get them all in one place.<\/p>\n

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A brief perusal of this year\u2019s line-up reveals that Power\u2019s \u2018musician friends\u2019 are a star-studded bunch: Mark Padmore, Anthony Marwood and Adrian Brendel, to name a few. All are international soloists in their own right.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So how does the Power dream team come up with their programmes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I often start by planning programmes that I\u2019ve always wanted to do but haven\u2019t had the chance to perform elsewhere, but this can be difficult before you know who\u2019s coming. I\u2019m lucky in that I\u2019ve played with many of the festival musicians before so we can often play pieces we’ve done in the past and save rehearsal time. Through that, a theme tends to emerge. This year, it\u2019s music written between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em> period which I\u2019ve always found so interesting musically.<\/p>\n

The WWCMF is now in its fifth year. What does the future hold for the festival?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The one thing I would love to do is expand the educational side of the festival. I\u2019ve lead masterclasses for a few local musicians on the Friday morning, but it would be great to take more musicians in. I\u2019m also hoping to get a small orchestra together to perform some baroque music next year.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I\u2019ve found that after attending festivals all over the world, the most enjoyable ones are the simplest and most straightforward. I’m not interested in making it big and glitzy – there are enough concerts around like that already!<\/p>\n

Power\u2019s approach to the festival\u2019s direction may be simple but his programming is far from perfunctory. The four concerts mix an eclectic range of compositions from the less well known works of Rebecca Clarke and Venezuelan Reynaldo Hahn to those of the more popular John Williams, Brahms and Korngold.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are there any pieces we should particularly look out for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enescu\u2019s Octet, which closes the festival, is real a masterpiece and the Kod\u00e1ly Serenade for two Violins and Viola has been a great discovery. Mark Padmore will be singing Vaughan-Williams and Ravel – he\u2019s one of the great tenors singing today, in my opinion.<\/p>\n