The afternoon concert by students from Birmingham Conservatoire is reviewed by  Eileen Smith (4th year student at the Birmingham Conservatoire)

The student concert was a full range of repertoire from Kurtag to Brahms. It showcased some wonderful playing from some of the students studying at Birmingham Conservatoire.

The concert began with Wranitzky’s concerto for two violas, which the violists, Alistair Rutherford and Matthew Johnstone lovingly arranged the piece for string quartet (originally for orchestra) and two soloists. This performance captured youthful enthusiasm at its best, all first year students put in lots of hard work which was clear to the audience.

We were then moved to the romantic era with Chu Hui Heung’s beautiful performance of the first movement of Brahms’ Sonata in E flat (Opus 120/2)  which was an expressive and enjoyable performance with excellent accompaniment from Jon French.

Clara Biller then performed some delicate and stylistic Bach, the allemande from Suite number 3 Clara also performed Stravinsky’s Elegie which was beautifully executed and exquisitely sorrowful.

Shang-Yang Sun gave a brilliantly polished and expressive performance of Kodaly’s ‘Adagio’ and once again accompanied at an outstanding standard by Jon French.

Laura Feeney gave a confident and thoughtful performance of Kurtag, clearly thoroughly prepared and a real treat for the audience.

This great student concert then finished beautifully with Kat Lambeth’s rendition of Glazunov’s Elegie, performed with grace, emotion and fluency.

This student concert was a great credit to Birmingham Conservatoire and positively everyone enjoyed this and the rest of viola day.