St Mary’s Church was packed on Saturday afternoon to hear a performance of music by Haydn, Mozart and Tchaikovsky played by the Endellion Quartet. For 37 years this quartet has been playing at concerts in major international venues and has established a reputation for excellence. It did not disappoint the audience at St Mary’s, as the completion of every piece of music was greeted with loud and long applause. The quartet’s attention to detail, the precision of their playing, and the depth and originality of their interpretation of the music, all illustrated why the Endellion Quartet is so admired and sought after. The concert was dedicated to the memory of the late Beryl Calver-Jones who held the Endellion in high esteem. She had been a generous supporter of the Painswick Music Society and many other musical events in the area. The quartet joined us for tea after the concert, giving us a chance to meet the players and thank them for their performance.

There was another full house at St Mary’s on Saturday April 23rd for Voces8, one of the world’s most versatile singing groups. There was a special welcome for tenor Sam Dressel, a former Wycliffe College pupil who was born and bred in Stroud. Voces8 is committed to education and the concert was preceded by an inspirational workshop for young singers at Wycliffe. Their Painswick programme included works from the English and German Renaissance, through to Duke Ellington, pop and folk songs, as well as a particularly haunting piece by their Norwegian Composer in Residence, Ola Gjeilo. They moved effortlessly from polyphonic sacred music to more modern genres always with a highly effective stage presence and great communication with the audience. Their performance throughout demonstrated their total commitment to the music, wonderful blending and balance of the different voices, an impressive range of colours and evident joy in the sound they were creating which was fully shared by their listeners. A particular highlight was their encore, a highly amusing opera medley in which the singers competed for centre stage to display their operatic talents, and, not surprisingly, it brought the house down. We loved them.

We were fortunate to have as our soloist the brilliant English pianist, Benjamin Grosvenor who, at 23 years of age, is widely considered to be one of the finest young pianists in the world. He first came to public attention when, as a twelve year old he won the piano section of the Young Musician of the Year Competition. He continued to develop his enormous talent at the Royal College of Music in London. In the autumn of 2015, he was a soloist in the Last Night of the Proms. Benjamin performed a well-balanced programme of compositions by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Ravel and Liszt. His ability to inhabit the moods of these varied works enabled him to take his listeners on an emotional journey ranging from the darkly enigmatic Funeral March Sonata by Chopin to Liszt’s glittering account of Venetian and Neapolitan melodies, which brought the recital to a barnstorming conclusion. The young pianist displayed astonishing technical facility; his imaginative interpretations, clarity of passage work and ravishing tonal palette swept away his capacity audience . After rapturous applause, we were treated to two delightful encores; the first was from a group of Countryside pieces by Mompou. In the final work, Percy Grainger’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Love Walked in, Benjamin’s exquisitely-judged sonorities and subtle rubato tugged at the heart strings of his listeners, leaving us in no doubt that we had heard something very special. Later, he joined concertgoers for tea and cakes at the Church Rooms.