EMMA JOHNSON AT THE DEVERON FESTIVAL:
Mozart, Weber and Beethoven; Emma Johnson
(clarinet) Deveron Festival Orchestra / Gareth John 10.06.2006,
Banff Academy, Banff, Scotland (AC)
Gareth John - Deveron Festival Director
Deveron Festival is the UK's most northerly mainland annual
music festival and is based in the coastal town of Banff,
on the Moray Firth in Scotland. The Festival ran over
the weekend of the 8th-11th June this year and was started
in 1996 by a group of professional musicians led by local
conductor Gareth John. It consists of a short annual series
of classical music concerts bringing top-quality professional
music into the area - performed by musicians who
would not normally visit this rural community geographically
separated from the major arts venues. This review is written
by Alan Cooper, a music contributor to the Glasgow
Herald and Press and Journal newspapers. (Editor)
Emma Johnson - Photo by
Joe Bangay
It was not only the presence of one of
the finest and most exciting clarinetists in the world
that made Saturday’s concert with the Deveron Festival
Orchestra conducted by Gareth John their best ever performance.
Emma Johnson radiates a fiery enthusiasm in her playing
that lifts her audience up and sweeps them away towards
intoxicating new realms of musical passion and technical
brilliance. Was it this though that inspired the orchestra
to give such a dynamic and vibrant performance of Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony or Mozart’s Overture: The
Magic Flute?
I go to a lot of concerts, but one of the composers I
rarely hear played live is Weber, so I was especially
pleased that Emma Johnson had chosen his Clarinet Concerto
No.2 in E flat major for her performance on Saturday.
Gareth John likes to chat to the audience about the music
that his orchestra is going to play and he encourages
his guest performers to do likewise. Emma Johnson’s
vivacious introduction was clear and to the point. She
left everyone eager to hear what she was going to do with
this piece which is designed to show all the finest points
of clarinet playing. It begins with notes at either extremity
of the instrument’s range. The outer movements require
whirlwind technical virtuosity while the andante con
moto calls for great beauty of tone. Emma Johnson
seized the music with both hands and wrung every last
drop of passion and technical wizardry from the score.
Many in the audience, even from one of the colder corners
of the stolid northeast, rose to give her a standing ovation.
Even before Emma Johnson took the platform, the Deveron
Festival Orchestra gave an electrifying performance of
Mozart’s Overture: The Magic Flute, and their
handling of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony struck
a fine balance between tumultuous drama and well focused,
precise playing. The military inspiration of the work
was all there in this fine performance.
In past Festivals, Gareth John has often brought aspects
of the visual arts or literature together with his music.
On this occasion, he had asked four artists, Sue Arber,
Ingeborg Bodzioch and David and Jane Pettigrew to prepare
a slide show of their works to be projected behind the
orchestra to illustrate their reactions in visual art
to the Beethoven Symphony. For me, it was during the penultimate
Allegro that this worked best but I have to say
that overall, I found the visuals a bit of a distraction,
especially when the performance itself was as good as
it was. I can hardly wait till next year to see and hear
what Gareth does with Stravinsky’s Firebird.
Alan Cooper
The Deveron Festival web site is Here
