The Parnassian Ensemble are promising Baroque Delights For A Summer’s Evening at their Festival of Chichester concert in the Priory Church, Boxgrove, PO18 0EE on Sunday, June 30 at 7.30pm.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers and also
00:06Chairman of the Festival of Chichester. In both capacities, it's lovely to speak to Sophie
00:11Middleditch, who is coming to the Festival of Chichester this summer with the Parnassian
00:17Ensemble. Now, you're offering Baroque Delights on Sunday, June the 30th, and it's an important
00:24concert, isn't it, because you are so passionate about the recorder, about the way we regard
00:29the recorder and about the respect that the recorder deserves and, well, sometimes doesn't
00:34get, does it? Thank you very much, that's absolutely true. We're really passionate about
00:40the recorder and its repertoire because there are so many beautiful, fantastic and virtuosic
00:46pieces that most people, you know, would not get to hear on a regular basis. So it's actually
00:53a really good opportunity to come and hear something a bit different and in a beautiful,
00:59wonderful setting and fantastic acoustic. Flying to the recorder, your feeling is you
01:05have to wade a little bit through people's grim memories of school days, don't they,
01:10and recorders in plastic tubs and Milton fluid and all being rather disagreeable, but that's
01:15not the experience, is it? That's not the experience, no. Yeah, it's, that is true.
01:23There are people who are still sort of suffering the trauma of childhood recorder class lessons,
01:30but I have to say that wasn't my experience, but I understand that a lot of people did
01:33have that. And so the other thing I should mention is that we're playing three different
01:38sizes of recorder. So we're playing, most of our 18th century repertoire is on an alto
01:45recorder. So that's a slightly mellower, longer, deeper sound than the Descant that people
01:52would be familiar with from their school days. Helen is also playing the equivalent of a
01:57Baroque tenor called a voice flute, which was really popular, especially in England,
02:02but throughout Europe during the 18th century. And we're actually playing a pair of special
02:08commissioned instruments that are Descants, but they're a little lower than you would
02:15normally expect to hear. They're beautiful instruments made especially for us by a French
02:22manufacturer, a recorder maker called Vincent Bernalan, and his instruments are becoming
02:28very well known amongst professional recorder players. And they're very interesting because
02:33instead of being built from a block of wood, they're still handmade instruments, but they're
02:41made from a solid block of resin. So the outside is a very, very dense material and the block,
02:50the bit that makes the actual quality of the sound of the recorder, is still made of wood,
02:54it's pine, and they are beautiful. And it's modelled on an instrument of the late 17th
03:02century. And so that goes with some of the earlier pieces that we'll be playing in the concert.
03:09Sounds fabulous, you're saying the whole thing will be enhanced by the beautiful venue.
03:15Where are you playing? So we're playing in the Priory Church at Boxgrove Priory, so it's the
03:22Priory Church of St Mary and St Blaise. But most people will know it as Boxgrove Priory, but we're
03:29playing in the church, not in the ruins. Fantastic. And this will be on Sunday 30th
03:36of June for the Festival of Chichester tickets through the Festival of Chichester website.
03:41Sophie, really lovely to speak to you again. Thank you very much.
03:44Thank you very much for speaking with me. Thank you.