The final Chichester Chamber Concerts recital of 2024 brings together Geneva Lewis (violin) and Llŷr Williams (piano) in the Assembly Room, Chichester on Thursday, December 5 (tickets from Chichester Festival Theatre).
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to
00:06speak to the pianist Leah Williams. Now Leah, you're coming to Chichester Chamber Concert
00:11Series, the final concert of the year, on Thursday 5th December in the usual venue,
00:16the Assembly Room in North Street, and you're performing with Geneva Lewis, a violinist,
00:22and it's always interesting to know how combinations come together. You two have been playing together
00:28since the summer, but you haven't played together since the summer, have you? But you've worked
00:31together quite a bit. That's right, we had a quite intensive period in the summer. We did
00:37some concerts in Kingsland and Cambridge and Cheltenham, and a friend of mine, who is also
00:45a friend of Geneva's, in fact, a very well-known Japanese pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, and she
00:51recommended we should work together and we would make a good combination, and I think
00:57Mitsuko's, Uchida's instinct was dead right, and we worked together really well. And interesting,
01:06you just play together to find out if you can work together. It's not about the conversation,
01:10is it? No, not at all. We just sit down together when we first meet. This is a general thing
01:17when you work with a new chamber music partner for the first time. The best thing is just to sit
01:22down and play through the whole piece. It's better than trying to express what you're trying to
01:29achieve through the words. I mean, that's why you become musicians, because you express your emotions
01:35and your feelings through the music itself. And then when it works, you don't over-analyse why
01:42it works, presumably. No, I mean, I think Geneva and I, we're quite similar sort of people, we're
01:50quite introverted as people, but when it comes to the actual music, we're transformed into
01:57altogether different sort of character, I think much more extrovert, and the way we
02:05sort of communicate with the audience, it just comes alive when the music starts.
02:10Fantastic. You were saying that when you were playing together over the summer,
02:14it was some of the best chamber music you've ever played.
02:17That's right. Well, she's a very, very perfect player as well, technically very accomplished, so
02:24there are no intonation problems that you have with some musicians that you have to try and cover,
02:30but she's very, very reliable, so it's a huge pleasure working with her.
02:35Fantastic. Well, it sounds a lovely combination to finish the year for the Chichester Chamber
02:39Concert Series. You'll be together Thursday 5th December in the Assembly Room and tickets
02:45available from Chichester Festival Theatre. Leah, really lovely to speak to you, thank you.
02:49Yeah, thank you, nice to talk to you.