Purity of Style

MALCOLM MILLER enjoys a
Piano Circus event in north-west London

A riveting evening of dodecafingered minimalism and powerpacked new six-piano music regaled a large audience of school pupils, parents and music lovers, at the concert by Piano Circus on 2 May 2007 at South Hampstead High School for Girls, in North West London, UK. Currently in residence at Brunel University, the six piano team, David Appleton, Adam Caird, Kate Halsall, Semra Kurutac, Helen Reid and Graham Rix, regularly visit educational institutions, and this visit to South Hampstead, hosted by their enterprising music director Stefan Reid, featured workshops for pupils that focused on the minimalism of Reich and Riley, a style which featured in the inventive, accessible programme.

Piano Circus, since its inception in 1989, has developed a rich repertoire of some hundred works by avant garde composers, and if this concert included but one première (the witty encore), most of the works, by Patrick Nunn, Graham Fitkin, Yumi Cawkwell, Max Richter, Miguel del Aguila and some of the performers themselves, were of recent post-2000 vintage.

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