London String Duo Concert at St Pancras Church

String Duo Concert at St Pancras Church London – Today the Manor House String Duo, consisting of Vaughan Jones on violin and Reiad Chibah on viola, had the pleasure of performing at the stunning St Pancras Church on the Euston Road in London. The church has a weekly series of lunchtime recitals with a regular audience and we were particularly pleased to see at least 50 people in the church.

Having performed two duos by Mozart and Rolla on Tuesday at St Martin’s in the Fields, we wanted to try out a slightly different programme and whilst we kept the Mozart Bb duo (K424), we switched the Rolla with a very upbeat and lively piece by A.B Bruni and the ever popular Passacaglia transcribed by Halvorsen from a Handel keyboard sonata. The Bruni piece always has an immediately uplifting effect on listeners and people often come up to us at the end of concerts to tell us how much they enjoyed it.¬† I think one reason is that it’s dramatic and full of almost comical contrasts (apparently Bruni conducted the opera comique in Paris for many years) and it contains¬†some very jaunty themes – great fun to play, and a perfect opener for any concert.

In contrast the Mozart offers a very different listening experience with the two instruments in perfect balance with a set of inventive variations to finish.

At the end of the concert we got the opportunity to speak to many audience members and one lady who is an accomplished sketch artist (Shizue Takahashi) showed us a pen and ink / pastel drawing she had drawn of us whilst we were playing – it was really beautiful, capturing the movement and flow of the two instruments in performance.

Overall playing at St Pancras was a wonderful experience and we’re very keen to go back one day – perhaps next year.