Helen Wilson
Carole Nash Recital Room, RNCM
14 February 2014
Happiness.
Helen Wilson’s flute playing was as dazzling as her dresses in a concert that included Schubert and Prokofiev and a new work by Kenneth Hesketh entitled ‘Entanglements’. Two composers were new to me, André Jolivet and Paul Taffanel, and it was Jolivet’s Chant de Linos that provided the most thrilling performance of the evening. Ferocious and exciting from the off, it seemed to have a tempo like a runaway train, always accelerating. At the end, you were left on the edge of your seat.
Wilson gave lucid introductions to each work and it was instructive also to see how for certain performances she took care to distribute the score, made the recital room a stage. Flautists sometimes have a near-dance as they move into their instrument, and she made space to do that here.
An evening of enchantments.
Jildy Sauce 