Today I was working for the London Philharmonic Orchestra (who, I just realised, I have been working with for almost ten years) whose marvelous education team and event team put on a fantastic event, twice, for about 4,000 local Key Stage 3 pupils.
The event, directed by Simon Reade, was based around Michael Mopurgo’s beautiful short story “The Mozart Question“, which was narrated over the performance by the author himself and Alison Reid, and interspersed by orchestral, solo and quartet performances, with the highlight (although that seems like a completely inappropriate description) being Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. The conductor was Nicholas Collon, who I photographed a few years ago, and the violin soloist was Jack Liebeck – who is also a very talented photographer.
Morpurgo’s happy and sad story about the formative years of a fictional violinist is incredibly moving and would be a good introduction for children to the reality of the Holocaust and an inspiration to potential young musicians.
It was refreshing to see children being invited to work hard and not being patronised or merely apologised to with bite-sized or watered down classical music.
