Don't let the music stop
Long Covid doesn't just affect humans. Countless arts organisations and music venues appear to be suffering from its effects too - in the form of reduced audiences and revenues.
Three Rivers Music Society, which holds lunchtime and evening concerts in Rickmansworth Baptist Church, would like to claim that it is bucking this global trend. But we too have been struggling to balance our books despite staging some unforgettable concerts.
Here are some of the stand-out performers we have attracted over the past three Covid-disrupted years:
Iain Farrington, a brilliant pianist and arranger who performed the "Chariots of Fire" comedy sketch with Rowan Atkinson at the 2012 London Olympics. He and John Reid, a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, treated us to an evening of dance-inspired piano music immediately before the first lockdown.
David Halls, director of music at Salisbury Cathedral, and a member of a piano trio that raised our spirits in early 2022. Earlier he had entertained the queue waiting for Covid vaccinations at his cathedral by playing organ music by Bach and Handel - and even a little Rodgers and Hammerstein.
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Verona Maier, another accomplished organist, who is vice-rector of the National University of Music in Bucharest. Her piano recital last November was astonishing. She played Bach's Partita No. 1, a revolutionary composition that the immortal Johann Sebastian said he wrote to refresh music lovers' spirits. Almost 300 years later it still achieves that aim.
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The highly regarded John Donegan Jazz Sextet, which has performed for us seven times, also helped to blast away the Covid blues. John is a local pianist and composer with a national reputation, and several members of his sextet are stars in their own right.
But ever since the music society was revived by Dr Steven Halls, former chief executive of Three Rivers District Council, and our chairman Ash Patil, the concerts that have left audiences most awestruck are the recitals by teenage students at the Purcell School in Bushey, a world-class centre of musical excellence. "How can someone so young play so well?" is the perennial question.
Happily, these Purcell performances have been witnessed by children even younger than themselves because we always invite a local primary school to send a class to these concerts (in fact, free entry to concerts is offered to all under 25-year-olds).
We believe this early introduction to classical music will encourage children to become the musicians or concertgoers of the future. But, of course, it does not help us to pay performers' fees in the short term. That is why we must trust that, as Covid fears abate, residents of Three Rivers will turn up in greater numbers to support our concerts.
The music society, a charity established in 1975, should not be allowed to disappear. As one local concertgoer said on a social media site in February: "The people of Rickmansworth are lucky to have such a seriously good music society."
We have to hope that others will realise the truth of that statement in the coming year.
article by....
David Budge
20.06.2023
Minutes of the latest 2021 AGM that took place on Wednesday December 1 at the Baptist Church will be available soon.
Minutes of the last AGM - 2019
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