GERVASE de PEYER and FRIENDS,

 

                                       Concert 4th April 2006, The WIGMORE HALL, London

 

 

It was my great pleasure to invite two young and very talented Italian musicians, Vincenzo Perrone and Carlo Balzaretti, to participate in my 80th Birthday concert at the Wigmore Hall in London on April 4th 2006.

 

I met Vincenzo Perrone and Carlo Balzaretti as young students when I was on the faculty during the music festival in Assisi in the 1980Õs and recognized their young talent. Some years later, this led to the concept of a program for two clarinets and piano which was performed with great success in Italy. It was recorded live for the label Radiant Mastery at a concert in Milan.

 

I consider Vincenzo to be a natural virtuoso with a beautiful tone and sensitive musicality. As a colleague he displays great awareness combined with technical brilliance.                                                                       His reliability and musical cooperation makes him an ideal colleague and strengthens my appreciation of his talents.

 

Carlo Balzaretti needs no introduction to audiences throughout Italy. His performances now perpetuate the extraordinary talents he showed as a young prodigy but now with additional maturity.  Freshness of discovery and poetic illumination are vital parts of his personality as an artist.

 

The participation of these two young performers contributed to the outstanding success of my Special Birthday Concert at the Wigmore Hall, London on April 4th 2006.

 

 

May-June 2006  MUSICAL OPINION

 

 

 GERVASE de PEYER and FRIENDS,

" Here was a remarkable programme, chosen by Gervase de Peyer, the Friends being fellow musicians appearing with him on the platform, but to judge by the capacity audience everyone in the Hall was a friend of this most admired and well-loved artist.

Thus we heard MendolssohnÕs two remarkable and very rarely heard Concert Pieces Opus 113 by 2 Clarinets and Piano, opening both halves of the programme and wonderfully played by our hero and by Vicenzo Perrone and the pianist Carlo Balzaretti.

The concluding part of the PonchielliÕs Divertimento Il Convegno for two clarinets & Piano ended the first half in a brilliant fashion. A truly memorable concert."            

 

 Robert Matthew-Walker