Japanese violinist to play

A young violinist of Japanese birth will grace the stage at St Paul's Church for the final recital in the very successful current season of lunchtime concerts, promoted by the Honiton Festival.

Naoko Miyamoto (pictured) gained her early musical experience in Australia, playing the Bach Concerto for two violins with the Sydney Youth Orchestra at the age of eight. Since then she has played at the Sydney Opera House and, since coming to London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Purcell Room are among the important venues where she has performed. Concerto performances have taken place with well known orchestras from Japan and Australia, throughout Europe, and in the USA.

Her partner at Honiton will be pianist Simon Lane, who leads a diverse musical life, performing with both instrumentalists and singers at major venues and festivals across the UK and abroad.

Just two works have been chosen for the Honiton concert, opening with the Ravel Sonata. Throughout, the composer emphasised the difference of sonority and tonal colour between the two instruments. The central blues movement was inspired by an evening spent at a cabaret when he 'heard the negroes' and returned home to base the music on stylized jazz rhythms.

Mendelssohn's F major Sonata is the second work in the programme. One of the finest works for violin and piano of its day, it has echoes of the famous Violin Concerto, which was to become one of the most popular of all time. This being so, it is a complete mystery as to why Mendelssohn left the work unpublished and we now owe to Yehudi Menuhin, who unearthed it in 1953, edited it and had it published, the fact that it is now a popular part of the repertoire.

The concert takes place on Friday, February 27, at 1pm. A light lunch will be available from noon and tickets may be purchased at the door.

John Dalton