Arundel Festival review: The Enchanted Flute

Diploma-winning Florence is only 16 and on the day of the concert was celebrating spectacular GCSE results – 10 A*s and one A (which was only one mark short of another A*). She also plays the violin and leads the West Sussex County Youth Orchestra, but is aiming for a science-based career.

Sarah is organist and choirmaster at the church and, with her husband Nick, is also co-founder/organiser of the festival’s prestigious Words and Music series.

This lunchtime concert, which attracted a sizeable audience, featured music by Handel (closely followed by Grainger’s popular Handel In the Strand), French composers Faure, Taffanel and Poulenc, the Swiss composer Honegger and the contemporary Britons John McLeod and John Rutter.

Florence and Sarah took turns in announcing their pieces, as well as playing solos amongst the duets. Florence enchanted us with Honegger’s delightfully witty Danse de Chevre, and Sarah impressed with her accounts of the Grainger and the tricky Trois Mouvements Perpetuels by Poulenc – one of the six composers who broke away from the Wagnerian German style.

Sarah admitted that Poulenc was one of her favourite composers, who was commemorated by John McCleod upon his death in 1963. From McCleod’s Le Tombeau de Poulenc, our performers played the gentle Berceuse.

John Rutter enjoys a wide reputation both here and in the US as a popular choral composer and director, but today we were able to enjoy his Suite Antique for flute and piano. Indeed, one of the movements, Chanson, bore a strong resemblance to his Candlelight Carol. The prelude and aria depicted various aspects of older style music, with ostinato and waltz also displaying strong jazz rhythms.

The concert ended spectacularly, with an energetic rondeau.