http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/wars-words/story-16535062-detail/story.htmlSaturday, July 14, 2012
THE voice was familiar, but the subject matter was far removed from the quirky tales of Sherlock Holmes.
Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the recent TV series, brought the horrors of the First World War to life with evocative poems and prose.
Intertwined were wartime- related piano pieces including Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky and snippets of information from a military historian.
An interesting mix and although there were some moments of hesitation when it came to whose turn it was next, it worked pretty well.
Cumberbatch, with his deep, clear voice, breathed life into a personal selection of poignant and graphic readings – bayonet training from Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, DH Lawrence's delight at failing his medical and the anguish of an officer for his lost men in EA Mackintosh's In Memorium.
More famously, were the classic Wilfred Owen poem Dulce et Decorum Est and John McCrae's In Flanders Fields.
Military historian Margot van Bers Streeter gave a factual and fascinating slant on the war from numbers killed to life in the trenches. Mud, barbed wire and mustard gas were the things that caused the most misery, she said.
The choice of music echoed the readings with calm, rippling phrases through to crashing chords that echoed the horror of battle.
Pianists Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen were outstanding, bringing tone and texture to a range of pieces, opening with Debussy's En Blanc et Noir and the mournful Page d'album.
Stravinsky's lively Souvenir d'une Marche Bouche was followed by the brisk March Militaire by Enrique Granados and pacifist Frank Bridge's poignant Lament for Solo Piano, a memorial to the sinking of the liner Lusitania.
But it was Charles Owen's masterful playing of Ravel's Frontispiece and Le Tombeau de Couperin that earned most applause.
周日 七月 15 2012, 00:54