Emma Johnson and John Lenehan, Kendal Town Hall

DURING its lengthy, distinguished history Kendal Midday Concert Club has presented concerts containing a quite wide variety of content. Few, though, can have surpassed its most recent venture, when, for a brief period of time, the club’s capacity audience was transported back 600 years to the German town of Hamelin in Brunswick, where the townsfolk were plagued by rats. In Kendal the famous tale was retold in magical fashion by local children and two world famous musicians as they performed an imaginative musical drama based on Robert Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with music by Jonathan Dove.

Twenty seven colourfully-attired children from Old Hutton Primary School enthusiastically acted, sang and played their recorders as they, aided and abetted by an impressive wind consort from the Queen Elizabeth School, Kirkby Lonsdale, helped to relate the familiar sequence of events. The Piper and narrator (doing everything from memory) was Emma Johnson. She, in her 'queer long coat' and blowing her world famous clarinet, did rid the town of rats. She was hugely helped in this task by the strangest of assistants - John Lenehan, a pianist. But what a pianist! He had to contend at times with a virtuosic score and, my goodness, he was magnificent. The enjoyment of this drama was enhanced by an ever-changing backcloth projection of pictures, drawn by the children themselves, to illustrate the action.

A tremendous amount of work had been put into this production - by the children, the two professionals, the staff of the two schools, and by John Hiley, who had contributed so much expertise to the overall organisation of the event.

As a prelude to this Emma Johnson and John Lenehan had performed music by Finzi (Three Bagatelles), Bernstein (Scenes from West Side Story) and Glampieri (Carnival of Venice). As was to be expected from such an experienced and talented duo, every bar was imbued with superb musicianship and technical wonderment. There was also the sense that the players knew that their enjoyment was reciprocated.

BRIAN PAYNES