Geneva Lewis and Llŷr Williams combine for final 2024 Chichester Chamber Concert

SussexWorld

The final Chichester Chamber Concerts recital of 2024 brings together Geneva Lewis (violin) and Llŷr Williams (piano) in the Assembly Room, Chichester on Thursday, December 5 (tickets from Chichester Festival Theatre).

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to

00:06speak to the pianist Leah Williams. Now Leah, you're coming to Chichester Chamber Concert

00:11Series, the final concert of the year, on Thursday 5th December in the usual venue,

00:16the Assembly Room in North Street, and you're performing with Geneva Lewis, a violinist,

00:22and it's always interesting to know how combinations come together. You two have been playing together

00:28since the summer, but you haven't played together since the summer, have you? But you've worked

00:31together quite a bit. That's right, we had a quite intensive period in the summer. We did

00:37some concerts in Kingsland and Cambridge and Cheltenham, and a friend of mine, who is also

00:45a friend of Geneva's, in fact, a very well-known Japanese pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, and she

00:51recommended we should work together and we would make a good combination, and I think

00:57Mitsuko's, Uchida's instinct was dead right, and we worked together really well. And interesting,

01:06you just play together to find out if you can work together. It's not about the conversation,

01:10is it? No, not at all. We just sit down together when we first meet. This is a general thing

01:17when you work with a new chamber music partner for the first time. The best thing is just to sit

01:22down and play through the whole piece. It's better than trying to express what you're trying to

01:29achieve through the words. I mean, that's why you become musicians, because you express your emotions

01:35and your feelings through the music itself. And then when it works, you don't over-analyse why

01:42it works, presumably. No, I mean, I think Geneva and I, we're quite similar sort of people, we're

01:50quite introverted as people, but when it comes to the actual music, we're transformed into

01:57altogether different sort of character, I think much more extrovert, and the way we

02:05sort of communicate with the audience, it just comes alive when the music starts.

02:10Fantastic. You were saying that when you were playing together over the summer,

02:14it was some of the best chamber music you've ever played.

02:17That's right. Well, she's a very, very perfect player as well, technically very accomplished, so

02:24there are no intonation problems that you have with some musicians that you have to try and cover,

02:30but she's very, very reliable, so it's a huge pleasure working with her.

02:35Fantastic. Well, it sounds a lovely combination to finish the year for the Chichester Chamber

02:39Concert Series. You'll be together Thursday 5th December in the Assembly Room and tickets

02:45available from Chichester Festival Theatre. Leah, really lovely to speak to you, thank you.

02:49Yeah, thank you, nice to talk to you.

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