Congratulations to all pupils who participated in the annual Junior Recital Prize, Intermediate Recital Prize and Directors' Recital Prize this year.
For the Junior Recital Prize, we are delighted to announce that Viktor won the monophonic category for his performances on both violin and clarinet and Alexander K won the polyphonic category. Viktor played Prelude to the third Partita for Solo Violin (Bach) and Scherzo (Sher) on violin and the first and third of the Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet by Stravinsky on clarinet. On piano, Alexander K played Prelude no.3 in C# major, from Well-Tempered Clavier, book 1 (Bach) , Minor 2nds and Major 7ths from Mikrokosmos Volume 6 (Bartók) and the third movement from Piano Sonata in E, op.14 (Beethoven).
For the Intermediate Recital Prize, congratulations go to Lydia who won the monophonic category for her performance of Adagio from Sonata no.3 in C for unaccompanied violin (Bach) and Third Movement from Violin Concerto in C (Haydn) and Misha, who won the polyphonic category for his performance on classical guitar of Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra) (Tárrega), Moscow Nights (Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi arr. Sergei Orehov) and Black Eyes (Russian romance arranged by Orehov)
The four finalists in the Directors’ Recital Prize Competition are Cliodhna Scott, Phoebe Barber, Sofia Ros and Pavlina Gusheva. The final is due to take place early in July.
The Director’s Recital Prize is donated annually by the School’s Board of Directors and in normal circumstances provides pupils with experience of public solo performance in a competition situation. The Intermediate and Junior Recital Prize follow the same format. The competitions are an annual highlight and this year took place in a virtual setting.
As a result all pupils had to record their own performances from home and submit them online for review so the panel were delighted to receive 25 entries for the Directors' Recital Prize and a further 32 for the Junior Recital Prize and the Intermediate Recital Prize.
Dr Kenneth Taylor, Headteacher said "This year has been particularly challenging due to the restrictions imposed by the outbreak of Covid 19 and the fact that this term all of our teaching and learning has been delivered in an online environment. We gave special consideration to the fact that those taking part would not have an accompanist. To address this we split the competitions into categories for polyphonic and monophonic instruments. Pupils were asked to record their submissions and to submit to an unlisted Youtube channel and we were delighted to receive 57 submissions in total from our pupils based across Scotland, the rest of the UK and abroad.”
“Mr Stubbings, Director of Music and Mr Cameron, Assistant Director of Music and Head of Keyboard, have reviewed every entry and, in spite of the challenges of performance and recording, were extremely impressed with all the entries. The calibre of playing was extremely high and I would like to thank all pupils who took part and their parents who have supported them."
Arrangements for the final of the Directors' Recital Prize are currently underway with filming of the finalists recitals due to take place at the RSNO Studio in Glasgow and in a studio in Spain and will be released as a Youtube premiere on 6th July.
The Directors' Recital Prize is a highlight of the school calendar at St Mary's Music School and many previous winners have gone on to flourish in the world of music.
For a full list of previous winners click here.