Former Worthing composer's birthday tribute

In celebration of the 60th birthday earlier this year of this former music teacher at Lyndhurst Primary School, the concert at Bristol Music Club culminated in an exhilarating performance of his Piano Concerto in C.

This work, premiered by Worthing Symphony Orchestra in 1985 with the late Philip Challis as soloist, conducted by Jan Cervenka, was given in its Grand Duo version for two pianos on Steinway and Bosendorfer grand pianos by Michael Jones and Duncan Honeybourne.

Honeybourne took the solo part in the breezy opening movement, inspired by the seafront at Scarborough but, like the finale, exhibiting a Scottish element in one of its main themes, and in the closing movement, in which Cummings-Knight juxtaposes the contrasting themes of the father and offspring from his Prodigal Son musical for children's performance.

Jones opted to take the solo spot in the witty and mercurial second movement, a rondeau, and in the slow and rhapsodic third, which is borne expansively out of a simple theme.

Jones, 54, a fellow student with the composer at Birmingham Conservatoire, champions British contemporary composers and conceived the idea of the concert. He took the lion's share of the opening half of the evening, giving intimately informed readings of four of the 24 Preludes, the easy-going Valse Lente from the children's opera Jacob's Ladder, and The Turning Year, an effective instrumental evocation of Chinese poetry about spring from the T'ang Dynasty.

The Preludes, of which Jones gave those in E major, F sharp, Ab and F major, have intellectual shape as well as an unsuppressable, sometimes turbulent passion.

Honeybourne, 30, made a sensitive and significant mark in the evening with the Ballad in D, and an interpretation more sensuously-fired than his own, commented Jones later. The Ballad, like the Valse, dates from 1973, and its clarity of utterance and texture is a winning one.

Jones commented: "In Geoff's music there is an ease of expression as well as a depth, and a melodic memorability and harmonic originality. The music is romantic. Rakhmaninov and Korngold sound closest to him but I can't compare Geoff's work with anyone else. He's got a voice of his own."

The first half of the evening also contained performances of two Cummings-Knight choral pieces, in four parts, by Bristol Choir, Cantanti, who were 17 voices directed by Nigel Nash with Jones at the piano, whereas he had played the organ in its first performance. These were the Magnificat, a Brighton College commission premiered in Chichester Cathedral in 1990, and the Nunc Dimmitis. Both contained Cummings-Knight's characteristically bold and ready key changes and the accompaniment to the Magnificat provided extra melodic content and counterpoint.

The evening was hosted and the pieces introduced by the composer's ever-supporting wife, Jennie.

Richard Amey