YPH was filled with brilliant musicality as students performed in our Spring Music Festival open class competition.
The open class took place on Monday 11 March, with students from across the school performing 24 mini-recitals. Winner of the open class competition, Mia (10L), reflected on the day: ‘Having the opportunity to participate in the Spring Music Festival was amazing as it was a great chance for us musicians to receive feedback and improve. A lot of my preparation was listening to recordings of the pieces I was going to play, and this really helped me get an idea of how my interpretation could be. I really enjoyed the day of the performance; you could tell that each musician had put in an exceptional amount of hard work – every single person played tremendously. It was a privilege to win as it could have easily been someone else, considering how the level of skill was so high that day!’
Isabella (10M), who also competed, said: ‘It was my first time at the Spring Music Festival this year and I really enjoyed it, the experience of performing a set of repertoire and then getting instructive feedback meant you could develop your pieces to the next level. But as well as this, I learnt how to present myself on my violin and how to grow in musicality and bond with the pieces for singing, to handle the balance between expression and technique. With my friends and classmates being there it lightened up the mood and took away the pressure, so I knew that when I made a mistake I could carry on and blend it into part of the music, this is helpful I think not just in music but for future experiences in other areas of life.’
Read about day one of the Spring Music Festival and the recital class competition, and find out more about music at St Helen’s:
