Stockbridge Music Hub Friday Concerts: Clea Friend and John Kitchen

Stockbridge Parish Church - 03/02/23 

Clea Friend, the very fine cellist in Edinburgh, is involved in setting up a series of lunchtime concerts under the auspices of the Stockbridge Music Hub in Stockbridge Parish Church, a venue familiar to concert goers for hosting the Georgian New Town series of concerts. I’m a big fan of lunch-time concerts. I’ve just been in London for an operatic weekend but managed to get to a Wigmore Hall concert on Sunday morning. It’s a good time to launch a series in Edinburgh, as sadly Edinburgh University appears to have abandoned its lunch-time concerts! (See my letter in last week’s ‘Scotsman’). So we welcome the work of Stockbridge Music Hub, a collaboration between Amati Global Investors, who fund the engagement of a community music practitioner, and Stockbridge Parish Church, who provide facilities as well as administrative and managerial support. 

This concert consisted of Clea on cello and her old friend and former teacher John Kitchen, Edinburgh’s most prominent organist. Unusually Clea was playing next to John upstairs in the organ loft and we were looking up to them from the stage. I worried whether we would be able to hear and see them clearly, but unnecessarily: the cello sounded very clear and John Kitchen didn’t drown it out on the organ. The only drawback to the concert was that, like most churches, Stockbridge Parish Church was a little chilly on a cold day, something that will hopefully improve later in the season. 

It was a delightful programme chosen by Clea and John, which allowed both instruments to be heard and appreciated. I did jokingly request the whole of the Bach Cello Suites from Clea and I’m glad she did play one movement from them, and later the Bach choral ‘Ich ruf zu Dir’. They also played works by Johann Ludwig Krebs, a haunting melody from Bloch’s ‘Songs from Jewish Life’ and Bruch’s ‘Kol Nidrei’ (All Vows), Faure’s ‘Elegy’, written originally for piano and cello, but arranged here for organ and cello. The final piece was Saint-Saëns’ beautiful ‘The Swan’ from ‘The A Carnival of Animals’. Clea and John are consummate musicians and their music gave pleasure to the very healthy lunch-time audience who rewarded them with warm applause. 

The next lunch-time concert in the series will be Friday March 3rd, when the great young traditional singer Hannah Rarity will be the main attraction. These concerts promise to be an important part of Edinburgh’s music scene.