Lunchtime Recital – Anna Le Hair (piano)

A real pleasure to have Anna close this series of Lunchtime Recitals with a seasonal selection of piano pieces. Anna first played for us solo in 2018 and has been back a number of times accompanying other artists. This time she could choose her own pieces!

She started with six short Christmas pieces written by Felix Mendelssohn as a Christmas present for the children of his niece. The family were coal merchants Anna told us.

The next four pieces by Cesar Franck had been written for the harmonium but Anne felt it worked very well on the piano and some of the tunes were familiar from carols.

 This was followed by Claude Debussy’s “Footsteps in the snow” from Preludes book 1 – very evocative of trudging through the snow, closing in a more wistful mood.

The “Song of the fir tree” by Billy Mayerl is thought to be a transcription of a Scandinavian folk song. Billy had been a child prodigy going to Trinity College at the age of seven. He’d ‘jazzed it up a bit’ Anna thought but it was a nice seasonal piece.

Richard Rodney Bennett’s “Partridge Pie”, Anna felt, was a bit like going to an art gallery and looking at a picture of each of those 12 days of Christmas. The nine drummers drumming came across most clearly!

Anna closed with Tschaikovsky’s “December” from his series ‘The Seasons’ which had a piece for each month of the year. A Christmas night with a girl telling fortunes, taking off her slippers and throwing them out of the gate.

A great seasonal selection which set us up nicely for the charity lunch that followed.