Speed Interview with Andrew Dickinson...

Andrew Dickinson, winner of the Hampshire Singing Competition, joins us on Friday 15 March for English Serenade, the first in our Concert Series for Spring 2013. We always like to get to know our soloists and were lucky enough to have caught Andrew for a quick interview. So here it is...

What has been your career highlight so far?

I've been really lucky and have had some wonderful experiences already as a soloist. The one that leaps out is probably a Messiah I did a couple of years ago in Berlin. The RSAMD (where I was studying at the time) provided the choir and soloists and we were accompanied by the UDK Orchestra. It was a spectacular venue and concert, but what really made it special was having so many good friends performing with me.

                         

How do you relax when you aren't performing?

Sleep is always a good way! I'm a huge cricket fan and during the summer months I try and fit in a few games when I can. I also run a music festival in my home town of Rainhill (Merseyside), so this tends to take up a lot of my down time! www.rainhillmusicfestival.com (excuse the plug!)

When/ where are you most happy?

I’m most happy when I’m a) on stage, b) on a cricket field, or c) having good food with friends. Not always necessarily in that order!

If you could travel back in time where would you go?

There's a YouTube video that I'm obsessed with, which is a live performance of La Forza Del Destino from Palermo in 1958, with Franco Corelli singing "O tu Che in Seno." It's some of the most wonderful singing I've ever heard, and that's on a very old recording instrument. I would probably travel back to that theatre and get the best seat in the house!

What is the most played piece of music in your Itunes/ CD collection?

This varies a lot as I now have a Spotify account, so the choice of what to listen to can be a bit overwhelming! I've been going through a Steve Reich phase recently, particularly his guitar music. I also always have time for Radiohead.

Other than English Serenade with Southern Sinfonia, what else have you got planned for 2013?

I've just finished playing Lenski in Eugene Onegin with Bury Court Opera and Southbank Sinfonia, and in April I start a fantastic project with Mahogany Opera. We are performing Britten's Church Parables at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, as well as Aldeburgh Festival, Southwark Cathedral and at Buxton Festival. They're fantastic pieces that are rarely performed in their entirety, or as a "triptych." After that I return to Glyndebourne as I'm involved in the revival of Billy Budd, before making my house debut as Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia on the Glyndebourne Tour.

Andrew Dickinson, winner of the Hampshire Singing Competition, performs Finzi's Dies Natalis with Southern Sinfonia on Friday 15 March 2013 at St. Lawrence Church, Hungerford. 

To find out more about our Concerts and Café Concerts in Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and across the South, or our Education & Outreach programme, please visit the Southern Sinfonia website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe and please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments for us below.

Some Interesting Facts about Gerald Finzi...

The next event in our Concert Series, English Serenade, takes place in a few weeks time at St. Lawrence Church, Hungerford. In the run up to it we thought we'd explore the composers that are featured a bit further. This week we've been looking at Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)... So here a few things you might not have known about him:

• Of Gerald’s three brothers and one sister, only his sister Kate lived past the First World War. His brother Felix committed suicide in India in 1913, Douglas died of pneumonia contracted while at Bradford College in 1912, and Edgar died in action on September 3, 1918. Preceding the early deaths of his brothers, Gerald’s father Jack Finzi died just before Gerald’s eighth birthday. These deaths coupled with the death in 1918 of Ernest Farrar, also killed in action, with whom Finzi studied from 1914 to 1916 and who acted as a father figure for him, helped to confirm Finzi's introverted nature. His reaction to this multiple loss was to turn to literature and poetry, forces that would shape much of his life.
• He worked on behalf of the celebrated war poet and composer Ivor Gurney, cataloguing and editing his work for publication. Gurney has suffered a nervous breakdown after WW1 and had been in mental institutions since 1922. Finzi would be the driving force behind Gurney's Music & Letters symposium and the eventual publication of five volumes of songs and two collections of poems.
• He saved a number of rare varieties of English apples from extinction.
• In 1939, during the dark war years, he founded Newbury String Players, an amateur chamber orchestra, which he would conduct until his death in 1956. With Arts Council funding and a small petrol allowance, it became a mobile music body, offering performance opportunities to talented young musicians and taking music wherever it was wanted across the South of England.
• During the war years he opened his house in Ashmansworth, Hampshire to a number of German and Czech refugees.
• The outbreak of WW2 delayed the first performance of Dies Natalis at the Three Choirs Festival, which could have established Finzi as a major composer much sooner.

Andrew Dickinson, winner of the Hampshire Singing Competition, performs Finzi's Dies Natalis with Southern Sinfonia on Friday 15 March 2013 at St. Lawrence Church, Hungerford. 

To find out more about our Concerts and Café Concerts in Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and across the South, or our Education & Outreach programme, please visit the Southern Sinfonia website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe and please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments for us below.