By Mr Wright, Acting Director of Music

The final week of the spring term saw one of the biggest events of the musical calendar, our Spring Concert. This year’s concert held at St Barnabas’ Church, saw a record number of six Year 13s taking to the stage as accompanied soloists, marking their final performances at NHEHS. All six showed great musicality, technical skills and confidence, on a range of instruments, from piano to voice to flute and clarinet.

Performing a solo with orchestra or choir is a major challenge for any young musician. Our Year 13 students not only had to play their own part but to lead a vast number of other musicians in some well known, and less well known, movements from the concerto and oratorios repertoires. In addition, the soloists had to learn to project over the orchestra; no longer a small part of it, but to sound like an equal partner with the combined force of the other instruments. Simultaneously, the orchestra had to play the closest attention to what the soloist was doing.

Our soloists were accompanied by our Symphony Orchestra, Senior Choir, Choral Orchestra and Wind Band with music from 16th Century Venice to mid 20th Century London, including Verdi, Vivaldi, Handel, Nestico, Rachmaninoff and Jenkins.  Well done to all taking part, particularly our soloists ZaraT, Lara, Ami, Saira, Zara B, Olivia and Ingrid.

Scroll through our carousel of photos and videos over on our Instagram to enjoy some of their wonderful performances!

Upcoming music events this summer term include our Tea Time Concert on June 8th, Summer Concert on July 3rd and Hillfest on July 5th. We look forward to seeing you there!