AN enthusiastic audience, large enough, according to the Minister Bruce Thompson, to show a rival 'draw' to the afternoon's International Rugby on TV and the obvious charms at Jordan's book signing in W.H.Smith's, heard Taunton Suzuki Group present its annual Spring Concert on Saturday 10th of March at The Temple Methodist Church. Children world-wide are learning, with love and encouragement, to play piano, the stringed instruments, harp, recorder and singing using the methods devised in the 1940's by Shinichi Suzuki of Japan. There is a constant demand in the UK for this form of teaching and Taunton is fortunate to have dedicated violin experts Mary Trewin and Diane Rivaud driving it forward.

The mayor of Taunton Deane, Cllr. Chris Hindley, praised the young musicians of the group, calling them, 'brilliant' and commented that, 'the future of music in Taunton is on the stage this afternoon'. It quickly became clear that this was no empty phrase as the youngsters, from 17 to 5 years old, charmed us with their delightful music. I calculated that the older players had memorised around 16 separate and substantial pieces, in addition to playing in the accompanying orchestra for some of the 26 items. I was particularly impressed by the opening concerto movement by Friedrich Seitz, the Brahms' Waltz, the beautifully played introduction to Paganini's 'Witches' Dance', Dvorak's 'Humoresque', the group performance of the Grade 5 set piece, 'Gigue', by Corette and Suzuki's six folk song arrangements, all of which will grace the CD (available from Mary Trewin) which was made from the concert. The deep and profound introduction, on organ and lower strings, to Giazotto's arrangement of Albinoni's famous 'Adagio', with the organ part from the group's excellent and inventive accompanist Keith Jones, and the solo violin obbligato from 13 year old Ben Le Neve-Foster, was also impressive at the start of the second half of the concert. The low pitch of the organ (a perennial problem with pipe organs) gave Ben some difficulties, but he took his solos with confidence and, over all, this was a well paced performance. So well done TSG and here's to the next thirty years!

Richard Featherstone