The second component of our musical weekend was a dinner and piano recital at Yewfield Guest House, near Hawkshead. We started enjoying these wonderful evenings earlier this year. The music is always glorious and an added bonus is the delicious, completely vegetarian, dinner which is served to fit around the performance.
Yewfield Guest House is set high above Hawkshead, and on the first really cold evening of the year so far, we saw very little of the scenery! With such a clear sky, however, the stars were incredibly bright.
This Sunday Paul Janes performed a selection of French piano music on Yewfield's beautiful grand piano. For me the pieces which I enjoyed the most were Satie, Poulenc and Debussy.
I found myself spellbound by Poulenc's The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant. This piece was played by Paul Janes and narrated by Derek Hook, the very musical owner of Yewfield. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this piece as much as I did. The music was beautiful and the narration added to the musical story. The inspiration for the piece came about after children requested Poulenc play music from the Babar book, while he was improvising at a friend's house. The result is charmimg and amusing.
We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and are looking forward to returning in a couple of weeks for the final offering of 2025. This, we think, will be contemporary music by the Printmakers.
