The very charismatic violinist, Andrew Bernardi, Sally Clarke’s brother-in-law, very generously offered to come down from West Sussex to play his Stradivarius to help raise much needed funds for our church. The date was set, posters printed, leaflets delivered and adverts placed and what a response we got. The concert was completely sold out with people sitting in every available space. As someone remarked “so lovely to see the church full other than for a funeral or a wedding”! The pieces Andrew played included J.S. Bach movements from the “Sonatas and Partitias for unaccompanied violin”, Sir Edward Elgar’s “Salut d’Amore”, Fritz Krielser’s “Prelude and Allegro” and Ralph Vaughan Williams “The Lark Ascending”. Accompanying him quite beautifully on piano was Amanda Slogrove from Sherborne.

Andrew had been quite happy to play for the entire evening but the committee thought that a pure violin concert may be a little too much for some so we search around for a singer/choir. How lucky were we find Amelia Kelly-Slogrove who, at only 15 years old, has a wonderful voice. Her pieces included Henry Purcell’s “If Music be the food of Love”, “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz and “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. Amelia is currently studying for her GCSEs at The Gryphon School in Sherborne and is planning to audition for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain in November so we wish her all the best for her future music career.

During the interval we were treated to a glass of Prosecco from Waitrose (they did us a good deal!).

We cannot begin to thank Andrew enough for not only performing so brilliantly but for all his advice and support in the lead up to the concert. Finally I would like to thank the committee of Richard Clarke, Pat Harris, Lucy Parrott and Louise Sandy who worked so hard to make this such a success and put up with me being rather bossy!