Cranleigh Matters The Cranleigh School Newsletter CRANLEIGH EX CULTU ROBUR
Issue No 33 Spring 2009 www.cranleigh.org
Cranleigh School, Cranleigh Surrey GU6 8QQ Telephone 01483 273666
Building for the Future The new £10 million academic centre (the Emms Centre) has now been completed by the building contractors Durtnell, and the School has taken ownership of the building from the start of the Lent term, just eighteen months after work commenced on site. The Chairman of Cranleigh School’s Governing Body, Mr Anthony Townsend, stated at the topping – out ceremony in September that, “It started with an inspired master-plan for new buildings at the School from our architects Pringle Richards Sharratt, from which this is the first major project. We are hugely enthusiastic about the building and the statement that it makes. It is modern, bright and yet it blends so well with the existing buildings at the School. It will be used to teach sciences and languages: areas where focus is urgently needed in our country’s education system. This building symbolises Cranleigh’s commitment to further these subjects.” The official opening by The Rt Hon. the Lord Patten of Barnes takes place on May 20th.
Cranleigh Riders Shine in Nationals The 2008 National Schools Equestrian Association Championships took place over the final week of November at The College Equestrian Centre in Keysoe, Bedfordshire. Twenty-four schools had qualified for each of four height classes from various qualifying competitions across the country and Cranleigh was one of very few schools to be represented in every championship class. By the end of the two days Cranleigh were, as they had been the previous year, the school with the greatest success overall, going one better in terms of team placings, and once again producing the National Individual Open Champion in 14-year-old Imogen Way on her grey mare Misty Flight. It was the first time that a rider has retained her Open title at this championship. Other highlights were the Novice team: Indi Thompson, Izzy Graham-Watson, Hattie Allison and Georgina Ambrose, who finished as Reserve National Champions and the Open team,who rode with superb style and also finished as Reserve Champions. We are hugely grateful to Rachel Changer for her help in preparing riders both beforehand and during the championships, and Barlow Robbins LLP, whose generous sponsorship meant that we were able to purchase team tops for all the riders. Chris Allison WEB-SITE Some articles in this newsletter appear in a fuller version on the web-site. For the latest news go to www.cranleigh.org
Stephen Artus’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (9-12 February) was some of the fastest-paced, most dynamic Shakespeare I have seen, yet the casting of Freddie Comber and the outstanding Izzy Baynham-Herd as the Nurse ensured that there was a true sense of different generations, not easy to achieve in a school production. Amongst the four parents it was perhaps Rowena Morgan’s Lady Capulet that stood out: a fascinating portrayal. Max Martin and Anthony Dunkley brought contrasting types of anger to Capulet and the Prince.
Romeo and Juliet
Harry Rudd made an amiable Benvolio and Campell Rankine brought great physical acting and eccentricity to Mercutio. Sam Durant made a fiery Tybalt and Morgan Fletcher gently embodied the innocence of Paris. Romeo emerged as very much one of this group of hedonistic, spoiled party-goers until Juliet dragged him to maturity. Tom Grafton really went for the emotion of the character and, as with all parts, the verse-speaking seemed almost natural. Head of Drama Stephen Artus describes this as ‘Juliet’s play’ and in Francesca Lowry he found as perfect a Juliet as one could imagine. Francesca spoke her lines with total command and understanding: this was the ideal mix of the intelligence of the actress with the maturity of this remarkable character, but blended with a touching innocence. The sheer control needed to get a cast of 39 organised by this first night was most impressive, and on top of this the expert fight scenes and the music, meticulously chosen to match the mood, all added to the effect. There were 40 names in the programme who supported the production, chief of these being set designer and theatre technician Mark Jenkins, whose set was enhanced by Peter McNiven’s scenic design.
Tom Chevis Wins Top Composer Award Tom Chevis (a 2008 leaver) has won first prize in the Classical/Contemporary section of the Sibelius Student Composer of the Year Competition 2008 (17-18 age range). His composition ‘Enclos’d in Cinders’ can be heard and the score can also be viewed on the Sibelius web-site. http://www.sibelius.com/competition/student_composer/2008/votes/classical_17-18.html Director of Music Marcus Pashley, adds “This is fantastic recognition, following Tom’s Choral Scholarship to Oxford, of what a talented composer and outstandingly versatile musician Tom is. We are delighted for him.” Tom is currently on his gap year project of missionary work in Africa.
The Alchemist
Martin Allison’s fine production of ‘The Alchemist’ showed us an image of a time of unabashed opportunism, in which greed and gullibility were mercilessly exploited by a shameless trio. The editing ensured accessibility whilst retaining the rich flavour of the original. The music, played by Tom Hollister and Chloe Allison, conveyed a pleasing sense of period and the set (designed by Peter McNiven) was absolutely right: solid wooden staircases and dim lighting conveyed the candlelit Jacobean world. It is Face who is the true alchemist of the play: his transformation from fraudulent swindler to honest butler requires a fine sense of stagecraft and James Currie demonstrated it in abundance. This was a comic tour-de-force. Christopher Williams clearly relished his role as Subtle and performed it with great gusto and flair. Shaunagh Duncan was an exceptional Doll: she captured all of Doll’s leering avarice, feminine wiles and comic gusto.
Alex Moss’s slack-jawed clerk, Dapper, was most entertaining; J.J.Bee, as Epicure Mammon, stumped about to great effect; Pertinax was played with instinctive understanding by Alex Quant and Nick Roberts played Abel Drugger with wide-eyed amiability. Angus Peters and Anna van der Zalm brought real colour and verve to their parts and Michael Holford was superb as Lovewit. Enormous credit goes to everyone involved, particularly Paul Leggitt (props) and Mark Jenkins (technical supremo). The final word, however, should go to Martin Allison for his flair and sensitivity as adaptor and director. Gordon Neill
Pat Dixon Woodwind Performance This year’s winner of the Junior Performance competition was Harry McCagherty (oboe). Another oboist came second: Elinor Morgan. Saxophonist Charlie La Fosse was third. In the senior ranks, one performer, Chloe Allison, played two instruments on this same evening and qualified for the next round of the Helen Wareham Competition on her clarinet. The others who won through under the adjudication of Marcus Pashley were oboist Pip Mansergh and saxophonist Fred Hickman. All twenty performances were enjoyable to hear and were the fruits of hours of preparation by the pupils and their teachers and, as ever, accompanist Richard Saxel.
Dashwood Piano Performance The Junior Dashwood Piano prize went to Isabella Simpkin (IVth Form) for her very atmospheric performance of a Chopin Nocturne and Mr Cyril Dashwood, the generous benefactor of the prize, was on hand to award it. He handed the envelopes for second and third prizes to Elinor Morgan (Prokofiev with panache) and Tom Hollister (sensitive Schubert). The well-supported event in the MMS, with 90 minutes of music-making from 22 of the 60 pupils who have piano lessons, was adjudicated by Marcus Pashley. Richard Saxel paid fulsome tribute, not only to the competitors for reaching so high a standard, but also to his five fellow piano teachers. Especial praise goes to Emma Wallis, who had started learning the piano only that term and who gave us a hauntingly desolate ‘Petit Berger’ by Absil. Three piano players from the Senior Piano Class went through to the semi-final stage: Chloe Allison and Fred Hickman playing Mozart and James Reynolds playing Liszt.
Hannah Top of the Pile for Oxford English In the ELAT paper used by Oxford University to help select candidates to whom they offer places, Hannah Coleridge’s final mark of 58/60 was the highest scored by any candidate in the country: she was one of just seven pupils to attain this mark, out of roughly 1300 applicants. This is a second considerable triumph for Hannah, who attained one of the top five marks in the country in English Literature at GCSE. The paper Hannah sat comprised a selection of unseen passages of verse and prose from a variety of different periods, united by the theme of ‘portraits’. Candidates were asked to write a comparative analysis of any two pieces and Hannah chose an extract from an essay by Francis Bacon and a sonnet by Philip Sidney, from Astrophil and Stella. The Oxford ELAT plays a significant part in the selection process and every pupil applying to read English at Oxford is obliged to sit it. Since her success in the ELAT, she has been offered a conditional place by St Edmund Hall, Oxford to read English, starting in September 2010.
CCF Trip to Harlech
Merriman Orchestra Concert On Friday 23rd January we were treated to a fantastic concert played with such maturity and expression. ‘The Bartered Bride’ overture provided an exciting start to the concert with its super-charged opening. The Brahms Violin concerto is wonderful and it will be hard to forget the outstanding performance by 24-year-old Jaroslaw Nadrzycki. His portrayal of the supreme concerto for the violin after Beethoven’s, was inspiring and not only were his technical skills polished to perfection but also he played with such emotion, with such a warm, powerful, tone. Just about everybody knows the first few bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 and so it was no surprise when the orchestra started with the fantastically loud and dramatic motif. The thick texture was very impressively clarified under the baton of Marcus Pashley to end an extremely enjoyable evening of fine music. Hilary Cronin
The forecast for the last weekend in January was for decidedly Welsh weather (wet, wild and windy), so we were somewhat apprehensive about this annual trip for the senior CCF cadets, based just inland from Harlech in Snowdonia. A great time was had white-water rafting and we then set off on the expedition phase, walking into the remote Penrhos bothy for the night. A wicked wind spurred us on to a very rapid return yomp over the hills at the back of Trawsfynydd, and the temperature continued to drop by Sunday morning. We broke our journey home at Llangollen to scale the limestone of Trevor Rock. However, icicles were forming on the seepage lines along the crag and little flurries of snow encouraged us to complete our climb in record time. We returned to Cranleigh as more serious snow began to fall, feeling that, for once, we had beaten the weather. Simon Young
Paddlers Show Real Potential
Will Collier selected for England Rugby
This year’s Devizes-Westminster (DW) canoe team has made a very encouraging start. At 18 members, it is the largest squad since Cranleigh began entering teams. With some of the coldest January weather of recent years to contend with, the first few weeks saw them already move into unstable but fast-racing K2s. The focus was then on learning an effective paddling technique that they can maintain for the full 125-mile distance and on building endurance. Slowly but surely, the various ingredients necessary for this unique event are being developed to produce a team that promises to challenge Cranleigh’s impressive record in this event.
Will Collier told the local press that “it doesn’t get better” than the “huge honour” of being selected for the England U18 Rugby squad following his success at Surrey and London and South East levels. Will plays warm-up games against Japan High Schools, Northampton High School and Worcester Warriors Academy before flying with the squad to Toulon for the AER tournament in April. The first game in the knock-out is against Georgia. He is also off to France (Toulouse) with the Harlequins EPDG squad. James Witcombe, who takes over this term from Richard Humes as Head of Rugby, adds, “We are all very proud of Will, who has worked hard for this success and who really has the calibre to go on from when he represented England at U16 level.”
Olivia Riding Towards 2012 Olympics
Sunday 19th January saw the paddlers and their parents gather for the annual ‘Supporters’ Presentation’ – an evening for those who will be following the pairs by road along the course, feeding, watering and encouraging them as they go. The squad’s first race – an ‘in-house’ event held on the River Wey from Guildford to Godalming – was on Saturday 31st January: see the web-site for Hannah Coleridge’s ‘view from the canoe’.
Seventeen-year-old event rider, Olivia Craddock, and her six-yearold horse, Boherdeal Cruise, have been included in the first published list of horses and riders who are up for possible selection for the 2012 Olympics. Out of an original 14,500 hopefuls, 84 horses have been selected for this list. All these horses have had to meet strict criteria in terms of their successes during the 2008 eventing season and Olivia and Boherdeal Cruise have not only achieved the wins at novice level necessary to win her place now, she has also already achieved the criteria to keep him on the list until he is at least nine years old, having competed successfully at Intermediate level too. Over the next two years the GB selectors will be watching Olivia’s progress carefully and, as a result of this selection, she will be invited to train at the highest level with some of the sport’s top competitors and instructors. Looking ahead to next season first, however, Olivia’s aims are to secure a place on the Junior team for the European Championships and to do all of this whilst still studying hard for the A-level grades she needs to go to university. She is an extremely busy and committed young lady! Chris Allison
Alex Buchanan picked for GB team
On Sunday 15th February, the Canoe team competed in the first of the ‘Waterside’ races on the Kennett & Avon Canal. With 13 miles to paddle and 21 locks to negotiate, they had plenty of opportunity to show off their fast-developing skills. And so they did, with top pairs Knight and Holford and Fitzalan-Howard and Scarrott putting in some fast times and the others covering the course in style. Phil Parker
Alexandra Buchanan was ski-racing for nearly the whole of the Christmas holiday in Italy, France and Austria: her family drove over 4000 miles in two and a half weeks! In Chamonix Alex had two races: the Giant Slalom, where she came fifth and the Slalom, where she came second and was beaten only by a local racer from a French national team. At the prize-giving she was shocked and delighted to learn that her combined results in the two events meant that she was the overall winner of the Combined Trophy. On the 9th January Alex was informed that she has been selected by Team GB to represent the UK in international races this season. Up-dates of her progress will be on the web-site.
Editor: PETER LONGSHAW - Photography: STEPHEN OWEN - Design and Typesetting: JOHN SANDFORD