We preceded today’s Music in New Malden concert of music by Robert and Clara Schumann with our first-ever General Meeting, for which we had a good attendance of about three dozen.

We have adopted our constitution, and the elected officers are Jane Booth (Chair) John Irving, (Deputy Chair) and Peter Bullett (Treasurer). Mia Bekvalac has been co-opted as Secretary to the committee. Finances are in good shape, and Peter Bullett presented an up-to-date picture of charity donations (already over £1200 this season) and the expenses fund for performers (which has recently received a generous anonymous donation).

Our nine-season track record is, we think, quite impressive, with a broad range of repertoire offered and a number of recognisable themes established – including showcasing students from our excellent London conservatoires. We look forward with confidence to Season TEN (2017-18).

The Guildhall School of Music & Drama was featured in the concert immediately after the General Meeting, in which Laura Roberts, a member of the GSMD’s Piano Faculty introduced a programme of works for violin and piano by perhaps the most famous husband and wife musical team of the 19th century, Robert and  Clara Schumann. These were expertly performed by Laura with Amarins Wierdsma (violin). As a bonus, the Schumann works were preceded today by some superb cello playing by Yoanna Prodanova, offering music by Andropova, Fauré and Elliot Carter – his Fragments No.1 for solo cello (1994) must be the most recent work that has ever appeared in MiNM and is a stunning exhibition of technical fireworks.

NEXT CONCERT: Jane Booth (clarinet) and Steven Devine (piano): Music by Tovey, Hadow and York Bowen – three British composers with strong connections to the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Music, whose legacy in music history, analysis and piano has sometimes overshadowed their brilliance as creators of music.