Ticketing websites divide shows for ease of browsing into genres: drama, comedy, musicals etc. A sifting algorithm would short-circuit with The Wellspring. It’s partly a top-class concert, in which pianist David Owen Norris exquisitely samples Clementi, Grainger, Elgar and others. These recitals interleave and sometimes underscore monologues by the musician and his son Barney that are autobiographical and also geographical: both have lived in Northamptonshire, where The Wellspring world-premiered, and neighbouring Oxfordshire, where it plays next week.
Rarely can a father and son have been so physically dissimilar – David bird-like, Barney bearish – but it is equally unusual for so such multicreative talent to be present on one stage. Barney is a playwright (Visitors, Eventide), novelist (Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain) and poet (two examples in the programme), while one of the pieces David plays is his own composition. Both also deliver a cappella lieder and folk songs, including one with a startling twist.
