A brand-new storybook concert, based on the modern classic book series by Benji Davies.
The Storm Whale tells the story of a child, and a whale washed up on the beach, and friendships that will change their lives forever and echo down the generations. These heart-warming tales of friendship, love and courage are brought to life through music specially written to accompany the book by our Children’s Composer-in-Residence, Paul Rissmann.
Perfect for 3 to 7 year-olds and their families, this illustrated and narrated storybook concert is brought to Wiltshire Music Centre with Music in the Round, the producers of previous popular family concerts Izzy Gimzo, Giddy Goat and Sir Scallywag. It is a wonderful introduction to a live concert experience, brimming with wonderful music, memorable songs, images from the book and plenty of chances to join in.
“The Storm Whale tells a simple but powerful story about loneliness and the love between a parent and child… The world may be as big and lonely and incomprehensible as the ocean, but still it’s possible to find tremendous, heart-stopping tenderness.” The New York Times on the book
With many thanks to all our funders, including:
The Sarah Nulty Power of Music Foundation, The JG Graves Charitable Trust, Sheffield Town Trust and Wise Music Foundation
“The musicians did a wonderful job of introducing the young audience to enjoyment of the theatre, live music and engaging story-telling. Proof of their success [were] the lines of excited children coming up to meet the musicians who had gathered in the foyer with their instruments.”
The Yorkshire Post (on a previous Music in the Round storybook concert)
“It’ll be a really fun show with some of the most insanely talented musicians playing some of the best music ever written… All you have to know is – do you like a good tune? Because we’re going to be playing a ton of those.” Chris Addison
Chris Addison (The Thick of It, Mock the Week) joins Music in the Round to bring his infectious enthusiasm for classical music to Wiltshire Music Centre.
Telling the story of Europe from the courts of 17th century Italy, through the political and social revolutions of 18th and 19th century Europe, to the weird and wonderful sounds conjured by today’s contemporary composers, Chris takes us on a journey through the rich, vibrant – and sometimes bizarre – history of classical chamber music.
Discover how a bassoonist beat up Bach, Mozart’s passion for the newly-invented clarinet (and for crude poetry), Beethoven’s embattled relationship with his failing hearing and the Emperor of France, and how Schoenberg tore up the musical rule book in a continent ravaged by war. Featuring live performances from some of the UK’s finest musicians and the inimitable curiosity and wit of Chris Addison’s storytelling, this will be an evening of insight, laughter and spine-tingling music.
Programme includes excerpts from: CORELLI Trio Sonata da Camera Op.2 No.1 in D STROZZI(arr. Birchall) Che si può fare Op.8 JS BACH Prelude from Cello Suite No.1 in G CPE BACH Flute concerto in D minor HAYDN String Quartet Op.76 No. 3 ‘Emperor’ MOZART Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Viola K.498 ‘Kegelstatt’ BEETHOVEN Serenade for flute, violin and viola Op.25 CHOPIN Nocturne No.20 in C sharp minor DEBUSSY Syrinx S. COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet SMYTH Piano Trio in D minor SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.8 in C minor Op.110 SCHOENBERG Suite for Piano Op.25 REICH New York Counterpoint MEREDITH Tuggemo
“Perfect for someone like me who knows next to zero about classical music but [Chris] put people at ease, made us laugh and I loved the interaction with the musicians too who were bloody awesome!”
Audience comment
“I absolutely loved Chris Addison’s enthusiasm and knowledge. A history and music class rolled into one with beautiful performances from all the musicians… I left feeling elated and could have listened for hours!”
SUK Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale ‘St. Wenceslas’ Op 35a COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet Op 10 HOWELLS Rhapsodic Quintet Op 31 DVOŘÁK String Quartet in F major No 12 Op 96 ‘American’
Praised by The Guardian as “one of the most adaptable chamber groups in the country”, Ensemble 360 is renowned for its virtuoso performances, bold programming and engaging interpretations of music. They present a sumptuous evening of music, with masterpieces ranging from Herbert Howells’s mystical Rhapsodic Quintet to Dvořák’s profound ‘American Quartet’. At the heart of this programme, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s exquisite Clarinet Quintet is arguably the composer’s greatest achievement in chamber music.
Josef Suk, a student of Antonín Dvořák and later his son-in-law, was a composer with a distinct artistic voice and strong ties to Czech musical heritage. His composition, the “Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale,” pays homage to the Bohemian patron saint, St. Wenceslas, and was written when a member of the Bohemian String Quartet to supplement the obligatory playing of the Austrian national anthem (after 1914) with a more distinctively Bohemian piece, and prayer for the wellbeing of the Czech people.
The “Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale’” is a single-movement for string quartet, which was later expanded into a version for string orchestra, adding a double bass line, and later still adapted for violin and organ. Suk‘s use of the violin as the leading voice enhances the expressive nature of the piece, allowing for moments of spiritual contemplation. The work commences with a solemn and tender introduction, featuring the initial statement of the hymn melody. Through subtle variations, this simple melody moves from serene introspection to intense and soaring passages as a recurring motif. The piece reaches a climax with the violin in its highest register, conveying a profound yearning. It gradually fades away, into tranquility.
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Samuel, Clarinet Quintet Op.10
Allegro energico
Larghetto affettuoso
Scherzo. Allegro leggiero
Finale. Allegro agitato – Poco più moderato – Vivace
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London and entered to Royal College of Music in 1890 to study the violin. His ability as a composer soon became apparent, and he studied composition with Stanford, becoming one of his favourite pupils. His Piano Quintet Op.1 (1893) heralded the arrival of a remarkable talent, but the Clarinet Quintet, composed in 1895, demonstrates Coleridge-Taylor at the height of his creative powers. Stanford had given his students a challenge, declaring that after Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, written in 1891, nobody would be able to escape its influence. Coleridge-Taylor couldn’t resist trying, and when Stanford saw the result he is said to have exclaimed ‘you’ve done it!’ Coleridge-Taylor took his influences not from Brahms but from another great contemporary composer: in places this work sounds like the clarinet quintet that Dvořák never wrote. That’s a mark of Coleridge-Taylor’s wonderfully fluent and assured writing. The sonata form first movement is both confident and complex, with the clarinet forming part of an intricately-woven ensemble texture. The Larghetto has a free, rhapsodic character, dominated by a haunting main theme. The Scherzo delights in rhythmic tricks while the central Trio section is more lyrical. The opening theme of the finale governs much of what follows until a recollection of the slow movement gives way to an animated coda. The first performance took place at the Royal College of Music on 10 July 1895, with George Anderson playing the clarinet. Afterwards, Stanford wrote to the great violinist Joseph Joachim describing the piece as ‘the most remarkable thing in the younger generation that I have seen.’
HOWELLS Herbert, Rhapsodic Quintet for Clarinet and Strings Op.31
Lento, ma appassionato – A tempo, tranquillo – Piu mosso, inquieto – Doppio movimento ritmico, e non troppo allegro – Più elato – Meno mosso – Lento, assai tranquillo – Più adagio
Herbert Howells is probably best remembered for his church music (including the famous hymn tune ‘All my hope on God is founded’ as well as several outstanding settings of service music) and for his choral masterpiece Hymnus paradisi. But he was also a gifted composer for instruments and wrote a good deal of chamber music at the start of his career. The Rhapsodic Quintet was completed in June 1919 and Howells himself said that there was ‘a mystic feeling about the whole thing’. Still, mystic feelings didn’t come without some serious hard work, and the Howells scholar Paul Spicer has drawn attention to an entry in the composer’s diary where he noted that the quintet had involved quite a lot of preparatory thinking. Howells wrote of his ‘long ponderous thoughts on problems of musical form … hours spent in an easy-chair, fire-gazing, form-thinking.’ The ‘form-thinking’ was clearly productive, since this beautifully written quintet for clarinet and strings in one movement appears to flow effortlessly from one idea to the next as well as having overall coherence. This was an early work – Howells had only recently finished his studies at the Royal College of Music with Stanford and Charles Wood – but his handling of the instruments shows tremendous assurance. Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music makes particular mention of this, describing the work as having a ‘sensitive appreciation of instrumental needs’, but there is more to it than that, since Howells also shows a great gift for unfolding long, lyrical melodies, and contrasting these with more capricious ideas. It’s this combination of fluent and idiomatic writing with memorable thematic material that led Christopher Palmer, in his biography of Howells, to call the Rhapsodic Quintet ‘an outstanding achievement’.
DVOŘÁK Antonin, String Quartet in F Op.96 ‘American’
Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Molto vivace
Finale. Vivace ma non troppo
Dvořák was teaching in New York in 1893, and for his summer holiday he travelled over a thousand miles westwards, to the village of Spillville in Iowa, set in the valley of the Turkey River. It had been colonized by Czechs in the 1850s and in these congenial surroundings Dvořák quickly wrote the String Quartet in F major. On the last page of the manuscript draft, he wrote: ‘Finished on 10 June 1893, Spillville. I’m satisfied. Thanks be to God. It went quickly.’
Coming immediately after the ‘New World’ Symphony (which was to have its triumphant première in New York later in the year), the quartet has a mood that suggests something of his contentment in Spillville. Dvořák’s assistant Josef Kovařík recalled the composer’s routine: walks, composing, playing the organ for Mass and talking to locals, observing that he ‘scarcely ever talked about music and I think that was one of the reasons why he felt so happy there.’
Just how ‘American’ is the quartet? While remaining completely true to himself, Dvořák admitted that ‘as for my … F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville) – I should never have written these works the way I did if I hadn’t seen America’. The first performance was given in Boston on New Year’s Day 1894 by the Kneisel Quartet.
Meet Chutney the Chimpanzee who, with one small act of planting a seed, transforms the lives of the entire town of Drabsville, and teaches its inhabitants to celebrate their differences, making life more colourful along the way!
Celebrating the importance of love and happiness, Paul Rissmann’s hour-long musical retelling of Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees’s much-loved picture book is performed by Ensemble 360 and narrator Lucy Drever. With narration, visuals from the book and plenty of chances to join in, this is a brilliant concert for 3 – 7 year-olds.
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