FINALE: MOZART, BEETHOVEN & ELGAR

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Saturday 24 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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Ensemble 360 musicians

MOZART Flute Quartet in D K285 (15′) 
BEETHOVEN Quintet for Piano and Wind Op.16 (30′) 
ELGAR Piano Quintet Op.84 (40′)  

 In a nostalgic nod to Ensemble 360’s beginnings, the group revisits the music from their very first concert in this 20th anniversary Festival Finale. The first of Mozart’s virtuosic flute quartets opens the evening, followed by a warm and witty work by Beethoven. The Finale culminates with a burst of energy in Elgar’s glorious Piano Quintet. 

Performed by the group in 2005, shortly after its establishment by Music in the Round, this concert was specifically curated to showcase the breadth and diversity of Sheffield’s stunning new resident ensemble. This ‘repeat’ performance of the same joyous music celebrates Ensemble 360 and highlights the group’s extraordinary musical strengths once more. 

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MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Flute Quartet in D K285

Allegro
Adagio
Rondo

Mozart’s Paris visit in 1778 was essentially a job-hunting exercise, and an opportunity to find new patrons and supporters. It wasn’t a success, partly because Paris was not especially enthusiastic about his music at the time. Immediately before that trip, he had been in Mannheim where he met a Dutch surgeon and amateur flautist, Ferdinand De Jean, who commissioned some new pieces from him. The Flute Quartet in D K285, completed on Christmas Day 1777, is a beautifully crafted and often sparkling work: whatever Mozart’s well-known reservations about the flute, they certainly aren’t reflected in the quality of the music he composed here.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Quintet for Piano and Wind Op.16

Grave – Allegro ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

Beethoven completed his Quintet for Piano and Wind in 1797, five years after his arrival in Vienna, taking Mozart’s quintet for the same instrumental combination as his model, and it’s probably no coincidence that one of Beethoven’s closest friends – Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz – owned the autograph manuscript of Mozart’s work at the time. Yet despite some obvious parallels in terms of structure and even some of the thematic material, the Beethoven Quintet sounds very individual. As Cliff Eisen has written: ‘Beethoven [remained] true to his own voice, some obvious modellings of his quintet on Mozart’s notwithstanding: their keys and unusual scoring are identical, and both begin with elaborate slow introductions. At 416 bars, however, the first movement of Beethoven’s quintet far exceeds Mozart’s in scale: as in so many of his chamber and solo works, Beethoven aspires to the symphonic, something that is alien to Mozart’s greater intimacy and concision.’

Nigel Simeone © 2011

ELGAR Edward, Piano Quintet in A minor Op.84

Moderato – Allegro
Adagio
Andante – Allegro

Elgar’s Piano Quintet is one of his last large-scale works, dating from the same period as the Violin Sonata and the Cello Concerto. In October 1918, Elgar wrote to the critic Ernest Newman, telling him that the first movement of his Piano Quintet was ready: ‘I want you to hear it. It is strange music I think, and I like it – but it’s ghostly stuff.’ The work was to be dedicated to Newman. The first private performance of the complete work took place on 7 March 1919 at Severn House, Elgar’s London home. George Bernard Shaw was there, and his reaction was enthusiastic: ‘The Quintet knocked me over … This was the finest thing of its kind since [Beethoven’s] Coriolan.’ Shaw is presumably referring here to the dark, uneasy opening which certainly recalls the mood of Beethoven’s overture.

As the introduction gives way to the main Allegro another influence is apparent: the Piano Quintet by Brahms. It is presumably the sweeping, passionate drive of the musical argument in this movement – punctuated by some dramatic references back to the introductory music – that led the English musicologist and Elgar biographer Percy Young to describe it in the most glowing terms, declaring that it was ‘in some ways Elgar’s finest movement’. The work’s central Adagio begins with a tranquil viola solo, supported by the other strings. This expansive movement is crowned by a passionate climax of almost orchestral grandeur, before subsiding back to the gentler, calmer mood of the opening. After a brief introduction that becomes increasingly agitated, the main theme of the finale is a noble arching theme marked ‘with dignity, song-like’. Much of the movement is restrained and reflective, but at the close Elgar drives home his musical ideas to a powerful and thrilling conclusion.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

CLOSE-UP: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS

Ensemble 360 & Aga Serugo-Lugo

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Saturday 24 May 2025, 11.00am

Tickets:
£12 
£7 UC, DLA & PIP 
£5 Under 16s 

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Musicians from Ensemble 360

A tour through the wondrous world of chamber music, specially created for young audiences. This concert combines some of the most well-known music ever written, alongside playful storytelling in Berio’s entertaining Opus Number Zoo. With thrilling musical adventures told through music, cheeky characters and epic heroes, this concert of marvellous musical games is perfect for children aged 7 11.  

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GOLDBERG: PIANO AT DAWN

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Saturday 24 May 2025, 5.00am

Tickets: 
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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Pianist Tim Horton

BACH Goldberg Variations (70′)  

Tim Horton performs his own spellbinding early morning concert, returning the Goldberg Variations to their original keyboard form. Once again ringing out among the dawn chorus, in the atmospheric hidden gem of Samuel Worth Chapel, the magnificent intricacy of these 32 variations will set the tone for the final day of the Festival. In the hands of Tim Horton, and in the intimacy of this very special venue, this promises to breathe new life into what is rightly one of the best-loved works of the solo piano repertoire. 

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BACH Johann Sebastian, Goldberg Variations (arranged for String Trio by Dmitri Sitkovetsky)

Bach originally wrote the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and this was one of the very few works published during the composer’s lifetime, by the firm of Baltasar Schmid at Nuremberg in 1741. The original title page describes the work as ‘Clavier-Übung [Keyboard Practice], consisting of an Aria, with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, prepared to delight the souls of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach.’ There was no irony here: Bach, as a devout Lutheran, was deeply conscious of the spiritual dimension of music, and its aspiration to enrich the soul as well as to divert and entertain. But the work was also an extraordinary feat: if we count each prelude and fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier as self-contained pairs of works, then the Goldberg Variations is by far the largest piece of keyboard music published in the eighteenth century and it attracted international attention early on. Bach is often thought of as a composer whose music was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century (thanks in large part to Mendelssohn and Schumann), but his keyboard music was the exception to this. In his pioneering General History of the Science and Practice of Music published in 1776, Sir John Hawkins devotes several pages to Bach, thanking Johann Christian Bach (then in London) for supplying some of the information. But he then goes on to quote three full pages of music examples comprising the Aria (‘Air’), Variation 9 and Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations, making this one of the first pieces of Bach to appear in print in England.

But where is Goldberg in all this, and who was he? In 1741, Bach stayed with Count Keyserlingk in Dresden, who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his 1802 biography of Bach, the story goes as follows: ‘The Count was often unwell and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.’

It’s a fine tale – and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia – but it’s mostly fictitious. As Peter Williams has demonstrated, Goldberg was only born in 1727 (and was thus in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk), so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had actually been published before Bach’s visit to Dresden, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a

copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also explains the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition of the score – and the presence of the Aria in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier. Williams has also speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedmann, a brilliant performer and who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733.

The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to Bach. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments – as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi. This arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose astonishing 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant bestseller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

SINFONIETTA: BRITTEN, VAUGHAN WILLIAMS & MORE

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Friday 23 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets: 
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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KNUSSEN Cantata for Oboe and String Trio (11′) 
RAVEL Piano Trio in A Minor (28′)  
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Piano Quintet in C minor (40′)
BRITTEN Sinfonietta (15′) 

This sumptuous exploration of an intricate musical family tree unpacks the influence of some of the 20th century’s greatest composers upon one another. The shimmering colours of Ravel’s exquisite Piano Trio, which drew on eclectic sources including Basque folk dance and Malaysian verse-forms, was highly influential in helping that most English of composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, to find his own musical voice. While Benjamin Britten, whose student Oliver Knussen opens this concert, wrestled with and resisted the legacy of Vaughan Williams throughout his life, his echoes can be heard, not least in this early taut and twitchy work that brings this programme to a swaggering conclusion. 

 

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KNUSSEN Oliver, Cantata for oboe and string trio Op.15

Oliver Kunssen started work on Cantata at Tanglewood in 1975 and finished it over two years later in London. Knussen described this period as one of ‘considerable frustration and little completed work’, but three pieces were finished: Autumnal for violin and piano, Sonya’s Lullaby for piano and Cantata. Together they form trilogy, of which Cantata is the third and final part. Knussen’s aim was to write something ‘consciously more relaxed and lyrical’ in Cantata than in its companion pieces, while also aiming for a compact structure. After a slow introduction, the music moves towards a frenetic section in which the solo oboe plays an extravagantly ornamented melodic line over string parts which Knussen himself described as ‘manic’. In the coda, a varied version of the oboe theme returns from the opening, now supported by gentle string figurations before evaporating into silence. Knussen wrote that ‘Although essentially abstract, the work is certainly subjective, which fact may encourage the listener to let the music evoke whatever personal imagery it may contain.’

Nigel Simeone 2025

RAVEL Maurice, Piano Trio

Modéré
Pantoum. Assez vif
Passacaille. Très large
Final. Animé

Ravel spent the summer of 1914 hard at work on the Piano Trio in the French Basque village of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The outbreak of World War I in August spurred him on to finish, and by September he was able to tell Stravinsky that ‘my Trio is finished’. It is one of the great works of the early twentieth-century chamber music repertoire. In his study of the genre, Basil Smallman writes that Ravel’s Trio ‘combines the brilliant string techniques of his early string quartet – double octave spacing, harmonics, tremolandi, and extended pizzicato passages and trills – with the powerful and evocative piano writing developed in Miroirs (1904 and Gaspard de la nuit in order to achieve some entirely new effects of colour and expression in trio-writing.’

The opening movement is based on a gently lopsided rhythm (two groups of three beats alternating with one group of two beats) derived from Basque folk music. The main idea is a wistful, modal theme (originally composed for a Basque-inspired piano concerto that Ravel sketched in 1912) that is twice whipped up into an exciting climax. The second movement is called ‘Pantoum’, a poetic form that takes its name from Malaysia but was made famous by French poets of the nineteenth century: Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle, Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire (whose ‘Harmonie du soir’ is probably the most famous example of a pantoum, though he doesn’t quite stick to the rules). Brian Newbould has demonstrated that Ravel did more than use the name: he followed the model of a poetic pantoum, finding a musical equivalent. Newbould quotes from a definition of a pantoum: ‘the poem treats two themes of which the one serves as accompaniment to the other’ before showing that Ravel pulled off a remarkable trick here: ‘If all or most features of the pantoum are to be translated into a musical equivalent, then the undertaking must by its very nature present a special challenge to the composer’s powers of integration. Two themes are to be developed alternately, in a coherent fashion, but in such a way that the two strands of development may be extricated and reassembled as separate, intelligible entities. Ravel does in fact attempt this, and succeeds well enough to have left most listeners and commentators oblivious of his feat. [The first idea] is staccato, brittle, percussive in its cross-rhythms: [the second idea] is legato, surging and falling in short breaths.’ This dazzling movement has at its centre a contrasting section in a quite different time signature (four slow beats in a bar as opposed to three quick ones), but at the point where the opening music returns, Ravel combines it with the slow melody in a way that sounds effortless but is both rhythmically complex and brilliantly conceived. The slow movement is a Baroque form: a Passacaglia in which the music is founded on a repeating sequence of notes in the bass. Brahms used this form for the finale of his Fourth Symphony, and Ravel adapts it as an eight-bar repeating phrase, developed with obsessive tenacity, reaching a climax and then fading away. The Finale follows without a break. Ravel’s fabulously inventive use of instrumental colour is immediately apparent with shimmering arpeggios and tremolos on harmonics in the violin and cello, as the piano introduces the asymmetrical main theme, in 5/4 time, later interspersing bars in 7/4 time that extend the same musical idea. The movement ends in a pyrotechnic display of trills and arpeggios.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, Quintet in C minor for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano

Allegro con fuoco
Andante
Fantasia, quasi variazioni

This Quintet in C minor, scored for the same instrumentation as Schubert’s Trout, was composed in 1903 and revised twice before the first performance at the Aeolian Hall on 14 December 1905, but after a performance in 1918 it was withdrawn by Vaughan Williams. It was finally published in an edition by Bernard Benoliel a century after its composition. Vaughan Williams’s friend and biographer Michael Kennedy speaks of ‘the shadow of Brahms looming over’ the work, and this seems especially true of the expansive first movement. The expressive, romantic melody of the Andante second movement is more characteristic of its composer at this stage in his career, and it has some similarity to the song Silent Noon, composed the same year. The finale is a set of five variations, ending with a beautiful bell-like coda.

As Michael Kennedy observes, what matters with an early work such as this is not whether it anticipates Vaughan Williams’s later masterpieces (for the most part, it doesn’t), but that it is impressive in its own right. He does, however, make an intriguing observation: ‘Vaughan Williams may have withdrawn the Quintet but he did not forget it, for in 1954 he used the theme of the finale, slightly expanded, for the variations in the finale of his Violin Sonata.’

© Nigel Simeone

BRITTEN Benjamin, Sinfonietta Op.1

1. Poco presto ed agitato
2. Variations: Andante lento
3. Tarantella: Presto vivace

Britten was already a very prolific composer by the time he gave this work its designation as his official Opus One. Dedicated to his teacher, Frank Bridge, it was written when Britten was 18 years old, and it already demonstrates his extraordinary imagination. The influence of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony is apparent in places, and the instrumental writing in all three movements has a fluency and flamboyance that quickly became hallmarks of the young Britten’s music. The first public performance was given on 31 January 1933 at the Mercury Theatre, London, in one of the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts played by the English Wind Players and the Macnaghten String Quartet, conducted by Iris Lemare. Britten’s music has always been more enthusiastically received abroad, and on 7 August 1933, the Sinfonietta was broadcast on Radio Strasbourg, conducted by the great Hermann Scherchen. The first British broadcast was a month later, by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Clark.

© Nigel Simeone 2013

CELEBRATING AVRIL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

Ensemble 360 & Dr Leah Broad

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Friday 23 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets: 
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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Dr Leah Broad

A COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Can Sorrow Find Me? (4′)  
S COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet (I. Allegro energico) (10′) 
ELGAR Chanson de Matin (4′)  
A COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Romance (6′)  
SMYTH Piano Trio (III. Scherzo) (5′) 
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Romance (7′) 
A COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Idylle (5′)  
 

Presented by RPS award-winning writer Leah Broad, whose group biography of female composers Quartet (2023) won plaudits around the globe, this concert with conversation introduces us to the ground-breaking Avril Coleridge-Taylor and her world. Setting this too-often overlooked composer, conductor and pianist in the context of the musicians who championed, supported and inspired her, Leah introduces rarely heard works, performed by Ensemble 360. Music by Coleridge-Taylor herself will be presented alongside her father Samuel’s crowning achievement in chamber music, Vaughan Williams’s soulful romance and Elgar’s charming, celebrated song to the morning. 

 

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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.’

BRAHMS STRING SEXTET

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Thursday 22 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets: 
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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Musicians from the Elias String Quartet

BRAHMS String Sextet in G (40′) 
ENESCU String Octet in C (40′)  

 In a final chance to catch the members of the Elias Quartet in collaboration with Ensemble 360, this celebration of music for strings centres on Brahms’s spectacular Sextet. Marked by heartbreak and romance, the piece sweeps from the wistful longing of the early movements to the warm and tender triumph of the dazzling fourth movement. Paired with Enescu’s prodigious and intricately structured epic, this luscious evening of string writing showcases the technical brilliance and big-hearted musicianship that has grown across two decades of collaboration among these very special players. 

 

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BRAHMS Johannes, String Sextet in G Op.36

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
3. Poco adagio
4. Poco allegro

Brahms’s G major Sextet was written at Lichtental, near Baden-Baden and finished in 1865. Richly scored for two violins, two violas and two cellos, this intensely lyrical work opens with a soaring, yearning theme, but in the second subject Brahms reveals part of the work’s inspiration: his engagement to Agathe von Siebold which had ended badly (for both of them) rather than in marriage, as had been intended. In one phrase, often repeated, the notes A-G-A-H-E (with ‘H’ the German musical spelling for ‘B’) are used to spell out Agathe’s name. Brahms wrote of this passage: ‘Here I tore myself away from my last love.’ The Scherzo is reflective rather than playful, while the slow movement opens with chromatic lines which dominate much of the movement either side of a more animated central section. The finale, though playing with contrasts of major and minor – giving it a slightly ambiguous flavour – ends in sonorous rapture.

Nigel Simeone 2014

ENESCU George, Octet in C Op.7

Très modéré –

Très fougueux –

Lentement –

Animé – Mouvement de valse bien rythmé

Born in Romania, Enescu was a child prodigy, writing his first compositions at the age of five, and a brilliant violinist. By the time he went to Paris in 1895, he was already an immensely accomplished musician having studied violin and composition at the Vienna Conservatoire. In Paris, he studied composition with Fauré and harmony with André Gedalge (who were also Ravel’s two most important teachers). The Octet was completed in 1900, when Enesco was just nineteen years old, and a year before he wrote the popular Romanian Rhapsody No.1 for orchestra. The composer’s Preface to the score of the Octet explains something of its unusual form:

This Octet, cyclic in form, presents the following characteristics: it is divided into four distinct movements in the classic manner, each movement linked to the other to form a single symphonic movement where the sections, on an enlarged scale, follow one another according to the rules of construction for the first movement of a symphony.

Scored for two string quartets, this splendid and grandly-conceived work had to wait nearly a decade for its premiere, given in Paris on 18 December 1909. Since Enesco was already a sought-after soloist in 1900, he composed the Octet in between performances of concertos by Beethoven, Saint-Saëns and Bach. From the start of the first section (presenting a theme that somewhat resembles the main theme of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge), Enesco’s skill at writing for his unusual forces is apparent, generating a great sense of power and momentum. The second section – “very impetuous” – is angular and jagged, and this is followed by a rather unsettled slow movement. The finale is dominated by a spiky waltz, full of wide leaps, but ending with a bold close – D flat then C in powerful octaves.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

SHOSTAKOVICH, MOZART & MORE

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Thursday 22 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets: 
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

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Ensemble 360 musicians

SHOSTAKOVICH Two Pieces for String Octet (10′)  
MOZART Quintet for Piano and Wind in E flat K452 (20′)  
POULENC Oboe Sonata (13’)  
SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht (30′)  

With Ensemble 360 once again joined by members of the Elias String Quartet, this is an expansive programme of some of the most exciting writing for strings from the 20th century, interspersed with two very different, but equally glorious, works for piano and wind.  

Mozart’s majestic Quintet was, according to a letter he wrote to his father shortly after its first performance, a piece he considered one of the finest he had ever written. Poulenc’s profound and stylish late Oboe Sonata is an elegy both to its dedicatee Prokofiev and a farewell to life itself, being the composer’s final work. Early pieces shot through with spirituality and revolution (by Shostakovich and Schoenberg, both of whom celebrate anniversaries in 2025) bookend this concert.  

 

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SHOSTAKOVICH Dmitri, Two pieces for string octet, Op.11

1. Prelude: Adagio
2. Scherzo: Allegro molto

This early work was completed in July 1925, just after Shostakovich had finished his First Symphony. It was dedicated to the memory of his poet friend Volodya Kurchavov and first performed at the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow on 9 January 1927. Originally Shostakovich envisaged a suite (in five movements), but he abandoned that scheme, settling on the present two-movement structure: an eloquent slow movement followed by a Scherzo which is full of forward momentum one moment, and quiet reflection the next. The driving energy soon wins out, and the music hurtles towards a frenetic close. At the time, Shostakovich expressed the view that the Scherzo was ‘the very best thing I have written’.

Nigel Simeone 2024

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Quintet for Piano and Wind in E flat K452

Largo – Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Allegretto

In a letter to his father on 10 April 1784, Mozart described his new Quintet for Piano and Wind as ‘the best piece I have ever written’. Completed on 30 March 1784 it was given its première just two days later on 1 April, at a ‘grand musical concert’ for the benefit of the National Court Theatre in Vienna. The extraordinary programme consisted of two Mozart Symphonies (almost certainly the ‘Haffner’ and the ‘Linz’), an ‘entirely new concerto’ played by Mozart (either K450 or K451, both recently finished), a solo improvisation, three opera arias and the first performance of an ‘entirely new grand quintet’. It was probably the presence of wind players for the symphonies that prompted Mozart to write one of his most original chamber works for this occasion.

While the first movement is designed on almost symphonic lines (complete with substantial slow introduction), it has a gentler sensibility and textures that recall the kind of dialogue between piano and wind that are such a feature of Mozart’s mature piano concertos. After a slow movement that makes the most of the song-like expressiveness of wind instruments, the finale is a sonata rondo – in essence a theme that returns repeatedly within a developing context – that was also much favoured in the piano concertos. The Quintet is highly original in terms of how it is put together, and the daring with which Mozart explores unusual sonorities.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

POULENC Francis, Oboe sonata

Élégie. Paisiblement sans presser
Scherzo. Très animé
Déploration. Très calme

Poulenc described the elements of the Oboe Sonata – his last major work – as follows: ‘The first movement is elegiac, the second scherzando, and the last a sort of liturgical chant.’ The form of the Sonata is slow–fast–slow with its most original feature being the finale, a deeply-felt ‘Déploration’. This eloquent tribute was dedicated to the memory of Serge Prokofiev, but it was first performed at the Strasbourg Festival on 8 June 1963 by Pierre Pierlot and Jacques Février as a memorial to Poulenc himself who had died earlier in the year.

© Nigel Simeone 2015

SCHOENBERG Arnold, Verklärte Nacht Op.4 for string sextet

Verklärte Nacht, composed in 1899, is one of Schoenberg’s earliest masterpieces, written in a language that owes much to both Wagner and Brahms, two of the predecessors he most admired. In this ravishingly beautiful sxtet (which Schoenberg later arranged for string orchestra), he uses Wagnerian leitmotifs, and he was clearly influenced by the sound world of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. But when it comes the work’s formal construction, Brahms is the dominant influence. Themes are developed by variation, by combining with other themes, and by fragmenting or dissolving them. This is a process that Schoenberg himself admired so much in the music of Brahms – a techinque he called ‘developing variation’. So while the use of leitmotifs suggests a Wagnerian kind of musical narrative – aptly so for a work that tells a story without words – we hear Brahms in the approach to development, tonality and form that Schoenberg uses to create a single movement lasting half an hour.

The work is programmatic, taking its title from a poem by the Symbolist writer Richard Dehmel (1863–1920), a kind of German Aubrey Beardsley. When Dehmel’s collection Weib und Welt (which includes the poem Verklärte Nacht ) was published, it caused a scandal, and Dehmel was tried for obscenity and blasphemy. Though he was acquitted, the court demanded that all copies of the book should be burned.

In Dehmel’s Verklärte Nacht, a man and a woman pass through a moonlit landscape. She confesses to carrying a child that is not his; bathed in light, he tells her that she must have the child, and bear it as their own. At the end of the poem, ‘He clasps her round her strong hips. Their kisses mingle in the night air.’ This erotic text was not only Schoenberg’s inspiration, but also guided the structure of the work which is thus a kind of tone poem for string sextet. The first performance took place on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein when it was played by the Rosé Quartet with Franz Jelinek and Franz Schmidt – the latter a cellist as well as a distinguished composer.

Nigel Simeone, 2014

CYCLES & CIRCLES

Jasdeep Singh Degun & Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Wednesday 21 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Book Tickets

Jasdeep Singh Degun is one of the finest exponents of the sitar and one of the most exciting musicians working today. His many collaborations with players from both Indian and western classical traditions have earned him broad audiences and many prizes, including two prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society awards in 2024. Following his sold-out Playhouse debut with tabla player Harkiret Singh Bahra in spring 2024, he returns for a new collaboration with the string players of Ensemble 360 to mark their 20th birthday. 

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THE NIGHT OVERTOOK US: An evening of Scottish folk music

Donald Grant & Friends

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 9.15pm

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Book Tickets
Fiddle player Donald Grant

Donald Grant, Elias Quartet violinist, is also a master of the folk fiddle. Raised in the Highlands, Donald was immersed in Gaelic song and Scottish music from an early age. His folk projects are infused with his life-long passion for this music tradition and inflected, through his many collaborations, with the spirit of jazz and the musical rigour of his classical work. He brings his band of exceptional musicians from Glasgow to collaborate with Ensemble 360 to perform excerpts from his new piece Thuit an Oidhche Oirnm (The Night Overtook Us) as well as classic tunes from his album ‘The Way Home’.  

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APPALACHIAN SPRING

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Book Tickets
Musicians from the Elias String Quartet

BARBER Canzonetta op.48 (8′) 
STRAUSS Metamorphosen (septet version) (25′) 
BARBER Adagio from String Quartet Op.11 (9′) 
COPLAND Appalachian Spring (30′)  

 Members of the celebrated Elias Quartet join forces with their friends and former colleagues in Ensemble 360 for this very special concert. The first half features Strauss’s beloved late work Metamorphosen in its rare string septet version; a brooding meditation on change that is deeply moving and filled with yearning. Barber’s sumptuous and iconic Adagio also features, alongside Copland’s large-scale chamber suite, Appalachian Spring. Originally a ballet score, it’s a celebration of peace and freedom, and a depiction of Appalachia that weaves together folk melodies in a joyous, life-affirming piece. 

This concert is generously sponsored by Kim Staniforth, in memory of Margaret Staniforth.

 

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STRAUSS Richard, Metamorphosen, preliminary version for string septet ed. Rudolf Leopold

In September 1944, Richard Strauss wrote to his friend Karl Böhm, telling him that he had been working on an Adagio for string instruments, which would probably become an Allegro since he couldn’t ‘remain very long at a Brucknerian snail’s pace’. Early in 1945, Strauss gave the new piece a name – Metamorphosen – and completed a version for seven string instruments, a score that was only discovered in 1990. Whether Strauss ever intended this for performance is questionable, but it serves as a fascinating comparison with the final version for 23 solo strings that was completed on 12 April 1945, just two weeks after the septet score. Metamorphosen was first performed on 25 January 1946, by the Collegium Musicum Zurich under Paul Sacher who had commissioned it. According to Michael Kennedy, Strauss conducted two of the rehearsals and he was in the audience for the premiere. Metamorophosen is an overwhelmingly powerful lament for Strauss’s native city of Munich – which had been all but destroyed by more than 70 bombing raids – especially its Opera House. The introductory chords and the falling theme heard near the opening are the most important components of a work marked by the most fluid and complex counterpuntal development. On the last page of the score, Strauss has written ‘In Memoriam!’ and the falling theme appears over a quotation in the bass from the Funeral March of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Thus ends one of the most moving and profound of all Strauss’s works.

Nigel Simone 2014

BARBER Samuel, Adagio for Strings

It’s an amusing accident of history that Barber’s Adagio, one of the totems of American music, was composed in Austria (where Barber was spending the summer and autumn with Gian-Carlo Menotti) and first performed on 14 December 1936 at a concert in Rome (as the slow movement of the String Quartet Op.11). Barber was delighted with this movement, describing it to his friend Orlando Cole as ‘a knockout!’ While finishing the whole quartet, he arranged the Adagio as an independent movement for string orchestra and this was first performed in 1938 in a broadcast concert in New York given by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Barber’s fellow composer Aaron Copland spoke about the piece in 1982 for a BBC radio programme, praising ‘the sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch … from beginning to end. It’s gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

COPLAND Aaron, Appalachian Spring

It was the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a new ballet for Martha Graham’s dance company in 1943, for performance in the Coolidge Auditorium (named after her) at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. Copland was delighted with the idea, particularly after Graham sent him the first version of her scenario concerning a young married couple in rural Pennsylvania. The ballet went through various titles during the composition process, and Copland’s manuscript was simply headed ‘Ballet for Martha’, but Graham settled on ‘Appalachian Spring’ just before the premiere, taking the title from a poem by Hart Crane. One of the attractions for Copland was the challenge of writing for an ensemble of 12 instruments (the largest group that could fit into the very small pit in the Coolidge Auditorium), and the result was described in a review of the first performance by the ballet critic John Martin as ‘a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit.’ Copland himself was typically self-effacing, admitting that ‘people seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.’ In 1945 he made a very successful arrangement for large orchestra, but the sound of the original has a beauty and intimacy all its own. Copland decided quite early on to use the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ (written in 1848), and this melody is woven through much of the score, notably in the set of variations. But while the score perfectly matches the ‘local’ elements of the story, it also transcends them to become a piece of universal appeal: Copland’s great achievement in Appalachian Spring is to have created a quiet and heartfelt vision of hope in troubled times.

Nigel Simeone 2024

RELAXED CONCERT: APPALACHIAN SPRING

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets:
£5 / carers free

Book Tickets
Musicians from the Elias String Quartet

BARBER Adagio from String Quartet Op.11 (9′) 
BARBER Canzonetta Op.48 (8′) 
COPLAND Appalachian Spring (30′)  

For this ‘Relaxed’ concert of American music featuring Barber’s much-loved Adagio and Copland’s joyful Appalachian Spring, doors will be left open, lights raised, a break-out space provided and there will be less emphasis on the audience being quiet during the performance. People with an Autism Spectrum, sensory or communication disorder or learning disability, those with age-related impairments and parents/carers with babies are all especially welcome. 

BARBER Samuel, Adagio for Strings

It’s an amusing accident of history that Barber’s Adagio, one of the totems of American music, was composed in Austria (where Barber was spending the summer and autumn with Gian-Carlo Menotti) and first performed on 14 December 1936 at a concert in Rome (as the slow movement of the String Quartet Op.11). Barber was delighted with this movement, describing it to his friend Orlando Cole as ‘a knockout!’ While finishing the whole quartet, he arranged the Adagio as an independent movement for string orchestra and this was first performed in 1938 in a broadcast concert in New York given by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Barber’s fellow composer Aaron Copland spoke about the piece in 1982 for a BBC radio programme, praising ‘the sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch … from beginning to end. It’s gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

COPLAND Aaron, Appalachian Spring

It was the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a new ballet for Martha Graham’s dance company in 1943, for performance in the Coolidge Auditorium (named after her) at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. Copland was delighted with the idea, particularly after Graham sent him the first version of her scenario concerning a young married couple in rural Pennsylvania. The ballet went through various titles during the composition process, and Copland’s manuscript was simply headed ‘Ballet for Martha’, but Graham settled on ‘Appalachian Spring’ just before the premiere, taking the title from a poem by Hart Crane. One of the attractions for Copland was the challenge of writing for an ensemble of 12 instruments (the largest group that could fit into the very small pit in the Coolidge Auditorium), and the result was described in a review of the first performance by the ballet critic John Martin as ‘a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit.’ Copland himself was typically self-effacing, admitting that ‘people seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.’ In 1945 he made a very successful arrangement for large orchestra, but the sound of the original has a beauty and intimacy all its own. Copland decided quite early on to use the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ (written in 1848), and this melody is woven through much of the score, notably in the set of variations. But while the score perfectly matches the ‘local’ elements of the story, it also transcends them to become a piece of universal appeal: Copland’s great achievement in Appalachian Spring is to have created a quiet and heartfelt vision of hope in troubled times.

Nigel Simeone 2024

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

Ensemble 360 & George Morton - conductor

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Monday 19 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Book Tickets
Ensemble 360 in concert with film

MEISEL (arr. Morton) Battleship Potemkin (74’) 

Legendary Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein’s silent masterpiece tells the heroic story of the 1905 rebellion of the crew of the Potemkin. The film is most famous for its iconic fourth act, a dramatic montage of visceral images of the crushing of the uprising in Odessa and the citizenry’s last stand on the stark stone steps.  

A technical masterpiece, and Soviet cinema at its finest, we are screening this influential and visionary piece of cinema with the original soundtrack performed live by Ensemble 360 to mark the film’s centenary year. 

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MEISEL Edmund (Arr. George Morton), Battleship Potemkin

Edmund Meisel was born in Vienna but moved to Berlin as a child. Little is known about his musical education, but he was working as a violinst in Berlin orchestras while still in his teens. The vibrant theatrical life of Berlin in the Weimar years provided his first work as a composer, writing incidental music for the agitprop stage productions by Erwin Piscator and including at least one project with Bertolt Brecht (a radio adaptation of Mann ist Mann). It was thanks to his association with Piscator that Meisel became involved with composing the score for the silent film Battleship Potemkin. In 1925, the Soviet Central Committee asked Mosfilm to make a new film to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, the film is based on a real historical event. It is set in 1905 aboard the Imperial Navy battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Sailing out of port with the red Socialist flag, the other Imperialist ships refuse to open fire and cheer the defiant sailors of the Potemkin. On its release, Battleship Potemkin was a great success in the Soviet Union and it was quickly distributed to other European countries. In Britain its central themes of promoting revolution and social change worried the film censors, but in Germany it was a huge success, distributed by Prometheus Films.

Prometheus decided that for the film to make its fullest impact, it needed a musical score to accompany the silent images. Meisel was asked to compose the score and was given less than two weeks to write it, as the German release date was already announced. Eisenstein was enthusiastic about the idea of adding music, and even made specific suggestions to Meisel, asking for the inclusion of some revolutionary songs (from Russia, France and elsewhere) and also to produce music of ‘deafening fury and stark rhythms’ for moments of the greatest dramatic power.

So it was that a Viennese-born Berliner composed the score for Eisenstein’s Russian classic. He did so without any of the synchronisation tools used by more recent film composers, and a tight budget meant that as well as time pressure, he was also limited to an orchestra of 16 players. Meisel’s remarkable achievement in Battleship Potemkin has been well summarised by the film music critic Craig Lysy: ‘In every way [Meisel] succeeded in empowering Eisenstein’s narrative with inspired music which helped earn the film the accolade as one of the greatest films in cinematic history.’

Meisel’s pioneering score started a trend for new large-scale film scores in the final years of the silent era. In 1927, Eisenstein asked Meisel to provide a score for his film October: Ten Days that Shook the World, and Gottfried Huppertz composed his score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Major figures in European symphonic music also became involved in writing for epic film dramas: Arthur Honegger composed a score for Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) and Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his music for New Babylon, a Soviet film set at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune.

In other words, Meisel should be considered one of the great innovators in film music history, producing a specially-composed score for a full-length film in which images and sound were integrated to create – together – a vastly richer dramatic effect. Previous scores had usually been pot-pourris of existing music, strung together to be an approximate match for the on-screen action. Meisel broke with that tradition, creating a score whose architecture (and detail) matched Eisenstein’s montage-like construction. In 1934, the commentator Ernest Borneman wrote about Meisel’s technique in an article for Sight and Sound: ‘Meisel analysed the montage of some famous silent films in regard to rhythm, emphasis, emotional climax and mood. To each separate shot he assigned a certain musical theme. Then he directly combined the separate themes, using the rhythms, emphasis and climaxes of the visual montage for the organisation of his music. He wished to prove by this experiment that the montage of a good film is based on the same rules and develops in the same way as music … By far the best result was from Eisenstein’s Potemkin.’ Meisel’s own career as a ground-breaking composer of film music lasted barely five years: he died in 1930 at the age of 36.