SHEFFIELD CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2027
Ensemble 360
Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
14-22 May 2027
Tickets go on sale at 10.00am on 22 September
ANNEA LOCKWOOD Piano Garden
Annea Lockwood’s iconic ‘Piano Transplants’, begun in the late-1960s, saw the composer drown, bury and – most famously – set fire to otherwise discarded pianos. This special event will see long-time Lockwood collaborator Xenia Pestova Bennett perform ‘Piano Garden’ (1969-70). Half-interred and left in the earth forever, ‘Piano Garden’ opens the instrument to the unpredictable, ongoing ‘preparations’ created by plants, curious animals and weather.
The piano burial will take place at Woodseats Community Garden, Camping Lane, Sheffield S8 0GB and will include a short performance from Xenia.
No need to book, just turn up on the day.
In partnership with University of Sheffield Concerts
Booking for schools’ concerts is through the Music in the Round office. Please contact Fis by email at fisayo@musicintheround.co.uk or call 0114 281 4660 for more details.
RISSMANN Izzy Gizmo (60’)
Music in the Round invites your class to take part in a brilliant music project, culminating in a live concert at the Crucible Theatre this October.
By popular request, Izzy Gizmo is back! Perfect for 3–7 year-olds, this delightful concert for Early Years settings is based on the best-selling children’s book ‘Izzy Gizmo’ by Pip Jones, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie.
The book tells the enchanting story of an intrepid young inventor who puts her talents to work to rescue a crow that can’t fly. This family concert brings Izzy’s mechanical marvels and infectious creative spirit to life.
Original music by Paul Rissmann features instruments including strings, woodwind, horn and piano, and you might even spot the musicians playing pots, pans, whistles and household items!
Together with story-telling and visuals from the book, this concert is a great introduction to live music for children.
Our EY and KS1 practitioners will support you to embed singing and music-making in classroom learning throughout the project, with training, resources, and in-school support newly developed around the Izzy Gizmo book. The project introduces young children to classical music in a fun and educational setting, including a concert featuring strings, woodwind and horn, presented together with story-telling and projected illustrations.
Performed by the wonderfully dynamic and hugely engaging musicians from Ensemble 360, this concert is a great introduction to live music for early years and KS1 children. It’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in.
Friday 16 October 10.45am Limited availability
Friday 16 1.30pm Good availability
Monday 19 October 10.45am Selling fast
Monday 19 October 1.30pm Good availability
Tuesday 20 October, 10.45am SOLD OUT
Tuesday 20 October, 1.30pm Limited availability
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
Formed under the midnight sun in the Lofoten Islands, Norway’s leading string quartet brings the rugged soul of the country to the stage.
From the vast plains of Finnmark to the fjords of Kvæfjord, this programme features the Quartet’s own arrangements of traditional joiks – one of the oldest song traditions in Europe – alongside haunting psalms and spirited bridal marches.
A fresh take on repertoire that is 400 years in the making, this concert explores the roots of much of the weekend’s music in an evocative, moving and joyful finale.
Part of NORTHERN LIGHTS A sweeping weekend of elemental music from the frozen north.
Friday 27 November – Sunday 29 November 2026
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction.
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Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
MOZART String Quartet No.15 in D minor K.421 (33’)
BEETHOVEN String Quartet No.11 Op.95, ‘Serioso’ (20’)
GRIEG String Quartet (33’)
Norway’s multi-award-winning Engegård Quartet brings its customary boldness, energy and freshness to Sheffield. It is a quartet with a deep affinity with Mozart and Beethoven and a profound commitment to Norwegian music.
Fresh from releasing a highly praised complete recorded cycle of Mozart’s string quartets, this concert brings together key strands of their musical life.
Beethoven’s Serioso retains its power to move as it veers violently between brutish power and yearning lyricism before tumbling to its thrilling conclusion. Grieg’s only completed string quartet is joyously inspired by the unique sound of the hardanger fiddle, evoking singing, dancing and quarrels in a distinctly Norwegian musical language.
Part of NORTHERN LIGHTS A sweeping weekend of elemental music from the frozen north.
Friday 27 November – Sunday 29 November 2026
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction. Find out more.
Allegro
Andante
Menuetto
Allagretto ma non troppo
The warmth of the friendship between Mozart and Haydn is wonderfully demonstated by the set of Mozart string quartets published by Artaria in the Autumn of 1785: ‘Six Quartets for two violins, viola and violoncello, composed and dedicated to Signor Joseph Haydn, Master of Music for the Prince of Esterhazy, by his friend W.A. Mozart.’ This was very unusual for the time: composers almost always dedicated works to aristocratic supporters, not to fellow musicians. The first edition includes a long epistle addressed ‘To my dear friend Haydn’, where Mozart writes: ‘A father who had resolved to send his children out into the world took it to be his duty to confide them to the protection and guidance of a very celebrated man, especially when the latter by good fortune was at the same time his best friend. Here they are then, O great man and dearest friend.’ Mozart goes on to say that they are ‘the fruit of a long and laborious study,’ and that Haydn expressed his ‘satisfaction with them … May it therefore please you to receive them kindly and to be their father, guide and friend! … W.A. Mozart, 1 September 1785.’ The Quartet K421 is the only one of the ‘Haydn’ Quartets in a minor key, and D minor is a key that Mozart used for some of his most serious works, such as the Piano Concerto K466 and the Requiem. The opening theme is marked by a downward leap of an octave that dominates the first movement. While the Andate is more consoling, the Minuet is one of the most anguished Mozart ever wrote. The finale – a set of variations – is begins wisfully, but becomes increasingly austere and agitated.
Nigel Simeone 2013
Allegro con brio
Allegretto ma non troppo, attacca subito
Allegro assai vivace ma serioso. Più allegro
Larghetto espressivo. Allegretto agitato. Allegro
‘The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.’ Thus wrote Beethoven to Sir George Smart in October 1816. The kind of public concerts he had in mind – mixed programmes of vocal and instrumental music – would indeed make an odd setting for a work of such concentrated intensity. Composed in 1810 and revised for publication in 1815, Beethoven dedicated it to his friend, Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovetz, a talented amateur cellist who worked as Hungarian Court Secretary in Vienna.
One of Beethoven’s shortest and most tautly argued quartets, it was the composer himself who called it Quartetto serioso on the autograph manuscript. The Beethoven expert William Kinderman sums up its character as ‘dark, introspective, and vehement’, and it’s no surprise that Beethoven takes a similarly pithy approach to form: a much-shortened recapitulation in the first movement, a slow movement that eschews lyricism in favour of a chromatic fugal section, and a prickly Scherzo (more of an anti-Scherzo really, since it is not only completely lacking in any kind of humour, but is even marked ‘serioso’). The finale sustains this tension and agitation until the last moment – then something extraordinary happens: the music takes a sudden turn to F major, and there’s a dash to the finish. The American composer Randall Thompson commented that ‘no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time.’
© Nigel Simeone
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
GRIEG Andante con moto (10’)
GRIEG Cello Sonata (28’)
SIBELIUS Andante Festivo (5’)
SIBELIUS String Quartet in D minor, ’Voces intimae’ Op.56 (28’)
Masterpieces and miniatures for strings and piano by two giants of Nordic classicism.
Grieg’s Cello Sonata is a passionate, expressive, dancing work, full of sweeping melodies and stirring tension. Sibelius’s taut String Quartet broods and bristles with soulful intensity and culminates in a fiery finale.
Part of NORTHERN LIGHTS A sweeping weekend of elemental music from the frozen north.
Friday 27 November – Sunday 29 November 2026
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction. Find out more.
Grieg’s mature chamber music comprises five major works: three sonatas for violin and piano, a cello sonata and a string quartet. The quartet was composed in 1878 and after finishing it Grieg turned to writing a piano trio. Only the slow movement, marked Andante con moto, was finished, the last page of the manuscript dated 17 June 1878. It was written in Grieg’s composing hut built in the dramatic surroundings of the remote countryside inland from Bergen. This movement, in the key of C minor, has a mood that is profoundly melancholic though there is consolation to be found in the second theme (a transformation of the first theme), which is in E flat major. After Grieg’s death, the movement was found by his friend Julius Röntgen who told Grieg’s widow that it was ‘a beautiful piece. What solemnity it conveys! He can’t get enough of that single theme, which even in the major mode retains its mournful character. … The piece stands very well by itself and does not give the impression of being a fragment as it constitutes a perfect entity in itself.’ Despite Röntgen’s well-placed enthusiasm, it took until 1978 for the Andante con moto to appear in print, published as part of the complete edition of Grieg’s works.
1. Allegro agitato
2. Andante molto tranquillo
3. Allegro molto e marcato
Grieg’s great fame as a composer rests largely on the Piano Concerto, a handful of piano pieces, the Holberg Suite and movements from his incidental music for Peer Gynt. One work from the same period as the Piano Concerto was to provide an important source for the Cello Sonata: the incidental music for the play Sigurd Jorsalfar from 1872. The Cello Sonata was started in late 1882 and the first draft was finished in April 1883. Grieg dated the manuscript of his slightly revised version of the work 18 August 1883. It is one of a handful of major chamber works, along with three violin sonatas, one complete surviving string quartet and one left incomplete. The first movement of the Cello Sonata is in sonata form (something of a rarity for Grieg) and opens with a passionate and agitated theme which eventually gives way to a calmer second theme introduced by gentle chords on the piano. The movement ends with an animated coda based on the opening idea (with added hints of the opening phrase from the Piano Concerto). The expressive slow movement is based largely on the recycled ‘Homage March’ from Grieg’s Sigurd Jorsalfar incidental music (aptly enough, since in the original orchestral version this passage is scored for four cellos). The finale opens with a cadenza for the cello before launching into an extended Norwegian dance which occasionally threatens to become bombastic but which ends impressively. The work was dedicated by Grieg to his brother John, an accomplished cellist, and on 1 October 1883, Grieg sent him the first printed copy. The first two performances were given by two of Europe’s preeminent cellists of the time. The premiere was given by Friedrich Grützmacher in Dresden on 22 October 1883; a few days later (on 27 October) Julius Klengel gave the work in Leipzig. Grieg was the pianist on both occasions.
© Nigel Simeone
Sibelius originally wrote the Andante festivo for string quartet in 1922. The first performance was given on 28 December 1922 in Jyväskylä at the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Säynätsalo sawmill (though Sibelius had originally been asked to write a cantata). He lived for another 35 years, but only a handful of major works followed this stirring pièce d’occasion, and the 1938 arrangement of the Andante festivo for string orchestra and timpani was virtually his farewell to composition.
© Nigel Simeone 2015
Andante–Allegro molto moderato
Vivace
Adagio di molto
Allegretto (ma pesante)
Allegro
In February and March 1909, Sibelius came to London to conduct concerts of his own music and it was during this stay that he composed most of the Voces intimae (Intimate Voices) quartet. He first stayed at the Langham Hotel (across the road from Queen’s Hall) but asked his friend Rosa Newmarch to find cheaper lodgings where he could also work in silence. She found quiet rooms for him in Kensington and having installed him, ‘left the composer to settle down (as I hoped) to write his string quartet, Voces initimae.’ Word travelled in the neighbourhood that a composer was staying, emboldening one elderly lady to play Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata repeatedly, as a sign of solidarity. Newmarch intervened, there was no more Beethoven, and Sibelius was able to make good progress on the quartet in Kensington.
According to his diary, he began the second movement on 16 February, and sketched the third on 25 February. Work continued throughout March (at the end of which he left London) and the quartet was finished in Berlin on 15 April. The first performance took place a year later, on 25 April 1910, in Helsinki.
Voces intimae is a characteristically bold exploration of musical form: there are five movements (including two scherzos), with a highly expressive slow movement at the centre. There has been speculation about the title and the likeliest explanation is that it has some connection with the fear of death which Sibelius confided to his diary in London. It was clearly a personal reference that will probably remain a mystery, but it is entirely apt for a work that embodies such an intense musical dialogue between the four instruments.
© Nigel Simeone
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
THORVALDSDÓTTIR Spectra (11’)
GUÐNADÓTTIR Point of Departure (8’)
ARNALDS This Place is a Shelter (4’)
SIGURÐSSON Nabraska (11’)
THORVALDSDÓTTIR Reminiscence (7’)
BJÖRK (arr. Tassie) Unravel (4’)
BJÖRK (arr. Tassie) Jóga (5’)
ARNALDS Beth’s Theme (from the soundtrack to Broadchurch) (5’)
BJANASON Stillshot (11’)
JOHANNSSON Passacaglia (6’)
Phaedra Ensemble launches our Northern Lights weekend with a dazzling portrait of contemporary Icelandic music ranging from celebrated glacial works by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and Oscar-winning Hildur Guðnadóttir, to new arrangements of the ever-inventive Björk and Ólafur Arnalds’ haunting original music for Broadchurch.
Evoking distant plains, shimmering permafrost landscapes, the flickering of flames and the chill of the tundra: this is music from the land of fire and ice.
Part of NORTHERN LIGHTS A sweeping weekend of elemental music from the frozen north.
Friday 27 November – Sunday 29 November 2026
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction. Find out more.
Tickets:
£5 (free to ticket-holders for other Northern Lights events, please book ahead)
Setting the scene for the weekend, join a panel of musicians and experts who will shine a light on some of the composers and music featuring across the three days.
Part of NORTHERN LIGHTS A sweeping weekend of elemental music from the frozen north.
Friday 27 November – Sunday 29 November 2026
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
MUDARRA Fantasia VII and X
DOWLAND
Praeludium
Forlorn Hope Fancy
Fantasia
J.S. BACH Cello Suite No.1 in G, BWV 1007
Prélude
Allemande
ADÈS Forgotten Dances
Courante
J.S. BACH Cello Suite No.1 in G, BWV 1007
Sarabande
ADÈS Forgotten Dances
Carillon
MESSIAEN O Sacrum Convivium (4’)
MONK Nightfall (10’)
REICH Electric Counterpoint (15’)
A magnetic performer, prolific recording artist, and a curious and wide-ranging musical explorer, this is a chance to experience one of the most celebrated musicians working today in the intimate setting of the Crucible Playhouse.
Making a triumphant return to Sheffield, Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe presents a virtuosic tour of four centuries of music, including a transcription of Bach’s beloved first cello sonata, Steve Reich’s thrilling masterpiece Electric Counterpoint and a recent commission by the UK’s leading contemporary composer Thomas Adès, alongside two of the standout works from his celebrated album Lost & Found.
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Prélude
Allemande
Sarabande
Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9) and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance. Bach sets the tone of the First Suite with a Prelude made of undulating arpeggios. The Allemande meanders purposefully until it arrives at a strong final cadence in the home key. Using multiple stopping, the Sarabande is noble and understated. It is in two sections; the first ends on D (the dominant) and the second moves to E minor before returning to the tonic, G.
Nigel Simeone 2018
Nightfall should be sung without vibrato so that the vocal colors and their translucent quality remain pure and clear. Recalling Baroque passacaglia procedure, the bass line underpins the entire work. Nightfall is an incantatory piece inspired by how light changes at the end of a day: the adding and subtracting of color and shadow; the slowly building and diminishing dynamics; the shifting texture as the sun intensifies and then disappears over the horizon. Nightfall was composed for and performed by Musica Sacra in 1995.
Meredith Monk
Electric Counterpoint (1987) was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival for guitarist Pat Metheny. It was composed during the summer of 1987. The duration is about 15 minutes. It is the third in a series of pieces (first Vermont Counterpoint in 1982 for flutist Ransom Wilson followed by New York Counterpoint in 1985 for clarinettist Richard Stolzman) all dealing with a soloist playing against a pre-recorded tape of themselves. In Electric Counterpoint the soloist pre-records as many as 10 guitars and 2 electric bass parts and then plays the final 11th guitar part live against the tape. I would like to thank Pat Metheny for showing me how to improve the piece in terms of making it more idiomatic for the guitar.
Electric Counterpoint is in three movements; fast, slow, fast, played one after the other without pause. The first movement, after an introductory pulsing section where the harmonies of the movement are stated, uses a theme derived from Central African horn music that I became aware of through the ethnomusicologist Simha Arom. That theme is built up in eight voice canon and while the remaining two guitars and bass play pulsing harmonies the soloist plays melodic patterns that result from the contrapuntal interlocking of those eight pre-recorded guitars.
The second movement cuts the tempo in half, changes key and introduces a new theme, which is then slowly built up in nine guitars in canon. Once again two other guitars and bass supply harmony while the soloist brings out melodic patterns that result from the overall contrapuntal web.
The third movement returns to the original tempo and key and introduces a new pattern in triple meter. After building up a four guitar canon two bass guitars enter suddenly to further stress the triple meter. The soloist then introduces a new series of strummed chords that are then built up in three guitar canon. When these are complete the soloist returns to melodic patterns that result from the overall counterpoint when suddenly the basses begin to change both key and meter back and forth between E minor and C minor and between 3/2 and 12/8 so that one hears first 3 groups of 4 eighth notes and then 4 groups of 3 eighth notes. These rhythmic and tonal changes speed up more and more rapidly until at the end the basses slowly fade out and the ambiguities are finally resolved in 12/8 and E minor.
© Steve Reich
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No.1 in F minor Op.2
Piano Sonata No.3 in C Op.2
Piano Sonata No.2 in A Op.2
Piano Sonata No.23 in F minor Op.57 ‘Appassionata’
On the threshold of a Beethoven bicentenary year, Ensemble 360’s pianist Tim Horton launches his latest marathon project. With his familiar commitment, rigour and virtuosic playing, he embarks on the monumental feat of a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle.
This thrilling afternoon launches a journey through Beethoven’s staggering achievements for piano, with works including his celebrated Appassionata sonata.
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The Sonata in F minor Op.57 only acquired its famous nickname ‘Appassionata’ after Beethoven’s death – an invention by a Hamburg publisher that has stuck. The work was mostly sketched in 1805, finished the following year, and first published in 1807. The manuscript, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, came from the family of the French pianist Marie Bigot, to whom Beethoven had given it after she sight-read it for him. Her husband recalled that just before Beethoven’s visit, during his journey back to Vienna from Silesia, he was ‘surprised by a storm and driving rain, which soaked through the case in which he carried the Sonata in F minor which he had just composed’ and, indeed, the manuscript has many water stains, presumably made by this downpour. The Appassionata is recognized as one of the greatest of Beethoven’s middle-period piano sonatas (alongside the Waldstein), and its turbulent emotional world moves from the gloom of the opening to a quotation from a folk song (for the second theme), a set of variations on a deceptively simple chordal theme for the slow movement, leading via a chromatic diminished seventh chord to the finale.
Nigel Simeone © 2011
Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The Telegraph
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The Times
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The Guardian
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ BBC Music Magazine
“Chopin by a pianist whose name is rapidly becoming synonymous with searching originality, rhetorical aptness and kinaesthetic authority… Kolesnikov, always eager for the deep dive, here resurfaces with rare pearls of perfect proportion and lustre from the long-picked-over beds of Chopin interpretation” Gramophone on Pavel Kolesnikov
CHOPIN Complete Nocturnes
Described by Bachtrack as “a poet of the piano”, Pavel Kolesnikov is one of the world’s most exciting young pianists. Lauded for his staggering ability to cast new light on familiar repertoire, he makes his Music in the Round debut with a sumptuous tour through the complete Chopin Nocturnes.
Among the most gorgeous music for piano ever written, these intimate dramas of powerful intensity cover a vast emotional spectrum, from the lyrical and dreamy to unparalleled passion. This epic musical journey, up close, promises to be an unforgettable highlight of the season.
Please note, there will be two intervals due to the length of this concert.
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Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
TENNEY Saxony (25’)
TASSIE O Suns – O Grass of Graves world premiere (10’)
LAIDLOW Content (30’)
ZUCCHI/LAIDLOW Interfaces Improvisation (15’)
Praised for his “urgently visceral” playing (Tempo), London-based Canadian saxophonist David Zucchi performs a programme of innovative works for saxophone and live electronics. James Tenney’s groundbreaking Saxony (1978) sees a shimmering wall of sound built from tape delay and saxophones of every size, while Benjamin Tassie’s new work, O Suns – O Grass of Graves, explores the fragile sound world of the saxophone’s delicately unstable multiphonics.
The second half showcases Zucchi’s recent collaborations with composer and creative technologist Robert Laidlow. Content translates the internet’s overwhelming abundance (memes, infinite-scroll feeds, push notifications) in a raucous concert work for saxophone and electronics, while Interfaces Improvisation sees Laidlow perform alongside Zucchi using his tactile new electronic instrument, a ‘stacco’, which uses live AI to melt timbres together and control live-processed sound.
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction.
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