MOZART 9 Variations on a Minuet by Duport (14’)
HANS GÁL Sonata Op.28 (18’)
MENDELSSOHN Variations sérieuses (11’)
BEETHOVEN Variations on ‘God Save the King’ (9’)
SCHUBERT Impromptu in B flat D935 No.3 (11’)
CHOPIN Berceuse Op.57 (5’)
CHOPIN Ballade in F minor Op.52 (11’)
“An artist of extraordinary magnetism” (The Daily Telegraph), Yorkshire pianist Sarah Beth Briggs has enjoyed a distinguished career both on stage and in the recording studio.
For her highly anticipated return to Sheffield, the acclaimed pianist will be playing works from her most recent album Variations. Her programme features some of the greatest composers for piano, with music ranging from the fun and lightness of Mozart and Beethoven to the gorgeously tender melodies of Schubert and Chopin, alongside the sparkling freshness of a Sonata by Hans Gál.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Variations on a Minuet by Duport in 1789: an entry in his thematic catalogue dated Potsdam, 29 April 1789, lists ‘6 Variations for piano’ but in fact there were 9 of them. The cellist and composer Jean-Pierre Duport had been recruited by Frederick the Great in 1773 and after his nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II was crowned King of Prussia in 1786, Duport was made responsible for the chamber music at court. The theme is taken from one of Duport’s cello sonatas and its buoyant mood sets the tone for much of what follows, although the sixth variation is slow and dream-like.
(C) Nigel Simeone
Hans Gál studied with Brahms’s close friend Eusebius Mandyczewski and they later went on to edit the first complete edition of Brahms’s works. Gál’s opera, Die heilige Ente (‘The Sacred Duck’) was first performed in 1923 and enjoyed considerable success in Germany, and the Piano Sonata, Op.28, was composed four years later, during one of the happiest and most productive periods in Gál’s career, at a time when he was also Director of the Mainz Conservatoire. This success was cut short with the advent of the Nazis, when Gál was immediately dismissed from his post in March 1933 and his music banned. He returned to Vienna but was forced to flee after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. It was the British musicologist Donald Tovey who invited Gál to Edinburgh, the city which he then made his home.
In 1962, Gál himself wrote that Piano Sonata was ‘a concentrated, tightly-knit structure; the form of the four movements is completely clear. It will amuse you to hear me confess that I have only just noticed this on looking at the score: when you write in one go, you invent organically, whether you want to or not.’
(C) Nigel Simeone
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Variations on God Save the King were written in 1803 for the Scottish music publisher George Thomson. The composer sent them with a note that they were not too difficult and hoping that they would be a success. He also hoped to show the English ‘what a blessing they have’ with the tune, one which certainly seems to have fired his musical imagination.
(C) Nigel Simeone
Franz Schubert composed his Impromptu, D935, No.3, in 1827. It is another set of variations, the theme drawn from his own incidental music for the play Rosamunde (1823) which had already reappeared in the A minor String Quartet. With typical ingenuity, Schubert fashions a set of variations that are full of subtle surprises.
(C) Nigel Simeone
Frédéric Chopin’s late Berceuse (1844) was originally called ‘Variantes’ and its theme (echoing a Polish folksong) is followed by 16 short variations, presented over a ground bass which establishes and sustains the mood of a cradle song.
(C) Nigel Simeone
The Ballade in F minor (1842) is a complex structure which combines elements of sonata form with that of variations, a magnificent contrapuntally complex work which English pianist John Ogdon described as ‘the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions.’
© Nigel Simeone
JS BACH Cello Suite No.5 (26’)
JS BACH Cello Suite No.6 (24’)
Concluding her series of Bach’s beloved Cello Suites, Ensemble 360’s celebrated cellist Gemma Rosefield returns to Upper Chapel, interspersing music with conversation and questions.
Immerse yourself in the intricate melodies of Bach’s cello masterpieces. From the haunting prelude to an energetic gigue, the many movements of each suite showcase the versatility and expressiveness of the cello.
Cello Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV 1011
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavotte I / II
Gigue
Cello Suite No.6 in D, BWV 1012
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavotte I / II
Gigue
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.
© Nigel Simeone
SCHUBERT String Quartet No.9 in G minor D173 (23’)
JANÁČEK String Quartet No.1 Kreutzer Sonata (19’)
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F, Op.59 No.1 Razumovsky (40’)
The four outstanding young musicians of the Leonkoro Quartet have already acquired an astonishing list of international prizes to their name. Last year’s awards included first prize at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, where they astonished both the jury and audience with their boundless energy and powerful musicality, and their appointment to the prestigious BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.
For their Sheffield debut, they’ll be performing a programme that tackles the profound drama of Janáček and Beethoven, alongside the graceful lightness of a quartet composed by Schubert when he was still a teenager.
POST-CONCERT Q&A Free
Ticket holders are invited to stay on for an informal Q&A with the musicians after the concert.
Allegro con brio
Andantino
Menuetto. Allegro vivace
Allegro
Schubert’s sheer productivity in 1815, the year in which he turned 18 years of age, is nothing short of astonishing: over 150 songs, two symphonies, piano pieces, religious music and the present string quartet, written between 25 March and 1 April 1815, while Schubert was also working as an assistant teacher in his father’s school. According to a note in his own hand, the first movement was composed ‘in four and a half hours.’ There’s no mistaking the influences on the teenage Schubert in this music, particularly Beethoven’s Op.18 quartets and, above all, Mozart’s Symphony No.40.
But far from being merely derivative or imitative, this quartet is a notable example of Schubert experimenting with quartet structures, and starting to find his way as an original genius. Schubert expert Brian Newbould has noted that ‘Schubert’s way of plucking … principles from the repertoire all around him in his teenage years … is part of a positive, learning, and properly creative purpose.’ Newbould goes on to write that in this quartet, we find ‘things here that represent the first stirrings of inclinations that were to come to fruition in later works.’
© Nigel Simeone
Adagio – Con moto
Con moto
Con moto – Vivo – Andante
Con moto – (Adagio) – Più mosso
Janáček composed his 1st String Quartet in 1923, taking as his inspiration Kreutzer Sonata, the novella by Tolstoy that had in turn been inspired by Beethoven’s famous violin sonata. Janáček’s quartet was composed in just a few days, and it’s probable that he drew on material from an earlier piano trio (now lost) based on the same story. The music does not follow Tolstoy’s narrative in detail, but it does evoke the rage and passion of the protagonists, using a musical language made up of generally quite short motifs that form both the melodies and the urgent, thrilling ideas that accompany them. Janáček also alludes to Beethoven’s Kreutzer, most obviously at the start of the third movement where he recalls the second theme of Beethoven’s opening movement. Janáček’s own motto theme in the Quartet is the rising idea heard at the opening. This returns at the start of the fourth movement, but this time it is followed by a melancholy violin theme, marked ‘as if in tears’. Janáček’s final transformation of the motto theme is magnificent: a furious fortissimo, accompanied by chords marked ‘festive, like an organ’. After this ecstatic moment of release, the music subsides back to the brooding, unsettled mood of the opening.
© Nigel Simeone
Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto – attacca
Thème Russe. Allegro
The first of Beethoven’s three quartets written for Prince Razumovsky was composed in 1806 and performed the next year. Like the ‘Eroica’ Symphony (1804–5) it shows Beethoven expanding the possibilities of the form to produce something on an epic scale while retaining the essential intimacy of a string quartet. The first movement is introduced by a cello theme which musicologist Lewis Lockwood describes as ‘opening up a musical space of seemingly unbounded lyricism and breadth.’ The Scherzo, in B flat major, is an unusual movement: while it has no distinct Trio section, it is also Beethoven’s longest Scherzo to date, even though Beethoven removed a large repeat while revising the work. The slow movement has the unusual marking mesto – ‘mournful’ – and is cast in the tragic key of F minor. It ends on a trill that leads seamlessly into the finale. This is based on a Russian theme – a charming and appropriate choice since Razumovsky was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna at the time.
© Nigel Simeone
“The Leonkoros draw on a wealth of youthful sonority, fiery vitality and rousing drive.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung
RACHAEL COHEN alto saxophone
ARTIE ZAITZ guitar
FERG IRELAND bass
WILL CLEASBY drums
Rachael Cohen is a prolific composer and one of the most creative and inventive saxophonists of her generation. Her tone and fluent, lyrical improvising style is often compared to the jazz greats of the Cool School, but also displays a harder edge when the music demands it.
Guitarist Artie Zaitz has been working and recording on the London and international scene for over a decade, regularly performing with artists such as Moses Boyd, Mark Kavuma’s Banger Factory and Camilla George.
Expect an absorbing mix of blues, ballads and bop-inspired tunes from the jazz catalogue and Rachael’s own compositions.
Please note the change to the previously advertised line-up.
“…Cohen takes a softly devious approach reminiscent of Lee Konitz – but, as with the canny Cool School veteran, the quietness is deceptive and the subtlety is in the weighting of phrases and the hipness with which she plays off the rhythm section.” John Fordham, The Guardian
“Cool-school jazz from emerging guitar talent Zaitz, whose John Scofield-ish sound takes in some loping New Orleans shuffles and moody cinematic themed originals” Time Out
“ She is a positive life-force and a truly remarkable musician”
London Jazz News
DORÁTI Duo Concertante (13′)
LIGETI Selection of Etudes (c.12′)
LUTOSŁAWSKI Dance Preludes for Clarinet and Piano (12′)
FARKAS Five Antique Hungarian Dances (16′)
LIGETI Ten Pieces (13′)
An evening of music for piano and wind celebrating the works of György Ligeti, one of the most innovative and influential composers of the late 20th century.
Ligeti’s celebrated Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet and a selection of his mesmerising studies for piano are among the highlights of this concert celebrating the 100th birthday of this ground-breaking composer. Other works to feature include dances by Ligeti’s teacher, Farkas, and a breathtaking duo by Doráti, who conducted several premieres of Ligeti’s most famous works.
Antal Doráti’s long and distinguished conducting career has tended to overshadow his work as a composer. As a brilliantly gifted teenager, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest at the age of fourteen and from the start, his musical development was in the best possible hands: his composition teachers included Zoltán Kodály and his piano teacher was Béla Bartók. After graduating from the Academy in 1924, he joined the music staff at the Budapest Opera, making his conducting debut the same year.
Notable later orchestral appointments included posts with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His numerous recordings included a pioneering set of the complete Haydn symphonies, made for Decca with the Philharmonia Hungarica.
Doráti also found time to compose a number of pieces, ranging from an opera (The Chosen) to orchestral works (including a symphony) and the present Duo concertante for oboe and piano, completed in 1984 and dedicated to the great Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger who gave the first performance in Washington, D.C. on 21 April 1984 with the pianist Karl Ritter. A modern re-interpretation of a Hungarian rhapsody, the structure draws on traditional Hungarian dance forms, opening with a slow lassú and following this with a friss – a quick movement marked molto vivace.
© Nigel Simeone
Ligeti composed a series of 18 études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001, published in three books. When they first became known, these pieces were hailed as instant classics of the twentieth-century piano repertoire, and also provided a remarkable climax to Ligeti’s composing career. Following in the tradition of Chopin, Liszt and Debussy, these pieces pose tremendous technical challenges while also resulting in brilliant musical miniatures, whether dazzling or poetic. Ligeti himself wrote that he imagined in the Études ‘highly emotive music of high contrapuntal and metrical complexity, with labyrinthine branches and perceptible melodic forms … not tonal, but not atonal either.’
They are dedicated to various important exponents of contemporary music, ranging from the composers Pierre Boulez and György Kurtág, to the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Volker Banfield. Described by critic Andrew Clements as ‘the most important additions to the solo-piano repertoire in the last half-century’, one remarkable feature is the way in which, as Clements put is, ‘in the Études, Ligeti effectively created a new pianistic vocabulary’. The influences described by Ligeti on these works included medieval and Renaissance music, African polyphony, Latin-American dances, Balinese gamelan, jazz pianists including Bill Evans and Thelonius Monk and the folk music of Ligeti’s native Hungary. But all of these are subsumed into a language that is entirely Ligeti’s own, with the most exhilarating results.
© Nigel Simeone
Allegro molto
Andantino
Allegro giocoso
Andante
Allegro molto
In 1954, Witold Lutosławski wrote his five Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano, based on folk tunes from Northern Poland, describing them as his ‘farewell to folk music’. In 1959 he recast the pieces for the Czech Nonet – comprising wind quintet, violin, viola, cello and double bass – in which he makes one significant change: no longer is the clarinet the soloist, but the thematic material is shared between the whole ensemble. Lutosławski’s biographer Charles Bodman Rae has described the way the composer transforms the folk tunes, and generates the propulsive energy in the faster movements: ‘Superimposition of different metres is the main feature of these pieces, resulting in metrical and rhythmic contradictions. This technique is most noticeable in the first, third and fifth pieces and invests them with much of their rhythmic vitality.’
This Nonet version of the Dance Preludes was first performed by the Czech Nonet at a concert in Louny, 40 miles northwest of Prague, on 10 November 1959.
Nigel Simeone 2013
Intrada
Lassú (Slow Dance)
Lapockás tánc (Shoulder Blade Dance)
Chorea hungaricae
Ugrós (Leaping Dance)
Ferenc Farkas studied with Leo Weiner at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and later with Ottorino Respighi in Rome. On returning to Budapest in 1932, one of his first commissions was for a film score and he went on to compose extensively for film and theatre productions. At the same time, he began researching Hungarian folk music and began a distinguished teaching career: his pupils included Ligeti and Kurtág.
This work, officially titled Antique Hungarian Dances from the 17th Century, exists in versions for various solo instruments and ensembles, with the present wind quintet version dating from 1959. In a note on the work, Farkas himself wrote that ‘compared with the rich folk-song heritage of Hungary, our ancient airs and dances that have been preserved in writing have a more modest role. For this work I have been influenced by dances of the 17th century, written by unknown amateurs in a relatively simple style … My interest in this music was first captured in the 1940s. I was so fascinated that I decided to give these melodies new life. I fitted the little dances together, in rondo form, and leaning on Baroque harmony and counterpoint, I attempted a reminiscence of that atmosphere of provincial Hungarian life at the time.’
© Nigel Simeone
Ligeti composed his Ten Pieces between August and December 1968. He said that his first idea was ‘to compose a virtuoso work … to bring out the individual character of the five very different instruments available to me. My first idea was to write five short virtuoso pieces, but as I was working on the sketches, I began to sense that this didn’t work in formal terms … It made more sense to have ensemble pieces contrast with virtuoso pieces, in order to supply points of repose. It was thus that the final form came about: ten pieces with a regular alternation of ensemble pieces and virtuoso pieces.’
The first performance was given on 20 January 1969 in Malmö, Sweden, played by the Wind Quintet of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Each piece is short – the first, marked Molto sostenuto e calmo is one of the longer movements, lasting just over two minutes, while the fourth, fifth and sixth, all very fast, last less than a minute each. In his biography of Ligeti, British composer Richard Steinitz has described the Ten Pieces as ‘both accessible and delightfully characteristic of their composer … The style is intentionally kaleidoscopic’ (likened by Ligeti himself to Tom and Jerry cartoons), and ‘the music is quirky, epigrammatic and comic.’
© Nigel Simeone
DEBUSSY Premiere rhapsodie (8’)
YORK BOWEN Clarinet Sonata (16’)
HARRISON Drifting Away (5’)
WEBER Grand Duo Concertant (21’)
Praised by International Record Review as “an eloquent and impassioned clarinettist [whose] playing is full-blooded and committed”, Robert Plane, the newest member of Ensemble 360, has been a remarkable addition to this highly regarded Ensemble.
Debussy’s impressionistic Premiere rhapsodie, performed by Rob and pianist Tim Horton, moves from a dreamy opening to a virtuosic conclusion. The pair will also perform Drifting Away, the work of Pamela Harrison, an often overlooked English composer who Rob has done much to champion. The concert concludes with Weber’s celebrated duo marked by soaring melodies and dazzling cadenzas.
POST-CONCERT TALK Free
Ticket holders are invited to stay for an informal talk from Rob about Pamela Harrison, who features in the concert.
The test pieces specially composed for the final exams at the Paris Conservatoire have something of a bad reputation. Many of them are routine competition showpieces but sometimes a work of much more lasting importance was written for these occasions. Such is the case with Debussy’s Première Rapsodie, completed in January 1910 for the clarinet concours at the Conservatoire that summer (Debussy also dashed off a sight-reading test for the same competition, published as his Petite pièce for clarinet and piano). Debussy himself was a member of the jury and he found most of the players unsatisfactory in the Rapsodie. However, the eventual winner, Vandercruyssen, impressed him. Debussy wrote to his friend and publisher Jacques Durand that Vandercruyssen ‘played by heart, and like a great musician’. A year later, Debussy prepared the better-known version of the piece for clarinet and orchestra, but the original with piano is superbly written for both instruments. The clarinettist David Pino has claimed, with justification, that the Première rapsodie was ‘the first major work for solo clarinet written in the twentieth century’.
It opens in a mood of stillness (marked ‘Rêveusement lent’ – ‘dreamily slow’), with the piano adding gentle momentum in the accompaniment after a few bars, and the clarinet – instructed to play pianissimo but also ‘sweetly’ and ‘penetrating’ – introducing a languorous theme that gradually becomes more animated. A sudden speeding up introduces a more capricious idea that is briefly stopped in its tracks by a series of trills and a return to earlier music. But the faster speed soon returns, starting with rumbling low notes on the piano and a series of upward flourishes on the clarinet. This gives way to a new section marked ‘Modérément animé (‘Moderately animated) and ‘playful’, a passage that quite brilliantly exploits the possibilities of the clarinet, especially its ability to play rapid figurations and lyrical lines. A return to the slower music gives way, finally, to a thrilling conclusion.
What makes this such an outstanding work is that Debussy combines extremely idiomatic writing – appropriate for a piece that was intended to demonstrate a player’s technical command – with musical ideas that have memorable substance. On 16 January 1911 the clarinettist Paul Mimart (to whom the work was dedicated) gave the first performance in a concert, at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, in one of the concerts promoted by the Société musicale indépendante. According to Debussy’s biographer Léon Valas, another performance took place at the end of 1911 in Russia, and it was greeted by the audience with confusion. A baffled Debussy wrote to a friend: ‘Surely this piece is one of the most immediately pleasing I have ever written!’
© Nigel Simeone
Allegro moderato
Allegretto poco scherzando
Finale. Allegro molto
York Bowen was a virtuoso pianist (in 1925 he made the first ever recording of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto) and had a parallel career as a prolific composer whose output included instrumental works written for many distinguished soloists, among them violinist Fritz Kreisler, oboist Léon Goossens, violist Lionel Tertis and horn player Denis Brain. When York Bowen heard the clarinettist Pauline Juler give the first performance of Gerald Finzi’s Five Bagatelles at one of the National Gallery Concerts in January 1943, he was immediately inspired to compose a work for her. The result was the Clarinet Sonata in F minor, given its premiere by Juler and the composer later that year.
Starting with a wide-ranging theme for the clarinet (extending over two and a half octaves), this vibrant, lyrical work explores the technical possibilities of the clarinet with consummate skill. The second theme is closely related to the first, and the movement ends with a coda based on the work’s opening. The Scherzetto is a capricious counterpart to the first movement and elements of it are also heard at the start of the finale, marked Allegro molto. This is a rondo in which music from the opening movement is also recalled before an imposing coda brings this remarkable post-romantic sonata to a powerful close.
© Nigel Simeone
Pamela Harrison studied at the Royal College of Music with Gordon Jacob (composition) and Arthur Benjamin (piano), and she composed several important works during the Second World War, including a String Quartet first performed in 1941 at the National Gallery Concerts. She wrote several important works for clarinet, inspired in part by a warm friendship with Jack Brymer for whom she composed a rugged and dramatic Clarinet Sonata in 1953, following this with a Clarinet Quintet in 1956. Drifting Away dates from two decades later: it was first performed by Brymer in 1975 at Sherbourne School. The title was derived from lines by W.B. Yeats:
I heard the old, old men say
All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.
Appropriately enough, this tender and evocative work, exquisitely crafted, was played by Brymer at the memorial service for Pamela Harrison in 1990.
© Nigel Simeone
Allegro con fuoco
Andante con moto
Rondo. Allegro
Weber’s own diaries contain a wealth of information about when he composed this work. The first movement to be written was the Rondo finale, completed in Munich on 5 July 1815 and a note from a few days later mentions sketches “for the sonata with clarinet and piano”. By 19 July Weber had also written the slow movement, describing it as an “Adagio”. It wasn’t for another year that he turned his attention to the first movement – noting in Berlin on 5 November that the “First movement of the Duo in E flat was written down”, and finally on 8 November “Allegro in E flat for the Clarinet and Piano Duo finished.” The work was published by Schlesinger in Berlin six months later, Weber noting that he received printed copies on 19 June 1817.
What is remarkable about this work, given its rather fragmented composition history, is that the finished piece has such concentration and coherence. An early review in the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung was full of praise: “The whole piece has an original and fiery spirit as well as tender heartfelt feelings; a thorough development of ideas comes without any pedantry … The harmonic and melodic aspects of each movement are beautifully balanced against each other and both instruments are treated with a perfect knowledge of what each can do.”
The ebullient and virtuoso writing for the two instruments in is one of the glories of the Grand Duo. It was conceived as a real partnership for clarinet and piano, with neither part dominating the proceedings. The results are very rich melodically but also extremely successful in terms of Weber’s handling of large-scale forms. Though the work was called Grand Duo concertant when it was published, it’s interesting to note from Weber’s diaries that he referred to this substantial three-movement work at least once as a “Sonata”.
© Nigel Simeone
Two members of Music in the Round’s Bridge Quintet, Benjamin Garalnick (horn) and Lorraine Hart (oboe) are accompanied by Domonkos Csaby (Piano) in this afternoon of music and poetry inspired by myth and legend.
BERGE Horn-Lokk (7′)
MUSGRAVE Niobe (5′)
LIZST Au Bord d’une Source (4′)
REINECKE Trio in A minor (25′)
Pieces will be introduced by the musicians who will also read poetry connected to the works they are playing.
Classical Sheffield’s biennial celebration of live music-making continues 17 – 19 March 2023.
Sigurd Berge (1929-2002) was a Norwegian composer known for his contributions to music education and his interest in Norwegian folk music. His works span a variety of styles, from traditional tonal music to electronic music and multi-media compositions.
Berge’s Horn-lokk is an unaccompanied horn solo composed in 1972 for fellow Norwegian Frøydis Ree Wekre. It consists of four sections and incorporates melodies inspired by Norwegian folk music. The piece showcases the horn as an instrument and is challenging for the performer due to its tessitura and required techniques.
The Horn-lokk contains traits reminiscent of traditional horn calls but with more complex tonality and dissonant intervals. The piece lacks the heroic quality of popular horn call melodies and instead presents a haunting and repetitive melody that grieves, with a cathartic outburst of fury at the climax.
Niobe, written in July and November 1987, was commissioned by the Park Lane Group for Ian Hardwick. The Tape was made in the Chiens Interdits Studios in New York; recording engineer, Jonathan Mann.
In Greek mythology, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion, King of Thebes. She unwisely boasted to Leto about her many sons and daughters. Leto, who only had two children, Apollo and Artemis, was angered.
As punishment Apollo slew all of Niobe’s sons and Artemis all her daughters.
Out of pity for Niobe’s inconsolable grief, the Gods changed her into a rock, in which form she continued to weep.
In this short work for solo oboe and Tape, the solo oboe takes the part of Niobe bitterly lamenting her murdered children. The tape with the distant high voices and the slow tolling bells, and later gong, is intended to provide an evocative and descriptive accompaniment.
Thea Musgrave ©
Au Bord d’une Source (“Beside a Spring”) is the 4th piece of the first suite of Années de Pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”) which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842.
The music begins with a gentle, flowing melody that represents the babbling of a spring. Liszt uses arpeggios and delicate trills to create a sense of water cascading over rocks. As the piece progresses, the melody becomes more complex and the harmonies richer, perhaps reflecting the increasing depth of the spring as it flows. He uses dynamic contrast to convey the ebb and flow of the water, as well as sudden bursts of energy that suggest the rush of water over rapids.
Allegro moderato
Scherzo. Molto vivace
Adagio
Allegro ma non troppo
Carl Reinecke was born near Hamburg, in the town of Altona – which was part of Denmark until 1864. As a young man he worked as court pianist for King Christian VIII in Copenhagen, before moving to a series of jobs in Germany. In 1860 he was appointed director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and professor of composition and piano at the Leipzig Conservatoire, and he remained an important musical force in Leipzig for the next 35 years. Despite his activities as a conductor, pianist and teacher, Reinecke was a prolific composer. Many of his works from the 1880s are groups of short piano pieces and songs, but among the more substantial compositions from this time are two important chamber works: the ‘Undine’ Sonata for flute and piano, and the Trio Op.188 for oboe, horn and piano. Its very unusual scoring suggests that Reinecke wrote the Trio for two specific players in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. It was first performed in the Gewandhaus on 22 November 1886 by the oboist Gustav Hinke, horn player Friedrich Gumpert and Reinecke himself as pianist. Gustav Hinke was principal oboe of the orchestra and was the dedicatee of another trio for the same combination by Heinrich von Herzogenberg (written in 1889) as well as of Reinecke’s own Octet (1892). Friedrich Gumpert was first horn in the Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1864 until 1898. The musical language of Reinecke’s Trio suggests a composer who was a contemporary and friend of Johannes Brahms (Reinecke conducted the first complete performance of Brahms’s German Requiem) but it’s also distinctive: Reinecke writes beautifully for his unusual ensemble, and the long melodic horn line – later taken over by the oboe – in the slow movement is particularly memorable, while the major key finale includes some splendidly idiomatic writing (hunting-horn rhythms and lyrical oboe phrases) that make for a stirring conclusion.
Nigel Simeone © 2010
SCOTT Respectfully Yours (4’)
SCHULHOFF Hot Sonata (15’)
RODNEY BENNETT Four Country Dances (13’)
FITKIN Gate (8’)
GLASS (arr. DICKSON) Sonata for violin and piano (22’)
FRANÇAIX Cinq danses exotiques (6’)
MILHAUD Scaramouche (10’)
Czech jazz, Brazilian influences, and a thrilling and emotional sonata by a minimalist master are explored by the Australian Classical BRIT award-winning saxophonist Amy Dickson in the company of our Festival Curator, Kathryn Stott.
Amy is celebrated internationally for her “individual and unusual tone: luscious, silky smooth, sultry and voluptuous” (Gramophone Magazine), and this eclectic programme showcases the subtlety, range and beauty of her instrument.
Andy Scott is a composer and saxophonist who worked on several occasions with composer Richard Rodney Bennett, and Respectfully Yours was written in memory of Bennett, who died in December 2012. For Scott himself, ‘it was appropriate to write a piece that was melodic with jazz-influenced harmony that I think of as a simple “thank you” to Richard Rodney Bennett, for being an inspirational musician and a kind and generous person.’ Originally written for euphonium and piano, Scott subsequently arranged it for saxophone and piano. Over tender, melting piano harmonies, the saxophone weaves a lyrical melody in music that is both reflective and heartfelt.
© Nigel Simeone
Schulhoff composed his Hot Sonata (subtitled ‘Jazz Sonata’) in 1930, while he was working on his opera Flammen. In a series of pieces from the 1920s, he was one of the first composers to attempt a serious integration of jazz idioms into concert works, and the Hot Sonata is a particularly impressive example. It was commissioned by the German radio station Funkstunde A.G. in Berlin and the commission specified that the music should meet ‘the particular musical requirements of radio’ – in short, that it should appeal to a large audience. The first performance was given in Berlin on 10 April 1930 by the American saxophonist Billy Barton with Schulhoff himself at the piano, and the Hot Sonata was published in August 1930 by Schott in Mainz.
In an advertisement for the new work, the firm announced that ‘today’s scant number of chamber music works for saxophone is augmented by this valuable composition. The name of Schulhoff guarantees the serious, artistic form of this sonata.’ This was not just publishing hyperbole: by 1930, Schulhoff had written several outstanding chamber works – including two string quartets and two violin sonatas – as well as a ballet (Ogelala), a jazz-inspired piano concerto and a number of piano pieces. The Hot Sonata is in four movements, with only metronome marks to indicate tempo. The first is moderately fast, the saxophone underpinned by a loping piano part which also introduces the deliciously spicy harmonies and syncopated rhythms that characterise the whole work. The short second movement is fast and scherzo-like. The third movement is a kind of blues, the opening saxophone melody marked ‘lamentuoso ma molto grottesco’ and this gives way to an ebullient finale.
© Nigel Simeone
New Dance
Lady Day
The Mulberry Garden
Nobody’s Jig
Richard Rodney Bennett’s Four Country Dances for saxophone and piano are part of larger series of pieces inspired by tunes found in John Playford’s The English Dancing Master first published in 1651, with numerous later editions which changed the title to The Dancing Master and added new tunes. Bennett has taken these folk-like melodies and added piano accompaniments of his own to create pieces that have a very individual character. This is particularly apparent in the last dance, where the piano part is at first spiky, then enters into a dialogue with the saxophone with fragments of the melody. The results are fresh, spirited and charming.
© Nigel Simeone
In a brief note on this work, Graham Fitkin writes that ‘this piece started from one thing – a trill. The alternation of two adjacent notes gives rise to a simple and constant grouping of beats. Place it in different temporal contexts and the inherent quality of the trill is questioned.’ These are the essential component parts of Gate, but what makes the piece so compelling is the vitality and creative imagination with which these ostensibly simple ideas are expanded and mutated in a piece that moves forward with seemingly unstoppable impetus to a dizzying close.
© Nigel Simeone
Pambiche. Risoluto
Baiao. Com morbidezza
Mambo. Allegrissimo
Samba lenta. Tranquillo
Merengue. Vivo com spirito
Jean Françaix’s Cinq danses exotiques were dedicated to the great French saxophonist Marcel Mule. While the music is Françaix’s own, the characteristic rhythms of all five dances draw on traditional music from Latin America. The first, a lively ‘Pambiche’, has its origins in the island nation of Dominica, while the second, a languid ‘Baiao’ is a popular form in north-eastern Brazil. The fast ‘Mambo’ has an obsessive repeating figure in the bass which drives the music along, while the Brazilian ‘Samba lenta’ is perhaps the most expressive of the set, its music in slow, swaying 5/8 time. The Merengue is a dance from the island of Hispaniola (comprising the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Françaix’s version is quick and highly syncopated.
© Nigel Simeone
Vif
Modéré
Brasileira
In May 1937 Milhaud wrote the incidental music for a production of Charles Vildrac’s play Le médecin volant (after Molière’s play of the same name), which opened at the Théâtre Scaramouche. He quickly repurposed pieces from it to create part of a suite – Scaramouche – for two pianos. As for the title, Milhaud almost certainly took it from the Scaramouche theatre and it was a particularly apt choice: in the traditional commedia dell’arte, Scaramouche is the clown, and the mood of the work is decidedly jovial, particularly the riotous Brazilian-inspired finale.
Milhaud also made an arrangement of Scaramouche for saxophone (an instrument he had already used to great effect in La création du monde) which he dedicated to Marcel Mule, who first played it in public. Both versions were published by Raymond Deiss, famous for only printing pieces he liked. During the French Occupation, when Milhaud was exiled in America, Deiss used his presses to produce Resistance literature, paying for this with his life when he was executed by the Nazis in 1943.
© Nigel Simeone
“Dickson shows the saxophone is capable of subtlety and great beauty”
BBC Music Magazine
JACOBSEN & AGHAEI Ascending Bird (5’)
SCHUBERT Piano Quintet in A ‘Trout’ (40’)
SAINT-SAËNS Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs (12’)
COLERIDGE TAYLOR Nonet (25’)
Bringing Sheffield Chamber Music Festival to a fabulous conclusion, Kathryn returns to play Schubert’s enduringly joyful ‘Trout’ Quintet with Ensemble 360, a piece she last played in the Crucible with the Lindsay String Quartet at their Farewell Concert in 2005.
After a folk-inspired string quartet charting the attempts of a mythical bird to reach the sun, and Saint-Saëns’ virtuoso showcase for flute, oboe and clarinet, comes Coleridge-Taylor’s dazzling Nonet, full of swagger, rich texture and brimming with optimism.
American composer and violinist Colin Jacobsen spoke about the background to this exhilarating piece before a performance in 2011: ‘I wrote Ascending Bird with my friend Siamak Aghaei, a wonderful musician from Iran. The piece tells the story of a mythic bird that tries to reach the sun. It tries at first and falls back down. It tries again, then finally on the third time it receives the radiant embrace of the sun and loses its physical body, in a metaphor for spiritual transcendence.’ Written in 2007, the music is an arrangement of an old Persian folk tune, starting gently and working up to a thrilling close.
© Nigel Simeone
Allegro vivace
Andante
Scherzo: Presto
Theme and Variations: Andante
Allegro giusto
Silvester Paumgartner was a wealthy amateur cellist who lived in Steyr, Upper Austria, and an enthusiastic supporter of Schubert and his music. After playing Hummel’s Piano Quintet Paumgartner wanted a quintet for the same combination of instruments (violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano) from Schubert, who visited in the summer of 1819 (and again in 1823 and 1825). Paumgartner also wanted a work that included reference to Schubert’s song Die Forelle, The Trout, which had been composed in 1817. For Schubert, his visits to Paumgartner in the Upper Austrian countryside were a delight, a chance to make music, enjoy good company and revel in the spectacular scenery.
Willi Kahl, writing in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music wrote that ‘the fundamental tone of the piece is defined by the persistence of a major key throughout’ – underlining that this is among Schubert’s most genial chamber works. The first movement is brilliant but never flashy while the Andante is the expressive core of the work, suggesting, Kahl believed, ‘a moonlit night-song from the Styrian landscape’. The Scherzo is muscular and energetic, with a more easy-going central Trio section. In the first three variations, the theme is heard in its original form (on a different instrument each time) and remains clearly recognisable in the more freely worked fourth and fifth variations. In the last variation, Schubert brings the Quintet back to the original song as the unmistakable figurations of the song’s piano accompaniment are heard for the first time, to utterly enchanting effect. The finale is amiable and untroubled (though not without a couple of surprises), bringing this most affable of works to a properly jubilant close.
© Nigel Simeone
Saint-Saëns wrote this piece for a series of concerts that he gave for the Red Cross in St Petersburg in April 1887. It is dedicated to Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, and the composer wrote it for himself to play on piano with three other specific players in mind: flautist Paul Taffanel, oboist Georges Gillet and clarinettist Charles Turban. For the sources of the tunes, Saint-Saëns wrote to Julien Tiersot, the leading French expert on traditional music at the time, requesting suitable Danish and Russian themes. Before leaving for Russia, the work was rehearsed in Paris, and Saint-Saëns invited the singer and composer Pauline Viardot to hear the new piece, after which he travelled to Russia with Taffanel, Gillet and Turban.
Following a flamboyant introduction, Saint-Saëns introduces a succession of traditional themes, varies and repeats them, and occasionally mixes them together, all composed with his characteristic inventiveness and skill.
Nigel Simeone © 2012
Allegro energico
Andante con moto
Scherzo. Allegro
Finale. Allegro vivace
Coleridge-Taylor composed his Nonet in 1893–4, while he was a student at the Royal College of Music, and it was first performed there in July 1894. Still in his teens, Coleridge-Taylor has modestly headed the score ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ (Steps to Parnassus), suggesting he realised that he still had plenty to learn. His teacher at the RCM was Charles Villiers Stanford, and the work reveals the clear influence of Brahms – a composer Stanford himself admired enormously.
The Nonet is conceived on quite a grand scale. The first movement immediately reveals Coleridge-Taylor’s skill in writing for nine instruments: at times the textures are almost orchestral while at others he reduces the forces to evoke the more private world of chamber music. There’s a similar kind of contrast in the main themes: the first of these, broad and expansive, is initially heard on the clarinet before being taken up by the whole ensemble. The second theme is livelier, with dotted rhythms, and it is introduced by the piano. The Andante reveals Coleridge-Taylor’s gift for song-like melodies (with some phrases suggesting the influence of Dvořák on the young composer), while the Scherzo (in duple rather than triple time) is highly animated, with a warm Trio section led by the horn. Again, the benign shadow of Dvořák seems to hover over this movement. The instrumental writing in the ebullient finale is particularly colourful, with some magical effects.
A review appeared in the August 1894 issue of Musical Times where the un-named critic commented that ‘the whole Nonet is most interesting, its themes are fresh and vigorous, and their treatment proves that the writer has learnt to compose with skill. The scherzo is unquestionably the most striking movement, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student.’
© Nigel Simeone, 2021
Workshop: 1.00pm – 3.30pm SOLD OUT (register on our waitlist via the Eventbrite Page)
Performance: 3.30pm – 4.30pm
The workshop portion of this event is now sold out. Please keep an eye on our Eventbrite page for details of any returned spaces or to join the waiting list.
Tickets for the public performance must be booked in advance through Sheffield Theatres box office here.
This workshop for singers of all ages and abilities is a chance to come together for music-making and an informal performance of brand new choral settings of songs by folk superstar Kate Rusby.
Choral leader and arranger Kate Shipway will lead a workshop on the iconic Crucible Theatre stage, featuring her own arrangements of Rusby’s much-loved songs. Either learn by ear or from provided notation. This event is for both beginners and experienced singers alike (although some experience of singing in a choir will be helpful).
