The critically-acclaimed Ligeti Quartet share tracks from their new album fusing acoustic and electronic music for string quartet by the Mercury-prize nominated composer.
Anna Meredith has achieved incredible success straddling multiple musical worlds, never compromising her raw, individual style. This concert is based around the Ligeti Quartet’s new album, Nuc, providing a survey of Meredith’s career to date, heard through her original works for string quartet.
Nuc was released by Mercury KX on 14 April 2023 and launched in Sheffield with Music in the Round. It started life as a conversation between Anna Meredith and Richard Jones (Ligeti Quartet’s viola player) after realising that after a decade of frequently working together, they had almost an album’s worth of music. So an idea developed in which they would not only make the first studio recordings of Anna’s original music for string quartet, but that Richard (whose previous collaborations include Alex Turner, Jessie Ware and The Waeve), would create new arrangements of existing tracks by Anna including from her award-winning electronic and dance albums.
The result is a joyful, occasionally furious, never too serious, energetic/restful collection of tracks which dazzle with Anna’s signature compulsive harmonies, rhythmic shifts of gear and sparkling textures.
To accompany performances the Ligeti Quartet, with funding from Arts Council England have commissioned Ewan Morris Jones, animator and long-term Anna Meredith collaborator, to design a set of projections. He also designed the video for the first single Tuggemo, featuring a melee of plant, animal and mineral creations which swarm together as the song swells. Created using a combination of 2D animation and AI techniques, the visual is a compelling, colourful and hypnotic evolution story.
BRITTEN Phantasy Quartet Op.2 (13′)
ELGAR Andante and Allegro (7′)
MOZART String Quartet in D K.499 (25′)
FINZI Interlude for strings and oboe (11′)
CLARKE Poem for string quartet (10′)
BAX Oboe Quintet (18′)
Ensemble 360 returns with a captivating programme of virtuosic music which combines the haunting world of the oboe with the richness of the strings. Featuring one of Benjamin Britten’s most assured early works, alongside Bax’s celebrated quintet and Rebecca Clarke’s haunting ‘poem’ for string quartet. This is a captivating programme centred on exquisite English music for oboe, beautiful miniatures and expansive chamber music.
BRITTEN Benjamin, Phantasy Quartet in F sharp minor
Andante con moto – Allegro vivace – Andante con moto
Bridge had already been successful in Walter Wilson Cobbett’s competition to write a ‘Phantasy’ – Cobbett’s reinvention of the Elizabeth Fantasy as new single-movement chamber works – and in 1910 he (along with Vaughan Williams and others) was commissioned by Cobbett to compose a Phantasy Piano Quartet. It’s a work in a satisfying arch form based on free-flowing musical ideas all of which derive from the powerful opening gesture. Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten, wrote in a programme note for the Aldeburgh Festival about this piece. He described the music as ‘Sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound—Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’
Nigel Simeone 2013
ELGAR Edward, Andante and Allegro for oboe and strings
This very early piece, composed in about 1878, was probably written to be played at the Worcester Glee Club. The manuscript in the British Library is, curiously, headed ‘Xmas music’ on the oboe part. The Andante is graceful, and the second movement is reminiscent of a Mendelssohn Scherzo.
Like Haydn before him, Mozart habitually published his string quartets in groups of six (the ‘Haydn’ Quartets) or three (the ‘Prussian’ Quartets). Between these two sets there is a single work, entered in Mozart’s manuscript catalogue of his own works on 19 August 1786 as ‘a quartet for 2 violins, viola and violoncello’. The autograph manuscript (in the British Library) is simply titled ‘Quartetto’. It was published in 1788 by the Viennese firm founded by Mozart’s friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister and it has come to be known as the ‘Hoffmeister’ Quartet as a result. The first movement opens with a theme in octaves that outlines a descending D major arpeggio – an idea that dominates much of the movement despite some startling harmonic excursions along the way. The development section is marked by almost continuous quaver movement that gives way magically to the opening theme at the start of the recapitulation. The Minuet has an easy-going charm that contrasts with the sterner mood (and minor key) of the Trio section. The great Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein thought the Adagio spoke ‘of past sorrow, with a heretofore unheard-of-depth’. It is not only a deeply touching movement but also an extremely ingenious one, not least when the initial idea heard on two violins returns on viola and cello, investing the same music with a darker, richer texture. The finale is fast and playful, but there’s also astonishing inventiveness in the flow of ideas, from the opening triplets with their chromatic twists to a contrasting theme which scampers up and down the scale. A few sudden and surprising dynamic contrasts keep the listener guessing right to the end.
Nigel Simeone
FINZI Gerald, Interlude for Strings and Oboe
Gerald Finzi began work on this piece in 1932 but only completed it four years later, in 1936. The first performance was given at the Wigmore Hall by Leon Goossens (to whom Finzi subsequently dedicated the work) and the Menges Quartet, on 24 March 1936. Finzi was particularly touched by Goossens’s enthusiasm for the piece, having been unsure if the great oboist would be interested in the work: a nervous composer wrote to his friend Howard Ferguson: “I see that Leon, the pride of oboeland, is playing with the Isolde Menges Quartet … Perhaps he’ll say that the Interlude isn’t big enough for him.”
He needn’t have worried, but this lovely work is just one of four published pieces of chamber music by Finzi.
Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Tempo primo
Lento espressivo
Allegro giocoso – Più lento – Vivace
Bax wrote his Oboe Quintet in 1922, just after completing the first of his seven symphonies. The inspiration for writing a work for oboe and strings was the playing of the great oboist Leon Goossens, to whom the work is dedicated. Bax’s biographer Lewis Foreman has drawn attention to the Irish elements in the music of this work: not only the jig-like final movement, but also in some of the atmospheric writing earlier in the work. The first movement begins with some richly harmonized string chords, and the oboe’s first entrance is rhapsodic, and rather melancholy. The main Allegro moderato has a strong, muscular drive and also demonstrates Bax’s brilliant instrumental technique, drawing a remarkable range of colours from the strings. A wistful recollection of the opening music brings the movement to a serene close. The slow movement opens with a beautiful first violin melody (again, suggestive of Irish folk music). The oboe enters with something rather different: a wistful, cadenza-like passage that is then developed with the strings. While there is plenty of veiled lyricism in this movement, Bax always remains a little questioning, and there’s a slightly uneasy calm at the close. The finale begins in overtly Irish high spirits, but this movement isn’t quite the romp that the opening might suggest. As Lewis Foreman put it, ‘all too soon clouds cover the sun and the spectres return’ in a passage that is slower and more reflective. The dance-like music returns but even at the close there is a brief moment of reflection before the final cadence.
VALERIE COLEMAN Umoja (3′) OTTO MORTENSEN Quintette (18’) PAUL HINDEMITH Quintet (15′) ARTURO MÁRQUEZ Danza de Mediodia (10′) FLORENCE PRICE Adoration (4′) VALERIE COLEMAN Red Clay (6′) ỌLÁ AKINDIPE Èkó Scenes (10′)
Introducing the Bridge Ensemble, a wind quintet supported by Music in the Round, who champion music by marginalised composers from backgrounds under-represented in chamber music. Opening with Valerie Coleman’s joyous Kwanzaa dance ‘Umoja’ and concluding with a brand new Afrobeat inspired work by the group’s clarinettist Ọlá Akindipe, this is an inviting tour through unjustly overlooked works.
Please note a change in programme as originally advertised.
BRITTEN Three Divertimenti for String Quartet (12’) DVOŘÁK Quartet No.11 in C Op.61 (39’) DVOŘÁK String Quintet No.2 in G, Op.77 (35’)
Dvořák’s exceptional and unusually scored String Quintet No.2 is operatic in scope and richly textured, earning the dedication ‘For my country’ from the Czech composer, who yearned to create a distinctly bohemian musical language in a time of turmoil across eastern Europe. His celebrated Quartet No.11 features the thrilling, turbulent writing that has placed him at the heart of the chamber music repertoire.
BRITTEN Benjamin, Three Divertimenti for String Quartet
Britten planned these movements as part of a five-movement Quartetto serioso with a subtitle from Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: “Go play, boy, play!” An earlier version of the opening March was written for a suite inspired by the film Emil and the Detectives (the children’s novel by Erich Kästner was a great favourite of Britten’s), but this was never completed. Eventually he settled on a work in three movements, and the first performance was given by the Stratton Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 25 February 1936. The audience response was chilly and a hurt Britten withdrew the Three Divertimenti, which were only published after his death. His brilliant gift for idiomatic quartet writing is already apparent in this early work – from the arresting rhythms and textures of the March to the beguiling central Waltz, and the driving energy of the closing Burlesque.
In 1881, the Viennese violinist Joseph Hellmesberger asked Dvořák to write a new work for his quartet. In October, while working on the opera Dimitrij, Dvořák was alarmed to read an announcement in the Viennese press that the first performance of this quartet would be given on 15 December. He wrote to a friend on 5 November: ‘It still doesn’t exist! … I now have three movements prepared and am working on the finale.’ In fact, Dvořák had no reason to panic: he worked quickly and the C major quartet was written between 25 October and 10 November 1881.
It has fewer overtly Slavonic elements than its immediate predecessor (the E flat Quartet, Op.51), and, perhaps in a nod to Hellmesberger’s commission, the main influences are from Viennese masters: Beethoven and, especially, Schubert. The spacious first movement transforms its two main themes with great ingenuity and harmonic imagination. The Adagio opens with a fervent theme presented as an intimate dialogue between the two violins; its second idea has what Dvořák’s biographer Otakar Šourek described as a ‘veiled expression of melancholy’. The influence of Beethoven is most apparent in the rather terse Scherzo while the falling theme of the central Trio provides a delightful contrast. The finale (a sonata-rondo) brings the work to a joyous conclusion, with Dvořák at his most inimitably Czech.
After all the rush, Hellmesberger’s advertised December premiere in Vienna had to be cancelled due to a catastrophic fire at the Ringtheater, and the earliest known performance was given by Joseph Joachim’s quartet on 2 November 1882 in Berlin.
Scored for the unusual combination of string quartet and double bass, Dvořák’s String Quintet in G major was first performed on 18 March 1876 as the composer’s Op.18 – a number that was changed when the work was first published by Simrock twelve years later in 1888. Originally the work had five movements (with an ‘Intermezzo’ before the Scherzo, reworked as the Nocturne in B major for string orchestra), and despite the published opus number, it is one of the composer’s first chamber works to be fully characteristic of his mature style. The first movement opens with a motif played first by the viola (Dvořák’s own instrument) that dominates much of the musical argument – the triplet figure in it is to be heard in the second theme too. The Scherzo finds Dvořák writing in the style of a folk dance, the opening theme consists of a lively opening motif that contrasts with a gentler idea over which Dvořák later introduces a warmly expressive new tune. The third movement has been described by the great Dvořák scholar Otakar Šourek as ‘one of the most entrancing slow movements in the whole of Dvořák’s chamber music … a flowing stream of passionate warmth [and] depth of feeling’. The finale has the same kind of sunny mood as the first movement, but with an even greater sense of joyful energy. Though there are moments of repose (during which the thematic material is treated to some ingenious transformations), the work ends with what Dvořák’s biographer Otakar Šourek aptly described as ‘high-spirited verve’.
Celebrating the importance of love and happiness in everyone’s lives, Paul Rissmann’s much-loved musical retelling of Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees’s best-selling picture-book returns.
Meet Chutney the Chimpanzee who, with one small act of planting a seed, transforms the lives of the entire town of Drabsville, and teaches its inhabitants to celebrate their differences and make life more colourful along the way!
With narration, visuals from the book and lots of music to introduce the musicians of Ensemble 360, this is a brilliant first concert for 3 – 7 year-olds.
Join Contemporary Music for All Sheffield (CoMA) for this presented workshop that interweaves explorations of the human voice into the unique colours of an open ensemble. CoMA are joined by composers Héloïse Werner (Hermes Experiment) and Ellen Sargen (MD CoMA Manchester) to explore pieces for mixed ensemble and voice. Either join in as an instrumentalist or vocalist on the day (all abilities of instrument and voice are welcome), or simply relax and watch as an audience member, with opportunities for Q&A throughout. Either way, this is an event to bring you closer to the music and scores will be available to peruse on the day.
Allcomers participants will be supported on the day to engage with these open scores, which invite players to make small decisions about what and how to play, and consider new ways of thinking about music.
If you’d like more information about this event, please email Learning and Participation lp@musicintheround.co.uk.
This event is hosted by Music in the Round. It is the third in our series of Participation Events around our Sounds of Now concerts. Don’t miss Hermes Experiment in the evening at 8pm in the Crucible Playhouse. Tickets for the 8pm event are available here.
Read more about CoMA here, and see what previous participants have said about their Allcomer Events here.
It’s becoming an annual tradition for Ensemble 360 to follow the morning Sunday Family Concert with a large-scale afternoon chamber music concert and in using all eleven members of the group, this year’s is rather special. Brahms’s first Serenade and Martinů’s Nonet have been much enjoyed by Leamington audiences before, but the Sextet by Dohňanyi is programmed for the first time. Written in Budapest in 1935, it is a Romantic work, richly scored and bubbling in tunes.
BRAHMS Johannes, Serenade No. 1 in D Op. 11, nonet version reconstructed by David Walter
Allegro Molto
Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
Adagio non troppo
Minuet
Scherzo: Allegro
Rondo: Allegro
Brahms’s D major Serenade is well known as his first orchestral work – but, like the D minor Piano Concerto from the same period, it had a complicated genesis. It was first conceived in 1857 as a Serenade for eight instruments in three or four movements, and a year later it had become a work in six movements, now scored for nine instruments. By 1860, it had been rewritten for full orchestra – the version that survives today (though Brahms even considered developing that into his first symphony, but decided to leave well alone). The nonet version was performed in public on 28 March 1859 at a concert in Hamburg, and a year later the orchestral version was given its premiere in Hannover. Whether Brahms destroyed the chamber version, or whether the material simply vanished is not known, but a skilful reconstruction reveals something of Brahms’s original conception: a work much closer in spirit to the serenades and divertimentos of Mozart than the reworked orchestral version.
This work dates from the last year of Martinů’s life and he wrote it with a specific ensemble in mind: the Czech Nonet. This Nonet is one of Martinů’s most fluent and skilful chamber works and in the outer movements his music suggests something akin to the joyful music-making of a group of Czech folk musicians. The heart of the work is the lyrical central Andante.
Martinů was far from home (he spent his last years in Switzerland) and in this movement he seems to bid a fond farewell to the Czech homeland that he knew he would never see again. The first performance was given by the Czech Nonet at the Salzburg Festival on 27 July 1959 and Martinů died a month later, on 28 August.
Allegro appassionato
Intermezzo
Allegro con sentimento
Presto, quasi l’istesso tempo
Born in Hungary, Dohnányi’s early compositions had been praised by Brahms, and he always had a strong sense of being part of the Austro-German Romantic tradition. In this respect he was very different from his classmate at the Budapest Academy, Béla Bartók, but his music is always beautifully crafted and has very individual harmonic touches. The Sextet for piano, violin, viola, cello, clarinet and horn was completed on 3 April 1935 and it is the most unusually scored of his chamber works. It was first performed in Budapest on 17 June 1935, with the composer at the piano, and received warm reviews. One critic specifically praised the unusual choice of instruments, commenting that ‘the combination … is neither coincidental nor arbitrary.’
The musical structure is unified by Dohnányi’s use of a dramatic rising motif – often on the horn – that is first heard right at the start. The first movement is brooding and tense, but ends with hope (the rising motif returning in triumph). The Intermezzo includes a rather sinister march, while the third movement is a set of variations that includes one that is scherzo-like. This leads directly into the finale – an almost dizzyingly ebullient movement which suggests a kind of jazzed-up Brahms.
A grand work for a grand finale: captivating charm and wit from George Onslow’s Nonet. Nicknamed the ‘French Beethoven’, this is a chance to hear one of his finest and largest-scale chamber works whose five movements move through an expressive array of moods from turbulence to a jubilant conclusion.
Steven Isserlis then joins pianist Tim Horton for a heartfelt lament by Gabriel Fauré, before we sign off with Tchaikovsky’s celebratory musical postcard, Souvenir de Florence. This hugely popular string sextet by the great Russian composer features both Steven Isserlis and Ensemble 360’s cellist Gemma Rosefield, and promises to be a fitting farewell to the Festival in our anniversary year.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“George Onslow, grandson of the first Earl of Onslow, is an interesting figure, straddling the twin worldsof London and Paris. Almost killed in a hunting accident – an incident which inspired his best-known work, a string quintet subtitled ’The Bullet’ – he sounds like a lively character, whose music was admired by Chopin. Tchaikovsky – who praised the piano quartet by Fauré that opened this festival – closes our programme with his irresistibly celebratory Souvenir de Florence. Party time!”
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ONSLOW George, Nonet in A Op.77
Allegro spirituoso
Scherzo. Agitato
Tema con variazioni
Finale. Largo – Allegretto quasi Allegro
Onslow was born in Clemont-Ferrand, the son of an aristocratic British family. He studied with Cramer and Dussek, and though travelling widely, he always remained loyal to the Auvergne working as a successful farmer as well as composing a large body of chamber music (including thirty-six string quartets) along with four symphonies and operas. His music was admired by Schumann and Mendelssohn, and the Nonet, composed in 1848, is dedicated to Prince Albert. The first movement has a nervous energy that is quite characteristic, and from the very start it’s clear that Onslow makes imaginative use of the ensemble. The Scherzo that follows has an unusual combination of austerity and charm, based on pithy Beethovenian main idea. The slow movement is theme with five variations. After a slow introduction, the finale is gently animated, working its way towards a dramatic conclusion.
Originally written as the slow movement of a planned cello sonata, the Élégie was first performed privately at the home of Fauré’s teacher and friend Saint-Saëns in June 1880. After abandoning the sonata (Fauré’s two cello sonatas – both magnificent works – came much later in his career), he decided to publish the Élégie as a stand-alone movement in 1883. It was dedicated to Jules Loeb who gave the first public performance, with Fauré at the piano, in a concert of the Société nationale de musique on 15 December 1883. The outer sections have a quiet solemnity which is underlined by the repeated piano chords heard at the start, over which the cello plays a melody seemingly laden with grief. The central section sees a move to a major key, and the arrival of a glorious lyrical theme – first on the piano, then the cello – which works up to a dramatic climax before a return to the sombre mood of the opening.
Allegro con spirito
Adagio cantabile e con moto
Allegro moderato
Allegro vivace
For Tchaikovsky, Souvenir de Florence was the one of his chamber works that gave him the most trouble. He had promised to write a piece for the St Petersburg Chamber Music Society in 1886 when the Society made him an honorary member, but after a false start in 1887, it was not until June–July 1890 that he composed the work. He found writing for string sextet problematic, as he wrote to his brother Modest in June 1890: ‘I began it three days ago and am writing with difficulty, not for lack of new ideas, but because of the novelty of the form. One requires six independent yet homogeneous voices. This is unimaginably difficult.’ By mid-July he was much happier with progress (‘at the moment I’m terribly pleased with myself’, he wrote to Modest), but the work was revised the following year after Tchaikovsky had heard a private performance. He was clearly taken aback by the results, telling Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov that he planned radical surgery ‘to alter the string sextet, which turned out to be astonishingly bad in all respects.’ Following extensive changes to the coda of the first movement, the middle of the third movement and the fugue in the finale, he was finally happy with the results and sent the score to Jurgenson for publication at the end of January 1892. The work is only tenuously connected with Florence: Tchaikovsky sketched one of the themes there while composing The Queen of Spades, but the Sextet was mostly composed at the house in Frolovskoye (about 100 miles west of Moscow) that he rented between 1888 and 1891. The first movement begins with a vigorous theme followed by a more lyrical idea that serves as a charming contrast. The Adagio starts with a theme that resembles a slowed-down recollection of the first movement, but this gives way to an expansive melody on the first violin, accompanied by pizzicato. The wraith-like central section of this movement is remarkable for the string effects demanded by the composer. The third movement is dominated by a theme that is redolent of a Russian folk tune, and the finale is also launched with a quick folk dance which is treated in a variety of ways including a rather unexpected fugue before heading to an affirmative close.
Nigel Simeone
CLOSE-UP FAMILY CONCERT: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS
A lively family concert, featuring five wind musicians (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn) and a very special guest singer, Roderick Williams (soloist at King Charles III’s Coronation) who will perform Vaughan Williams’ song ‘The Vagabond’. Together they breathe life into the wondrous world of chamber music.
They’ll play well-known classical favourites from Britten and Debussy to Haydn and Holst, alongside more recent works such as Anna Meredith’s playful portrait of a moth and Valerie Coleman’s celebratory Kwanza dance.
Perfect for 7-11 year olds, this is a lively, interactive concert, and a rare opportunity for families to experience the world-famous baritone Roderick Williams performing up close in the Crucible Playhouse!
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Programme: BRITTENI. Prologue from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1’30) HAYDN arr.ParryIV. Rondo-Allegretto from Divertimento No.1 (2’) ONSLOWIV. Finale (extract) from Wind Quintet(3’30) ARNOLDI. Allegro con brio from ‘Three Shanties’(2’30) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS arr. Morton ‘The Vagabond’ from Songs of Travel (3’) LIGETI III. Allegro grazioso from ‘6 Bagatelles’ (2’30) DEBUSSY‘Syrinx’(3’) BACEWICZI. Allegro from Quintet for Wind Instruments (3’) STRAVINSKY II. from ‘Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet’(1’) HOLSTIV. Air and Variations from Wind Quintet (4’) DANZIIV. Allegretto from Wind Quintet No.2(3’) MEREDITH‘Moth’ from ‘Tripotage Miniatures’(2’30) COLEMANUmoja(2’45)
FAURÉ Piano Quintet No.1 (31’) RAVEL Chansons Madécasses (13’) POULENC Sextet (18’) FAURÉ La Bonne Chanson (33′)
Musical national treasure Roderick Williams, soloist at King Charles III’s Coronation and Singer-in-Residence with Music in the Round, returns to the Crucible Playhouse with Ensemble 360 for a magical tour through the City of Light.
Fauré’s first Piano Quintet was a labour of love that he nurtured over many years, and the song cycles and works for violin he wrote alongside it echo through this exquisitely constructed piece.
Poulenc’s kaleidoscopic sextet encompasses jazz, ragtime, pastiche of Mozart and a tribute to Ravel, whose ‘Madagascan’ songs they follow, in this programme luxuriating in the many sounds of fin de siècle Paris.
Culminating in Fauré’s intricate song-cycle, crafted from the poems of Paul Verlaine, this concert reunites Ensemble 360, with Music in the Round’s singer-in-residence Roderick Williams for the first time since 2017.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“What a treat it will be to hear Roderick Williams in Fauré’s seductive ‘La Bonne Chanson’ (the first time he’s ever sung it, I understand!). Before that Ravel takes us away from Paris on a magic carpet for his bittersweet Chansons Madécasses. Poulenc is perhaps the ultimate Parisian composer, and so manages to make an appearance here – despite his disgraceful sin of (apparently) not appreciating Fauré’s music. Well – apart from that, he’s a wonderful composer…”
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FAURÉ Gabriel, Piano Quintet No.1
Molto moderato
Adagio
Allegretto moderato
No other work by Fauré gave his as much trouble as the First Piano Quintet. The earliest sketches date from 1887 (in the same sketch-book as the ‘Pie Jesu’ from the Requiem), the bulk of the composition was done between 1890 and 1894, and the work was completed and revised in 1903–5. When it was published in 1907, it was not in Paris, but in New York, issued by G. Schirmer. The first performance was given on 23 March 1906 when Fauré himself and a quartet led by Eugène Ysaÿe (the work’s dedicatee) played it in Brussels at the home of Octave Maus. A week later (30 March) they gave it at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
One early enthusiast for the work was the young Aaron Copland. In the early 1920s he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger – a Fauré pupil – and it was through her that Copland came to love this music. In 1924, he published an article in Musical Quarterly entitled ‘Gabriel Fauré: a neglected master’, likening Fauré to Brahms, with ‘a genius as great, a style as individual and a technique as perfect’. Copland described the first movement of the quintet: ‘The initial theme is an excellent example of that continuity of line that [is] peculiar to Faure’s late manner. A short subsidiary theme for strings alone, which later plays so important a part in the development, brings us to the second idea – an ardent, yearning phrase which must convince the most recalcitrant ear of Faure’s great powers of melody-making. Note with what technical mastery the recapitulation is made the inevitable climax of the development and is so varied as to take away all feeling of repetition.’ The extended Adagio – melancholy and introspective – is followed by a last movement that Copland described as ‘a sort of combination Scherzo–Finale’.
Nigel Simeone
RAVEL Maurice, Chanson Madécasses
Nahandove, O belle nahandove! Aoua! Aoua! Mefiez-vous des blancs! Il est doux de se coucher
The Chansons madécasses, scored for voice, flute, cello and piano, were commissioned by the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and composed in 1925–6. The texts by Évariste de Parny (1753–1814) are among the earliest prose poems in French, published in 1787. Equally striking are the strong anti-colonialist sentiments of these poems written by a French aristocrat who had been born on what is now the island of Réunion, east of Madagascar. Ravel himself wrote that the songs included ‘a new element, dramatic, even erotic, as a result of the subject matter of Parny’s poems’, and there is no doubting the sensuous erotic charge in ‘Nahandove’. But there is drama of a different kind in the powerfully anti-slavery themes of the second song, ‘Aoua!’, beginning with the warning ‘Méfiez-vous des blancs’ (‘Do not trust the white men’), its words lamenting the violence of the settlers who dispossessed and then enslaved the indigenous population. Ravel creates a harsh and terrifying musical counterpart for the poem, with unflinching dissonance, piercing high notes and motoric rhythms. This is Ravel at his most experimental, and also at his most provocative. The third song comes as a relief, somehow serving to ease the impact of ‘Aoua!’ And yet for all the stillness and simplicity of ‘Il est doux de se coucher’, there is no easy serenity.
POULENC Francis, Sextet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn and Piano FP 100
Très vite et emporté
Divertissement. Andantino
Finale. Prestissimo
The Sextet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn was a work over which Poulenc lavished a great deal of time and effort – the final results did not come easily or quickly. First performed in its original version at an all-Poulenc concert at the Salle Chopin in Paris on 19 June 1931 (and described in the Chesterian magazine as one of two ‘intelligent and lovely’ new compositions heard that evening), Poulenc reworked the Sextet several times before it reached a definitive form in 1939. On 29 August 1939 he wrote to Marie-Blanche Polignac that he had ‘thoroughly revised my entire Sextet (now very good)’. The result of this decade of reflection and rewriting is indeed ‘very good’: Poulenc’s most imposing chamber work is notable from the outset for its muscularity and seriousness – though the central ‘Divertissement’ provides an oasis of Mozartian repose – and, after an almost wild Prestissimo, the finale closes with an epilogue notable for its solemn stillness: Stravinsky-like austerity here is softened by Poulenc’s more emollient harmonic language. The first performance of the Sextet in its finished form took place during the early months of the German Occupation of Paris, on 9 December 1940, at a concert given by the Association de Musique Contemporaine, with Poulenc at the piano and the Quintette à vent de Paris. Poulenc kept the manuscript to himself during the years of the war and eventually sent it to Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen for publication in 1945. This brought to an end what Poulenc’s biographer Carl B. Schmidt has aptly described as ‘one of the most complicated compositional sagas of Poulenc’s career.’ Poulenc recorded the Sextet not with the original French players, but with the Philadelphia Wind Quintet in March 1960, during one of his last visits to the United States.
La bonne chanson was the most ambitious of Fauré’s settings of Verlaine’s poetry. The first eight songs were completed in 1893 but the ninth was only added in February 1894. A true cycle, La bonne chanson has several recurring themes which bring musical unity to the whole structure. According to the Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux, the result is ‘far more than just a volume of songs. It reaches the proportions almost of a vocal symphony.’ The inspiration for the work was the singer Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré became infatuated in the early 1890s. She gave Fauré advice about revisions while he was working on the songs, and sang them in private at her home in Bougival, with the composer at the piano. La bonne chanson was first given in a concert by the tenor Maurice Bagès on 25 April 1894. Bagès also gave the first London performance on 1 April 1898 (at Frank Schuster’s home in Old Queen Street) and it was for this occasion that Fauré made the version for piano and string quintet (though he later wondered if this arrangement was ‘unnecessary’, it has a tone colour all its own, quite distinct from the solo piano version). Reactions to the new cycle were mixed: Marcel Proust was enchanted by it, writing that ‘I adore this collection’, but he noted that Debussy (who later married Emma Bardac) thought it was ‘too complicated.’ History has come down firmly on Proust’s side: La bonne chanson is recognised as one of Fauré’s greatest achievements, combining sophisticated musical design with lyrical inspiration.
R SCHUMANN Gesänge der Frühe No.1 (3′) FAURÉ Nocturne No.13 (8′) RAMEAU Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes (7′) MENDELSSOHN Variations Sérieuses Op.54 (12′) R SCHUMANN Waldszenen (extracts) Einsame Blumen, Verrufene Stelle, Freundliche Landschaft, Vogel als Prophet (10′) RAVEL Miroirs (extracts) Oiseaux tristes, Alborada del gracioso, Vallée des cloches (18′)
No interval
Named ‘Critics’ Classical Music Breakthrough Artist’ in The Times Arts Awards 2021, Mishka Rushdie Momen was praised as “one of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists” shortly before she gave her debut recital at the Crucible Playhouse in January 2022. This recital highlights her versatility, with music encompassing three centuries, from the baroque lyricism of Rameau to the impressionism of Ravel. The work of Robert Schumann also features, a composer with whom Mishka has a special affinity and of whom she is a sensitive and arresting interpreter.
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SCHUMANN Robert, Gesänge der Frühe No.1
Nature was always a potent source for composers, and this recital includes several pieces which were inspired by the sights and sounds of the natural world. Robert Schumann (1810–1856) composed the Gesänge der Frühe, Op.133, in October 1853, just after completing his Violin Concerto. The five pieces were described by Clara Schumann in her diary as ‘dawn-songs, very original as always but hard to understand, their tone is so very strange’. This elusive mood is apparent in the first piece, marked Im ruhigen tempo. A chorale-like theme, occasionally coloured with Schumann’s characteristic harmonic dissonances, the music was described by Schumann himself as ‘impressions at the approach and growth of the morning, but more as an expression of feeling than painting.’
Nigel Simeone
FAURÉ Gabriel, Nocturne No.13
Gabriel Fauré composed thirteen nocturnes for piano between 1875 and 1921. The last of them, No.13 in B minor, Op.119, was completed on 31 December 1921, two weeks after the death of his friend Saint-Saëns. This event may have influenced the noble and introspective mood of the work, much of which seems to inhabit a world of private meditation, though it rises to a climax of great intensity before a return of the opening material. This substantial work moves through passion, anger, consolation, and grief, finally reaching what the British musicologist Robert Orledge described as ‘a visionary coda’ which gradually sinks into silence.
Nigel Simeone
RAMEAU Jean-Philippe, Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) published his first collection of harpsichord pieces in 1706 and further collections appeared in the 1720s. Though widely admired at the time, these works lapsed into obscurity and it took their rediscovery at the end of the nineteenth century, when a handsome edition, prepared by Camille Saint-Saëns, was published by Durand in 1895. Rameau’s collections mostly comprise dance movements, such as the two Rigaudons and ‘Double’ from the 1724 volume of Pièces de clavecin. This was also the source of one of his most celebrated imitative pieces, Le rappel des oiseauxwith its evocations of chirruping birdsong, and of Les tendres plaintes, a more subtle evocation of melancholy.
Nigel Simeone
MENDELSSOHN Felix, Variations Sérieuses Op.54
Felix Mendelssohn’sVariations sérieuseswere completed on 4 June 1841 and had been written to encourage contributions for a statue of Beethoven in Bonn. The work was published along with pieces by Liszt, Chopin, Moscheles and Henselt (among others) in a fund-raising ‘Beethoven-Album’. The piece was much admired at the time by Ignaz Moscheles, Mendelssohn’s friend and fellow-contributor to the album, who often included it in his recital programme. It comprises an original theme followed by 17 sharply contrasted variations, the first group gradually building momentum, a solemn chorale (Variation 14), and the brilliant virtuosity of the closing pages.
Schumann’s Waldszenen, Op.82, dates from 1848, just after finishing his opera Genoveva, the last act of which takes place in a forest. The woodland inspiration evidently persisted and the new set of pieces was completed in January 1849, with the last of them, ‘Vogel als Prophet’ (‘The Prophet Bird’) added as an inspired afterthought. One early review captured the spirit of these pieces, delighting in ‘the enigmatic rustlings, the distant melodies, the mystical flowers in this magical forest.’
Nigel Simeone
RAVEL Maurice, Miroirs (extracts) Oiseaux tristes, Alborada del gracioso, Vallée des cloches
Maurice Ravel composed Miroirsin 1904–5, and each piece was dedicated to a fellow member of Les Apaches, the group of musical friends formed in 1903. They included the pianist Ricardo Viñes (‘Oiseaux tristes’), the critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (‘Alborada del gracioso’) and the composer Maurice Delage (‘La vallée des cloches’). ‘Oiseaux triste’ is an evocation of a solitary bird, joined by others in due course. ‘Alborada del gracioso’ is a virtuoso piece, based on the rhythms and melodic shapes of an exciting Spanish folk dance. Like Debussy, Ravel heard the gamelan music at the 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris, and memories of those sounds may well have been in his mind when he composed ‘La vallée des cloches’, a piece in which different layers of bell sounds mingle in the most atmospheric way.
Violinist Irène Duval, a prize-winner at the 2021 Young Classical Artists Trust International Auditions, opens this concert with a monumental sonata written by Fauré’s violin virtuoso pupil, George Enescu. Irène joins Ensemble 360 for Fauré’s only string quartet, an ethereal piece that derives its principal melody from Fauré’s early Violin Concerto. It was his final work and is a fitting swan-song that resolves into an ultimately life-affirming finale.
Note from Guest Curator, Steven Isserlis
“Enescu’s impassioned Violin Sonata No.2 reveals the strong influence of his revered teacher Fauré. Like his beloved Schumann, Fauré used a theme from his Violin Concerto in his final work, his only string quartet. Unlike Schumann, however, Fauré did so deliberately; having discarded the Violin Concerto, he must have been loath to waste such a beautiful melody. It provides a poignantly human response to the chant-like opening of a work that gently, lovingly bids us farewell. Fauré’s work here is done, he seems to tell us; and it is time for him to pass on to the better world he has so often allowed us to experience through his music.”
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ENESCU George, Violin Sonata No.2 Op.6
Assez mouvementé Tranquillement Vif
Born in Romania, George Enescu was a child prodigy and he entered the Vienna Conservatory at the age of seven. His teachers there included Joseph Hellmesberger and Robert Fuchs, and in 1891 Enescu was introduced to Brahms. After graduating in Vienna at the age of twelve, Enescu moved to Paris where he studied with Fauré and André Gedalge – both of whom also taught Ravel. Enescu’s Violin Sonata No. 2 was written in April 1899 when he was 17 years old – and still a student. Its premiere was given in Paris on 22 February 1900 by Jacques Thibaud with the composer at the piano, and the sonata was dedicated to Thibaud and his pianist brother, Joseph. Enescu himself recalled that the opening theme first came into his head during a walk when he was 14: ‘I carried it inside me for three years; then, at the age of seventeen, I wrote my Second Violin Sonata in the space of a fortnight.’ As Enescu’s biographer Noel Malcolm has noted, the work has ‘an extraordinary unity, mainly because of the way it is pervaded by the long, mysterious … theme which opens the first movement.’ This theme is developed and transformed throughout the Sonata, giving the whole work a powerful coherence. The musical language has occasional echoes of Fauré, but even in this early work, Enescu was a highly original creative voice, even incorporating elements of the modes and harmonies of his native Romanian folk music in the slow movement.
Fauré worked on a violin concerto in 1878–9, but the project was destined to remain unfinished. Though the first two movements were performed by the violinist Ovide Musin and the Colonne Orchestra on 12 April 1880, the finale was never written. The slow movement of the concerto was destroyed, but was probably reworked as the Andante for violin and piano Op.75. The first movement – lyrical and expansive – survived complete, and turned out to be a surprisingly fruitful source for the composer: Fauré’s biographer Robert Orledge noted that its two main themes ‘proved far better suited to the more intimate medium of the String Quartet’ when they were reused ‘in the light of a lifetime’s experience’ in his last work, written in 1923–4.
Fauré’s String Quartet was his last composition, completed in 1924 shortly before his death. It was also his first chamber work without piano. For the first movement he drew on ideas composed 45 years earlier for his Violin Concerto, but now reworked in a much more compact and tightly organised sonata form structure. The Andante was written first, in September 1923 at Annecy. The opening Allegro moderato was completed in Paris and the third movement (combining elements of scherzo and finale) was finished in 1924, back in Annecy. The result is a work of great expressive power, with, as the British musicologist Robert Orledge has noted, ‘the craftsmanship being so consummate that we need to listen hard even to notice the joins or the thematic counterpoint that gives the Quartet its virile strength.’ On 12 September 1924, Fauré wrote to his wife from Annecy announcing that ‘yesterday evening I finished the finale. So that’s the quartet finished’. A month later, weakened by a bout of pneumonia, Fauré returned to Paris where he died peacefully early in the morning of 4 November. Two days later, the composer Albert Roussel wrote a moving tribute in the magazine Comoedia: Fauré ‘occupied a place apart in the history of music and, without noise or fuss or meaningless gesture, he pointed the way towards marvellous horizons overflowing with freshness and light.’
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