SUK Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale ‘St. Wenceslas’ Op 35a COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet Op 10 HOWELLS Rhapsodic Quintet Op 31 DVOŘÁK String Quartet in F major No 12 Op 96 ‘American’
Praised by The Guardian as “one of the most adaptable chamber groups in the country”, Ensemble 360 is renowned for its virtuoso performances, bold programming and engaging interpretations of music. They present a sumptuous evening of music, with masterpieces ranging from Herbert Howells’s mystical Rhapsodic Quintet to Dvořák’s profound ‘American Quartet’. At the heart of this programme, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s exquisite Clarinet Quintet is arguably the composer’s greatest achievement in chamber music.
Josef Suk, a student of Antonín Dvořák and later his son-in-law, was a composer with a distinct artistic voice and strong ties to Czech musical heritage. His composition, the “Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale,” pays homage to the Bohemian patron saint, St. Wenceslas, and was written when a member of the Bohemian String Quartet to supplement the obligatory playing of the Austrian national anthem (after 1914) with a more distinctively Bohemian piece, and prayer for the wellbeing of the Czech people.
The “Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale’” is a single-movement for string quartet, which was later expanded into a version for string orchestra, adding a double bass line, and later still adapted for violin and organ. Suk‘s use of the violin as the leading voice enhances the expressive nature of the piece, allowing for moments of spiritual contemplation. The work commences with a solemn and tender introduction, featuring the initial statement of the hymn melody. Through subtle variations, this simple melody moves from serene introspection to intense and soaring passages as a recurring motif. The piece reaches a climax with the violin in its highest register, conveying a profound yearning. It gradually fades away, into tranquility.
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Samuel, Clarinet Quintet Op.10
Allegro energico
Larghetto affettuoso
Scherzo. Allegro leggiero
Finale. Allegro agitato – Poco più moderato – Vivace
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London and entered to Royal College of Music in 1890 to study the violin. His ability as a composer soon became apparent, and he studied composition with Stanford, becoming one of his favourite pupils. His Piano Quintet Op.1 (1893) heralded the arrival of a remarkable talent, but the Clarinet Quintet, composed in 1895, demonstrates Coleridge-Taylor at the height of his creative powers. Stanford had given his students a challenge, declaring that after Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, written in 1891, nobody would be able to escape its influence. Coleridge-Taylor couldn’t resist trying, and when Stanford saw the result he is said to have exclaimed ‘you’ve done it!’ Coleridge-Taylor took his influences not from Brahms but from another great contemporary composer: in places this work sounds like the clarinet quintet that Dvořák never wrote. That’s a mark of Coleridge-Taylor’s wonderfully fluent and assured writing. The sonata form first movement is both confident and complex, with the clarinet forming part of an intricately-woven ensemble texture. The Larghetto has a free, rhapsodic character, dominated by a haunting main theme. The Scherzo delights in rhythmic tricks while the central Trio section is more lyrical. The opening theme of the finale governs much of what follows until a recollection of the slow movement gives way to an animated coda. The first performance took place at the Royal College of Music on 10 July 1895, with George Anderson playing the clarinet. Afterwards, Stanford wrote to the great violinist Joseph Joachim describing the piece as ‘the most remarkable thing in the younger generation that I have seen.’
HOWELLS Herbert, Rhapsodic Quintet for Clarinet and Strings Op.31
Lento, ma appassionato – A tempo, tranquillo – Piu mosso, inquieto – Doppio movimento ritmico, e non troppo allegro – Più elato – Meno mosso – Lento, assai tranquillo – Più adagio
Herbert Howells is probably best remembered for his church music (including the famous hymn tune ‘All my hope on God is founded’ as well as several outstanding settings of service music) and for his choral masterpiece Hymnus paradisi. But he was also a gifted composer for instruments and wrote a good deal of chamber music at the start of his career. The Rhapsodic Quintet was completed in June 1919 and Howells himself said that there was ‘a mystic feeling about the whole thing’. Still, mystic feelings didn’t come without some serious hard work, and the Howells scholar Paul Spicer has drawn attention to an entry in the composer’s diary where he noted that the quintet had involved quite a lot of preparatory thinking. Howells wrote of his ‘long ponderous thoughts on problems of musical form … hours spent in an easy-chair, fire-gazing, form-thinking.’ The ‘form-thinking’ was clearly productive, since this beautifully written quintet for clarinet and strings in one movement appears to flow effortlessly from one idea to the next as well as having overall coherence. This was an early work – Howells had only recently finished his studies at the Royal College of Music with Stanford and Charles Wood – but his handling of the instruments shows tremendous assurance. Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music makes particular mention of this, describing the work as having a ‘sensitive appreciation of instrumental needs’, but there is more to it than that, since Howells also shows a great gift for unfolding long, lyrical melodies, and contrasting these with more capricious ideas. It’s this combination of fluent and idiomatic writing with memorable thematic material that led Christopher Palmer, in his biography of Howells, to call the Rhapsodic Quintet ‘an outstanding achievement’.
DVOŘÁK Antonin, String Quartet in F Op.96 ‘American’
Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Molto vivace
Finale. Vivace ma non troppo
Dvořák was teaching in New York in 1893, and for his summer holiday he travelled over a thousand miles westwards, to the village of Spillville in Iowa, set in the valley of the Turkey River. It had been colonized by Czechs in the 1850s and in these congenial surroundings Dvořák quickly wrote the String Quartet in F major. On the last page of the manuscript draft, he wrote: ‘Finished on 10 June 1893, Spillville. I’m satisfied. Thanks be to God. It went quickly.’
Coming immediately after the ‘New World’ Symphony (which was to have its triumphant première in New York later in the year), the quartet has a mood that suggests something of his contentment in Spillville. Dvořák’s assistant Josef Kovařík recalled the composer’s routine: walks, composing, playing the organ for Mass and talking to locals, observing that he ‘scarcely ever talked about music and I think that was one of the reasons why he felt so happy there.’
Just how ‘American’ is the quartet? While remaining completely true to himself, Dvořák admitted that ‘as for my … F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville) – I should never have written these works the way I did if I hadn’t seen America’. The first performance was given in Boston on New Year’s Day 1894 by the Kneisel Quartet.
Meet Chutney the Chimpanzee who, with one small act of planting a seed, transforms the lives of the entire town of Drabsville, and teaches its inhabitants to celebrate their differences, making life more colourful along the way!
Celebrating the importance of love and happiness, Paul Rissmann’s hour-long musical retelling of Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees’s much-loved picture book is performed by Ensemble 360 and narrator Lucy Drever. With narration, visuals from the book and plenty of chances to join in, this is a brilliant concert for 3 – 7 year-olds.
A unique programme of music and movement, inspired by the physicality of Roosendael’s Rotations, created by virtuoso recorder player Tabea Debus and dazzling accordion player Samuele Telari, in collaboration with award-winning choreographer Sally Marie whose choreography is performed by dancer Elisa Blasi.
Featuring a new commission and works from giants of twentieth century music, the show’s choreography of the musicians makes full use of the ‘in the round’ setting.
This performance has no interval. There will be a post-show Q&A with the artists.
PÄRT – Pari Intervallo
BARTÓK – Pe loc (From Six Romanian Folk Dances)
ROOSENDAEL – Rotations for solo recorder
BARTÓK – Buciumeana (From Six Romanian Folk Dances)
LIM – slowly, turning
SEMIONOV – Allegretto (From Bulgarian Suite)
BACH –Siciliano, Largo (From Sonata in c-Moll BWV 1017)
CARDINI – Would you keep a secret?
BARTÓK – Poargă românească & Mărunte (From Six Romanian Folk Dances)
HOSOKAWA – Sen V for solo accordion
PÄRT – Spiegel im Spiegel
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!”
Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same time. Find out more here.
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!
Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same time. Find out more here.
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)
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