BEETHOVEN 250: COME AND PLAY

Ensemble 360 & Hallam Sinfonia

Cadman Room - Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
Sunday 20 March 2022, 2.00pm

£5 per participant

Public performance at 5.00pm (FREE, with donations kindly received on the door)

Sold Out

Come and play along with members of Ensemble 360 and one of Sheffield’s leading orchestras, Hallam Sinfonia! Spend an afternoon with these amazing, friendly musicians, playing through the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (da-da-da-DUUUUMMM). 

We have parts for all abilities of playing, whether you scraped through Grade I or were a concert soloist at the age of 12. As long as you have some experience of playing with others as part of a large group, you are really welcome! Our parts are specially arranged by Andrew J. Smith (BBC Ten Pieces) so you can select the part you feel most comfortable playing. We’ve even got parts for non-orchestral brass, saxophone and guitar. All you need is a working instrument and piles of enthusiasm – just come along and give it a go! 

The afternoon will culminate in an informal performance for an audience of friends and family. 

Please note that anyone under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult for the duration of the event. 

Fancy a chat before signing up? Email Ellen Sargen with any questions at ellen@musicintheround.co.uk. 

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is one of the BBC Ten Pieces Visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ten-pieces for a comprehensive set of resources to explore!  

www.hallamsinfonia.org.uk 

Download the concert programme notes

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MOZART, DVOŘÁK & SCHUBERT

Ensemble 360

Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa
Sunday 6 February 2022, 3.00pm

Tickets: £20

Past Event

Benjamin Nabarro and Claudia Ajmone-Marsan violins
Rachel Roberts viola, Gemma Rosefield cello
Tim Horton piano with guest double bassist

Mozart   Piano Quartet in G minor K478
Dvořák   String Quintet No 2 in G Op 77
Schubert   Piano Quintet in A D667 ‘The Trout’

Ensemble 360 has traditionally followed the morning Family Concert with a large-scale chamber concert attracting growing and enthusiastic audiences. The Dvořák and Schubert Quintets make a feature of the double bass adding an extra sonority, as we trip through Bohemian woods and listen to the babbling stream teeming with trout.

Concert generously supported by David and Gina Wilson

Izzy Gizmo family concert

Ensemble 360 & Polly Ives

Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa
Sunday 6 February 2022, 11.30am

Tickets
Children £6 | Adults £12
Family Ticket £32 (2 adults + 2 children)

Past Event

Best-selling children’s book, Izzy Gizmo, tells the enchanting story of an intrepid young inventor who puts her talents to work to rescue a crow that can’t fly. This brand-new family concert brings Izzy’s mechanical marvels and infectious creative spirit to life!

Performed by Ensemble 360, narrated by Polly Ives, and with pictures from the book, this concert is a great introduction to live music for children. Original music by Paul Rissmann features pots, pans, whistles and household items (as well as orchestral instruments).

Ideal for ages 3-7 but great fun for everyone, it’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in.

BRAHMS, RABL & ZEMLINSKY

Ensemble 360

Cast, Doncaster
Saturday 16 April 2022, 7.00pm

Tickets: £13.50 / £9 under 26s

Past Event
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No.2 in A
RABL Quartet in E flat for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano
ZEMLINSKY Clarinet Trio
Ensemble 360 return with a sumptuous and sparkling concert of strings and clarinet repertoire. Opening with Brahms’s virtuosic sonata, the concert begins with lyricism, grace and warmth. The programme continues with two of the composers lesser-known inheritors who crackle with fin-de-diècle verve: Rabl’s optimistic quartet is an overlooked gem of the chamber repertoire, by turns languid and vivacious. Closing with Zemlinsky’s passionate trio, this is a programme full of energy which concludes with an explosive flourish.

BRAHMS, RABL & ZEMLINSKY

Ensemble 360

The Stables, Milton Keynes
Thursday 17 March 2022, 8.00pm

Tickets: £20 / £16.50

Past Event

BRAHMS Violin Sonata No.2 in A minor
RABL Quartet in E-Flat minor
ZEMLINKSKY Clarinet Trio in D minor

Ensemble 360 return to The Stables with a sumptuous and sparkling concert of strings and clarinet repertoire. Opening with Brahms’s virtuosic sonata, the concert begins with lyricism, grace and warmth. The programme continues with two of the composers lesser known inheritors who crackle with fin-de-siècle verve: Rabl’s optimistic quartet is an overlooked gem of the chamber repertoire, by turns languid and vivacious. Closing with Zemlinksky’s passionate trio, this is a programme full of warmth and energy which concludes with an explosive flourish.

BRAHMS, RABL & ZEMLINSKY

Ensemble 360

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley
Friday 15 April 2022, 7.30pm

Tickets: £13.50 / £9 disabled and unemployed

Past Event
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No.2 in A
RABL Quartet in E flat for clarinet, violin, cello and piano
ZEMLINSKY Clarinet Trio
Ensemble 360 return with a sumptuous and sparkling concert of strings and clarinet repertoire. Opening with Brahms’s virtuosic sonata, the concert begins with lyricism, grace and warmth. The programme continues with two of the composers lesser-known inheritors who crackle with fin-de-diècle verve: Rabl’s optimistic quartet is an overlooked gem of the chamber repertoire, by turns languid and vivacious. Closing with Zemlinsky’s passionate trio, this is a programme full of energy which concludes with an explosive flourish.

MOZART, ADÉS, STRAVINKSY & BRAHMS

Ensemble 360

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley
Friday 11 February 2022, 7.30pm

Tickets: £13.50 / £9 Disabled & Unemployed

Past Event
MOZART Piano Trio in B flat K502
ADÈS Catch
STRAVINSKY A Soldier’s Tale Suite
BRAHMS Clarinet Trio

Marking clarinettist Matthew Hunt’s final appearance in Barnsley as a member of Ensemble 360, he appears in three pieces for this concert. Adès’s Catch is a series of intricate musical games and explosive new sounds for strings, clarinet and piano. Stravinsky’s narrative work, A Soldier’s Tale features an enjoyable mix of styles including ragtime and klezmer to create a dramatic melodic miniature epic. To end, one of Brahms’s later works, his Clarinet Trio providing a fitting conclusion to this fantastic concert.

“Ensemble 360 [gave] a mesmerising performance” ***** Bach Track

MOZART, ADÉS, STRAVINSKY & BRAHMS

Ensemble 360

Cast, Doncaster
Saturday 12 February 2022, 7.00pm

Tickets: £13.50 / £9 (under 26s)

Past Event

MOZART Piano Trio in B flat K502  ADÈS Catch  STRAVINSKY A Soldier’s Tale Suite  BRAHMS Clarinet Trio

Marking clarinettist Matthew Hunt’s final appearance in Doncaster as a member of Ensemble 360, he appears in three pieces for this concert. Adès’s Catch is a series of intricate musical games and explosive new sounds for strings, clarinet and piano. Stravinsky’s narrative work, A Soldier’s Tale, features an enjoyable mix of styles including ragtime and klezmer to create a dramatic and melodic miniature epic. To end, one of Brahms’s later works, his Clarinet Trio providing a fitting conclusion to this fantastic concert.

COME & SING

Robert Webb & Shruthi Rajasekar

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 15 May 2022, 10.00am

£5 plus Eventbrite booking fee

Past Event

Singers of all ages and abilities come together for music-making and an informal performance.

Sing with us in the peaceful setting of Samuel Worth Chapel as we explore two pieces of beautiful music that meld histories together through time.

We’ll workshop English composer Tippett’s arrangement of Willis’ Steal Away and American composer Shruthi Rajasekar’s Jayjaykar! before an informal performance to friends and family at the end of the event (1pm-1.30pm).

Sheffield Chamber Choir’s Robert Webb will lead us in performing this beautiful music which together references choral traditions from both England and India while providing perspectives from two very different places and points in history. Shruthi Rajasekar will also be zapping in from the US during the day and has recorded insights about her music especially for you. We’ll be sharing this with you during the break. 

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).

Recordings of both pieces can be found here: https://linktr.ee/mitr_participation and if you’d like a chat before signing up, please email ellen@musicintheround.co.uk

by RayMesh Photography

 

SOUNDS OF NOW WORKSHOP

Sheffield CoMA

Site Gallery, Sheffield
Thursday 19 May 2022, 4.30pm / 5.30pm

FREE, please book through box office

Past Event

*Please note the new start time for this event*

You are welcome to attend from 4.30pm to observe the process of this workshop, or to join the group at 5.30pm to watch the partcipants’ performances of Sarah Hennies’ Growing Block and Joanna Bailie’s Hildegardestraße Bundesallee.

Led by Sheffield CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) in partnership with Sheffield Music School, this workshop features new works for mixed ensemble. Edward Henderson of Bastard Assignments also joins the session to reflect on the branches of experimental practice that have informed both CoMA and his group, ahead of their Sounds of Now concert the same evening.

OBSERVE: COMPOSITION WORKSHOP

Helen Grime, Ensemble 360 & students from The University of Sheffield

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Wednesday 18 May 2022, 11.00am

FREE, please book through box office

Past Event

Join us for the final hour of a morning in which composition students from The University of Sheffield work on their latest compositions with Ensemble 360 as they are coached by Helen Grime.

*Please note the change to the previously advertised venue for this event and the new time. This workshop will now be held in the Crucible Studio Theatre, as originally advertised.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.*

FESTIVAL LAUNCH

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Friday 13 May 2022, 7.15pm

Tickets: £20
£14 Disabled & Unemployed
£5 Students & Under 35s

Save £s when you book for 5 or more concerts*

Past Event

JANÁČEK Concertino (17’)
MARTINŮ Three Madrigals (16′)
MEREDITH Tripotage Miniatures (15’)
DVOŘÁK Piano Quintet No.2 (40′)

Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No.2 provides a joyous opening to our first live festival in two years. Before this, the world-class musicians of Ensemble 360 have some fun with Anna Meredith’s Tripotage Miniatures, best translated as ‘jiggery-pokery’, plus Martinů’s Three Madrigals for violin and viola, full of playful repartee, and Janáček’s Concertino, featuring movements he compared to a ‘grumpy hedgehog’, a ‘fidgety squirrel’ and ‘a scene from a fairy-tale’. 

Welcome drinks
Celebrate the start of the Festival with us and enjoy a post-concert complimentary glass of wine or soft drink (served to all ticket-holders).

This evening is generously supported by Kate Dugdale.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival runs 13–21 May 2022

Download a Festival brochure

Download

JANÁČEK Leoš, Concertino

For piano, two violins, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon

Moderato
Più mosso
Con moto
Allegro

Janáček started his Concertino after hearing the pianist Jan Heřman playing his song-cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared in November 1924. The composer told Heřman that he’d played it ‘magnificently, like no one else’, and he soon set to work on a piece for him. The first sketches are dated ‘Prague, 1 January 1925, by the Vltava’ and ‘11 January 1925, on the train from Prague’, but this piece recalls not the nation’s capital where it was conceived, but the Moravian countryside where Janáček grew up and where, in fact, the work was finished: the manuscript is dated on the title page ‘Hukvaldy, 29 April 1925’. Though not stated on the score, the Concertino is programmatic. Janáček wrote to Heřman that ‘it arose from the youthful mood of the sextet Mládí’ and in a letter to Kamila Stösslová he told her that he had composed ‘a piano concerto – Spring. There’s a cricket, midges, a roebuck, a torrent – yes, and a man!’ In a later description from 1927, the theme of spring remained, but Janáček assigned a specific animal character to each of the first three movements: a hedgehog for the first, a squirrel for the second, and various nocturnal animals for the third. According to a note on the autograph manuscript, the fourth movement represents a rushing torrent. The result is one of Janáček’s most enchanting and untroubled chamber works, notable for some typically inventive scoring as well as its great charm. Much to Jan Heřman’s understandable irritation, he didn’t give the first performance of the Concertino that Janáček dedicated to him. In a letter of 1 July 1925, Janáček agreed to let the young pianist Ilona Štěpanová-Kurzová give the première, which she did on 16 February 1926, at a concert of the Club of Moravian Composers in Brno.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

MARTINŮ Bohuslav, Three Madrigals

Poco allegro
Poco andante
Allegro

It was hearing a performance of Mozart’s Duo in B flat played by Josef and Lillian Fuchs (brother and sister) that inspired Martinů to compose his Three Madrigals in February–March 1947, with the subtitle ‘Duo No. 1’ on the autograph manuscript. Martinů wrote to his friend Miloš Šafránek on 16 May 1947: ‘I have written Three Madrigals for violin and viola … for J. Fuchs and Lillian (his sister) who is a great and unique viola player. I heard them at a concert and was amazed by their artistic quality, so I wrote the Duo for them, and it seems to be good. They are both excited and will put it in their Carnegie recital.’ This was given on 22 December 1947 and in the next day’s New York Times, the venerated critic Virgil Thomson gave a warm welcome to the new work: ‘a delight for musical fantasy, for ingenious figuration [and] for Renaissance-style evocation.’ Josef and Lillian Fuchs performed the Madrigals on many more occasions and when their recording of the work was issued in 1950, it was coupled, appropriately, with the Mozart Duo in B flat.

© Nigel Simeone

MEREDITH Anna, Tripotages Miniatures

I              Lanolin                                 E flat Clarinet & Horn
II             40 Watt                                Piccolo & Double Bass
III           Moth                                      Alto Flute, Oboe & Horn
IV           Buzzard                                 Cor Anglais & Viola
V             Scrying                                  B flat Clarinet, Viola & Double Bass
VI           Majolica                                Tutti (Flute, Oboe, B flat Clarinet, Horn, Viola & Double Bass)
Tripotage Miniatures are a collection of 3 duets, 2 trios and a tutti movement for mixed sextet. Each miniature is around 1-3 minutes long.
The miniatures are exploring different kinds of opacity, glitch, fuzz, shade and grime – imagining underhand dealings that place a sort of filmy surface on top of the material. (My favourite translation of Tripotage from the French is Jiggery Pokery.)
Sometimes this filter seems to drain colour – turning the material almost sepia, sometimes it makes ideas a bit murkier – harder to grasp, slippery and falling through the fingers, sometimes it causes moments to stutter and distort and sometimes it’s about capturing a fleeting feeling of distance, of something out of reach.
There are tiny thematic links between the movements but they could also be played individually – it’s about capturing a moment – even if it’s a slightly shady and disquieting one.
© Anna Meredith

DVOŘÁK Antonín, Piano Quintet No.2 in A Op.81

Allegro, ma non tanto
Dumka. Andante con moto – Vivace – Andante con moto
Scherzo. Furiant – Molto vivace
Finale. Allegro 

Dvořák composed his great A major Piano Quintet in 1887 (a much earlier quintet from 1872 is in the same key) and it was described by Otakar Šourek as one of ‘the most delightful and successful works’ in the whole chamber music repertoire. From the spacious cello theme that opens the quintet, Dvořák shows the seemingly effortless spontaneity of a composer at the height of his powers. The second theme turns the mood more wistful, and the music oscillates between melancholy and warmth, culminating in a jubilant climax. The second movement is a Dumka, with slow outer sections based on a melancholy tune, and a quick central section derived from the same musical idea. The Scherzo – described by Dvořák as a Furiant – begins with one of his most enchanting quick melodies and this is followed by two more: an undulating tune and another of folk-like simplicity, before the opening idea returns. The central Trio provides an oasis – a tune in long notes over which Dvořák introduces fragments of the main theme. The opening melody of the Finale dominates much of what follows. Near the close, a brief fugal section leads to a moment of tranquillity before the final dash to the end.  

Nigel Simeone © 2014