SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

White Rock Studio, Hastings
Monday 12 May 2025, 1.30pm

The concert is FREE of charge.

To apply for seats, please complete the booking form by Monday 31st March 2025.

Please note that seating is limited so early replies are advisable. Places will be confirmed after the closing date.

Book Tickets

The White Rock Theatre & Music in the Round invites your class to take part in a brilliant free music project, culminating in a live concert at the White Rock Theatre for the first time!

Paul Rissmann (composer) has created a fantastic piece of music based around the children’s book Giddy Goat (Jamie Rix and Lynne Chapman) which includes songs for your class to learn and join in with in the concert.

EY and KS1 practitioners will support you to embed singing and music-making in classroom learning throughout the project, with an INSET and resources, newly developed around the Giddy Goat story. The project introduces young children to classical music in a fun and educational setting, including a concert featuring strings, woodwind and horn, presented together with story-telling and projected illustrations.

Being a mountain goat is no fun when you are scared of heights! Stand poor Giddy on a mountain ledge and his head starts spinning and his knees turn to jelly. But can he find the fearless goat inside himself in time to rescue little Edmund?

Performed by the wonderfully dynamic and hugely engaging musicians from Ensemble 360, this concert is a great introduction to live music for early years and KS1 children. It’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in.

Jasdeep Singh Degun

Jasdeep Singh Degun & Harkiret Singh Bahra

Cast, Doncaster
Thursday 13 November 2025, 7.15pm

Tickets from £13

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Jasdeep Singh Degun (sitar) and Harkiret Singh Bahra (tabla).

Multi-award-winning sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun has collaborated with musicians from a wide range of musical backgrounds, including Cerys Matthews, Nitin Sawhney, Mel C and as artist-in-residence with Opera North.

This concert sees Jasdeep sharing intimate duets with tabla player Harkiret Singh Bahra in masterful improvisations rooted in thousands of years of Indian tradition.

Jasdeep is highly regarded as an artist who is continually pushing the versatility of his instrument and reshaping the musical landscape for his peers, and for generations to come. Amid artist residencies and fellowships, an international concert schedule and royal command performances, Jasdeep’s lifelong training in gayaki ang – a lyrical approach to the sitar that mimics the human voice – has remained his anchor and his passion.

Mozart & Schumann Violin Sonatas

Ensemble 360

Cast, Doncaster
Thursday 2 October 2025, 7.15pm

Tickets from £13

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MOZART Sonata in E minor K304 (12′)
SCHUMANN F-A-E sonata, ‘II. Intermezzo’ (3′)
MOZART Sonata in G K301 (15′)
SCHUMANN Sonata No.1 in A minor Op.105 (17′)
MOZART Sonata in A K.305 (15′)

Elegant, moving and charming, these gems of chamber music range from the playful and witty to the profound and exquisite. Paired with other works for this most intimate and expressive duo of violin with piano, this delightful programme combines familiar favourites with new discoveries.

CLOSE-UP FAMILY CONCERT: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS

Elinor Moran & Ensemble 360

Cast, Doncaster
Saturday 8 March 2025, 11.00am

Tickets
£11
£6 Under 16s

Book Tickets
Musicians from Ensemble 360

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! 

Part of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024. 

View the brochure online here or download it below.

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Save £s when you book for 5 Music in the Round concerts or more at the same timeFind out more here.

Programme:
BRITTEN I. Prologue from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1’30) 
HAYDN arr. Parry IV. Rondo-Allegretto from Divertimento No.1 (2’) 
ONSLOW IV. Finale (extract) from Wind Quintet (3’30) 
ARNOLD I. 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’) 
BACEWICZ I. Allegro from Quintet for Wind Instruments (3’) 
STRAVINSKY II. from ‘Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet (1’) 
HOLST IV. Air and Variations from Wind Quintet (4’) 
DANZI IV. Allegretto from Wind Quintet No.2 (3’) 
MEREDITH  Moth’ from Tripotage Miniatures (2’30) 
COLEMAN  Umoja (2’45) 

MOZART MASTERPIECES

Ensemble 360

Palace Theatre, Mansfield
Monday 17 February 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets:
£14
£5 Under 26s

Past Event

MOZART
Horn Quintet (15’)
String Quintet No.4 in G minor K516 (36’)
String Quartet in D K499 (25’)

The string players of Ensemble 360 are joined by horn to present three of Mozart’s best loved works: his lyrical String Quartet in D, the expressive Horn Quintet and his haunting yet hopeful String Quintet in G.

Join Music in the Round for a friendly and welcoming classical concert performed by the brilliant Ensemble 360, a group of world-class artists who perform music written specially for small combinations of strings, wind and piano.

You’ll be sitting just metres away from these amazing musicians, performing spine-tingling music with their heart and soul in our intimate concert space.

MOZART Amadeus, String Quintet in G minor K516

1. Allegro
2. Menuetto: Allegretto
3. Adagio ma non troppo
4. Adagio – Allegro

 

Mozart’s string quintets are all for the combination of two violins, two violas and cellos, with the two violas allowing for particularly rich inner parts. The Quintet in G minor K516 was completed on 16 May 1787, four weeks after his C major Quintet – and during the final illness of his father Leopold, who on 28 May. Though Mozart and his father had a strained relationship by this time, the composer was alarmed at Leopold’s illness and reacted with the now famous letter written on April 1787 in which he declared that ‘death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling!’

The G minor Quintet – written by an estranged son who knew that his father was dying – is probably the most tragic of all Mozart’s chamber works. W.W. Cobbett described it as a ‘struggle with destiny’ and found it ‘filled with the resignation of despair’ – though this is rather to overlook the major-key ebullience of the finale. The first movement is full of restrained pathos, both themes melancholy and understated – and all the more wrenching for that. The minuet is sombre and reflective while the slow movement was, for the great Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein, the desolate core of the work. He likened it to ‘the prayer of a lonely one surrounded on all sides by the walls of a deep chasm.’ The element of tragedy is still very apparent in the slow introduction to the finale; but finally Mozart unleashes a more joyous spirit. The French poet Henri Ghéon found an eloquent description for this turning point: ‘Mozart has had enough. He knew how to cry but he did not like to cry or to suffer for too long.’

 

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010

FAMILY CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

Ensemble 360

Palace Theatre, Mansfield
Monday 17 February 2025, 11.00am

Tickets:
£8 adults
£5 Child (2-14 years)

Past Event
Giddy Goat family concert image

Based on the colourful children’s book, this family concert tells the story of Giddy, a young mountain goat who is scared of heights. A tale of facing fears and making friends, it’s a brilliant way to introduce children to classical music, with visuals from the book and plenty of chances to join in!

Perfect for 3 – 7 year olds and their families!

CLOSE UP: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS

Ensemble 360 & Elinor Moran

The Guildhall, Portsmouth
Monday 17 March 2025, 1.30pm

For tickets, please email hayley.reay@portsmouthguildhall.org.uk

Musicians from Ensemble 360

A lively schools concert, presented by Elinor Moran and featuring five wind musicians (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn). 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 Kwanzaa dance. Perfect for 7-11 year olds, this is a lively and interactive concert.

Ideal for 7-11 year olds.

SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

Ensemble 360

Junction, Goole
Thursday 3 April 2025, 1.30pm

£5
One free teacher for every 10 paying pupils

Book Tickets
Giddy Goat family concert image

Music in the Round invites your class to take part in a brilliant music project, culminating in a live concert at Goole Junction.

Paul Rissmann (composer) has created a fantastic piece of music based around the children’s book Giddy Goat (Jamie Rix and Lynne Chapman) which includes songs for your class to learn and join in with in the concert.

Our EY and KS1 practitioners will support you to embed singing and music-making in classroom learning throughout the project, with training, resources, and in-school support newly developed around the Giddy Goat story. The project introduces young children to classical music in a fun and educational setting, including a concert featuring strings, woodwind and horn, presented together with story-telling and projected illustrations.

Being a mountain goat is no fun when you are scared of heights! Stand poor Giddy on a mountain ledge and his head starts spinning and his knees turn to jelly. But can he find the fearless goat inside himself in time to rescue little Edmund?

Performed by the wonderfully dynamic and hugely engaging musicians from Ensemble 360, this concert is a great introduction to live music for early years and KS1 children. It’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in. 

A CELEBRATION OF CZECH MUSIC

Ensemble 360

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley
Friday 7 March 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets”
£14.50
£10 DLA/PIP/UC
£5 Under 35s

 

Book Tickets
Ensemble 360 classical musicians - oboe player Adrian Wilson, horn player Naomi Atherton and clarinet player Robert Plane

HAAS Oboe Suite Op.17
JANÁČEK In the Mists
BRITTEN Wind Sextet
JANÁČEK Mládí

Janáček’s beloved Mládí (‘Youth’) was written towards the end of his life as a nostalgic celebration of memories of his youth, drawing on his early writing. Receiving its premiere performances in Autumn 1924, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of this iconic piece for wind, featuring the bass clarinet alongside a regular wind quintet line-up of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.

HAAS Pavel, Suite for Oboe & Piano Op.17

Furioso 
Con fuoco. Con moto e poco largamente 
Moderato 
 

Pavel Haas, born in Brno into a Jewish family, was a pupil of Leoš Janáček from 1920 to 1922. Though his music doesn’t imitate that of his great teacher, both composers sought inspiration from Moravian folk song and dance. Janáček once declared that ‘a modern composer has to write what he has truly experienced’, but Haas was to experience more and much worse than most. However, in 1939, when he wrote the Suite for Oboe, he had just been awarded the Smetana Prize for his opera, The Charlatan, first performed at Brno in 1938. The musical language of the Suite, occasionally folk-inspired, sometimes recalling the cadences of Synagogue songs, and notable for its energy and drive, marks out Haas as a composer of real individuality, rugged in the first two movements, and more consoling in the third, rising to a grand climax that has occasional echoes of his great teacher. 

 

Haas was deported to the concentration camp and ghetto at Teresienstadt in 1941 where he met the conductor Karel Ančerl as well as several other Czech Jewish composers such as Gideon Klein (who coaxed Haas back to composition), Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann. In later years, it was Ančerl who most movingly recalled the appalling circumstances of Haas’s murder after both were transferred to Auschwitz: Ančerl was next in line to be sent to the gas chamber when Haas coughed, thus attracting the attention of the SS Doctor Josef Mengele, who chose to send Haas to his death instead.  

 

Nigel Simeone 2014 

JANÁČEK Leoš, In the Mists

JANÁČEK Leoš, In the Mists 

Janáček inspiration for In the mists probably came from a recital at the Brno Organ School on 28 January 1912 when Marie Dvořáková played Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. In the mists certainly shows the influence of Debussy’s Impressionism, though it is also a nostalgic reflection on childhood: Bohumír Štědroň wrote that ‘Here Janáček sees his youth in a mist and remembers the days spent at Hukvaldy’. Janáček made some revisions to the cycle before publication by the Club of the Friends of Art in Brno (to which Janáček belonged) near the end of 1913. According to the title page of this edition, In the mists was given to members of the club as a gift for the year 1913. The first performance took place on 7 December 1913 at Kroměříž, played by Marie Dvořáková. She played it again, on 24 January 1914, at a Brno Organ School concert in the Lužánky Hall when Janáček himself was present. The first known performance in Prague was not until 16 December 1922, given by the pianist Václav Štěpán and the following year Janáček asked Štěpán to help him prepare an edition incorporating his final versions. An inspired combination of Impressionism and musical ideas derived from Moravian folk music, In the mists is in four movements: the first haunting (and occasionally trouble), the second quite free, the third based on a memorable melody heard at the start, and the fourth hints at the flourishes of gypsy music as well as moments of high drama. All four movements are permeated by tenderness and nostalgia, without any hint of sentimentality. 

Nigel Simeone 

JANÁČEK Leoš, Mládí

Janáček composed Mládí in July 1924 (the month of his 70th birthday) at his rural retreat in the village of Hukvaldy. He described it to Kamila Stösslová as ‘a sort of memoir of youth’, and a newspaper article in December 1924 described the programme of the suite as follows: ‘In the first movement, [Janáček] remembers his childhood at school in Hukvaldy, in the second the sad scenes of parting with his mother at the station in Brno, in the third in 1866 as a chorister when the Prussians were in Brno; the concluding movement is a courageous leap into life.’ Intended as a nostalgic evocation of Janáček’s youth (his original title was Mladý život – Young Life) it is a typically quirky and ebullient product of his incredibly productive old age. It was first performed in Brno on 24 October 1924, followed a month later by a performance in Prague. Janáček also heard the work during his only visit to England, at a concert in the Wigmore Hall on 6 May 1926 when it was played by British musicians including Leon Goossens and Aubrey Brain. 

Nigel Simeone © 2011 

BEETHOVEN CELLO SONATAS

Ensemble 360

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley
Friday 4 April 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets:
£14.50
£10 PIP/DLA/UC
£5 Under 35s

Book Tickets

BEETHOVEN
Cello Sonata in C Op.102 No.1 (15′)
Cello Sonata in A Op.69 (26′)
Cello Sonata in G minor Op.5 No.2 (24′)
Cello Sonata in D Op.102 No.2 (19′)
FRANCES-HOAD Invocation (4′)

These works for piano and cello are the perfect introduction to the unique musical mind of Beethoven. Beethoven broke the mould by creating works in which the two instruments were true equals: in conversation and competition, wrestling and supporting one another to create dazzling musical journeys that remain thrillingly fresh and deeply moving.

Join Music in the Round for a friendly and welcoming classical concert performed by the brilliant Ensemble 360, a group of world-class artists who perform music written specially for small combinations of strings, wind and piano.

BEETHOVEN Ludwig Van, Cello Sonata Op.102 No.1

Beethoven’s two cello sonatas Op.102 (in C major and D major) were composed in 1815 and dedicated to Beethoven’s friend, Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. They were published in Vienna (by Artaria) and Bonn (by Simrock) in 1817. The first of the two sonatas is one of Beethoven’s most unusual structures, consisting of two fast movements, each of them preceded by an extended slow introduction.  

 

The first movement opens gently, with a lyrical melody in the upper register of the cello, to which the piano responds with an answering phrase, establishing the instrumental dialogue that is so often a feature of this sonata. After subsiding on to a C, the lowest note of the cello, there is an abrupt change of mood and tempo with the arrival of a stern idea in A minor, marked by dotted rhythms. The movement remains in A minor for most of the movement, ending tersely. The second movement begins with an elaborate slow introduction which gives way to a radiant recollection of the first movement – an unusual procedure that Beethoven was to use again in the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The main theme of the Allegro begins strangely, with a four-note rising fragment and a held note, but this idea quickly develops dramatic momentum, interrupted on several occasions by passages where the cello plays sustained notes and the piano is silent. The movement ends by appearing to fizzle out (using the four-note idea), before a triumphant closing flourish. 

 

© Nigel Simeone

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Op.102 No.2

Allegro con brio
Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto
Allegro – Allegro fugato

Beethoven’s last two cello sonatas were composed in 1815 dedicated to the Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. The initial critical response was one of bewilderment, one critic declaring that “these two sonatas are definitely among the strangest and most unusual works … ever written for the pianoforte. Everything about them is completely different from anything else we have heard, even by this composer.” Indeed, the D major Cello Sonata Op.102 No.2 is a work that points forward to some of Beethoven’s final instrumental works – the late piano sonatas and quartets – in significant ways. The Beethoven scholar William Kinderman has suggested that the solemnity and austerity of the slow movement (in D minor) has pre-echoes of the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ from the Quartet Op.132, while fugal finale is the one of a series of such movements in Beethoven’s late instrumental pieces (followed by the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and the Grosse Fuge among others). The whole sonata, from the brusque opening of its first movement, to the extraordinary culmination of the fugue, is characterized by wild emotional contrasts: the stern, profoundly serious Adagio is flanked by two faster movements that are dominated by a fiery, even angry, dialogue between the two instruments.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

FRANCES-HOAD Cheryl, Invocation

Invocation was originally the second movement of Melancholia, my first piano trio, written in 1999.

The piano trio is based on Melancholy, a painting by Edvard Munch that formed part of his Frieze of Life. Munch described the Frieze as a “poem of life, love and death”, and Melancholy, which depicts a man (sometimes thought to be the artist himself) looking out at the sea and oppressive sky, concludes the first of the three sections of paintings called Love blossoms and dies.

I had written a chamber opera, with all manner of instruments at my disposal, before starting my piano trio. In Melancholia I aimed at producing a much sparser music (at many points simply a melody with chordal accompaniment) in an attempt to prove to myself that I could still convey a great deal of emotion with only those notes that were absolutely necessary.

FANTASIAS & FLIGHTS: THE LARK ASCENDING

Ensemble 360

The Stables, Milton Keynes
Tuesday 4 March 2025, 8.00pm

Tickets:
£22 – £24

Book Tickets
String quartet players of classical music group Ensemble 360, with their instruments

HOLST Phantasy String Quartet
BRITTEN
Three Divertimenti for String Quartet
HOLBROOKE Eilean Shona 
HOWELLS Phantasy Sting Quartet Op.25
PURCELL (transc. Warlock) Three-part Fantasias 1,2 & 3 
HOWELLS Rhapsodic Quintet 
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (arr. Gerigk) The Lark Ascending

The violin soars melodiously above the rest of the quartet in the gorgeous arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ most popular work The Lark Ascending, which concludes this concert of English music for clarinet and string quartet. Fantasies from the Baroque gems of Purcell’s Three-part Fantasias (arranged for string trio) to Imogen Holst’s Phantasy String Quartet sit alongside this perennial favourite and Holbrooke’s intoxicating depiction of a Scottish Island in a magical Celtic evocation for clarinet and strings.

HOLST Imogen, Phantasy String Quartet

Imogen Holst (1907-1984) composed her Phantasy String Quartet in 1928 (although it wasn’t premiered until several years after her death, in 2007). The piece typifies the composer’s early style, blending the English pastoral tradition with her own unique talents for melodic development, contrapuntal writing, and idiosyncratic quartet-textures. It won the Cobbet Prize – an award founded by the wealthy industrialist Walter Willson Cobbett to encourage composers to write ‘Phantasies’, works of one movement in the tradition of 16th and 17th-Century English ‘fancies’, ‘fantasies’, or ‘fantasias’. These were short instrumental works which, like Holst’s, did not adhere to strict forms but rather developed in their own imaginative and unexpected ways. Beginning with lush pastoral harmonies, Holst’s Phantasy transitions fluidly through episodes of meditative introspection and spirited energy. 

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.

 

© Nigel Simeone

HOLBROOKE Joseph, Eilean Shona for Clarinet and String Quartet

Joseph Holbrooke was a curious and sometimes infuriating character. His chamber music concerts would often include oddly aggressive notes for the audience, presenting – as he put it – ‘music to an apathetic public’ after which he ‘hopes to receive as few blows as possible (with the usual financial loss) in return.’ On another occasion, he refused to perform his Piano Concerto in Bournemouth: an insert in the programme explained that ‘Mr Joseph Holbrooke declines to play today because his name is not announced on the posters in large enough type.’ Setting his personal flaws to one side, he was capable of producing fine music, of which Eilean Shona is a brief and very attractive example. Eilean Shona is a small island off the west coast of Scotland and Holbrooke’s short work for clarinet and string quartet (reworked from a song for voice and piano) is haunting and evocative. 

Nigel Simeone 2024 

PURCELL Henry, Three-Part Fantasias

Henry Purcell (1659–1695) was one of the most celebrated English composers of the Baroque era. Among his remarkable works is a series of Fantasias (or Fancies), composed in 1680 when Purcell was only 21 years old. Showcasing his profound skill with contrapuntal writing – in which each of the instrument’s melodic lines work both independently and as part of the musical-whole – the Fantasias are considered among the finest examples of the form and are regarded by many to be the ‘jewel in the crown of English consort music’. This wasn’t always the case, however. When Purcell composed these works, the Fantasia was quite unfashionable. King Charles II is said to have had ‘an utter detestation of Fancys’. Out of favour in the Royal court, Purcell’s Fantasias were therefore likely intended to be performed in domestic settings. Originally written for three viols, they are here transcribed for string trio (violin, viola, and cello). 

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’.  

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, The Lark Ascending

Vaughan Williams began The Lark Ascending before the outbreak of the First World War, taking his inspiration from George Meredith’s 1881 poem of the same name. But he set this ‘Romance’ aside during the war and only finished it in 1920. The violinist Marie Hall gave the first performance of the original version for violin and piano in Shirehampton Public Hall (a district of Bristol) on 15 December 1920. Vaughan Williams dedicated the work to her, and she went on to give the premiere of the orchestral version six months later, when it was conducted by the young Adrian Boult at a concert in the Queen’s Hall in London. Free, serene and dream-like, this is idyllic music of rare and fragile beauty.

© Nigel Simeone

CLOSE UP: MUSIC FOR CURIOUS YOUNG MINDS

Aga Serugo-Lugo & Ensemble 360

Wigmore Hall, London
Thursday 20 March 2025, 11.00am

Tickets:
£5

Book Tickets
Musicians from Ensemble 360

A lively schools concert, presented by Aga Serugo-Lugo and featuring five wind musicians (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn). 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 Kwanzaa dance. Perfect for 7-11 year olds, this is a lively and interactive concert.