This panel discussion is an opportunity to explore musical responses to the natural world and ask if music, and the wider arts, can contribute to developing our response to the most pressing issue facing us today.
A distraction while sea levels rise, or a galvanising force to motivate us as we build a better world… does music have a role to play in tackling the climate crisis?
Featuring composer Graham Fitkin, Co-creator of Sheffield Ark Tom Payne, music psychologist Helen Prior and Ensemble 360’s Tim Horton, this promises to be a lively conversation to inspire and provoke.
Back by popular demand, this delightful family concert for 3–7 year-olds, is based on the best-selling children’s book ‘Izzy Gizmo’, by Pip Jones and illustrated by Sara Ogilvie.
The book tells the enchanting story of an intrepid young inventor who puts her talents to work to rescue a crow that can’t fly. This family concert brings Izzy’s mechanical marvels and infectious creative spirit to life!
Original music by Paul Rissmann features instruments including strings, woodwind, horn and piano, and you might even spot the musicians playing pots, pans, whistles and household items! Together with story-telling and visuals from the book, this concert is a great introduction to live music for children. It’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in.
MARTINŮLa Revue De Cuisine (15’) DVOŘÁKSlavonic Dances Nos. 1 and 2 (for piano four hands) (10’) WEILL Nanna’s Lied; Youkali; Je ne t’aime pas (8’) DE FALLAPantomime and Ritual Fire Dance from ‘El Amore Brujo’ (9’) FRANÇAIXDixtuor for string quintet and wind quintet (18’) SAINT-SAËNSSeptet for trumpet, string quintet and piano (18’)
This concert will put a song in your heart and a dance in your step! International star trumpet player Tine Thing Helseth joins Ensemble 360 to launch Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2023 in style, with the rhythms of charleston and tango from Martinů, de Falla’s instantly recognisable Fire Dance, and more.
Festival Curator Kathryn Stott joins the party, playing Dvořák’s sumptuous Slavonic dances for piano four hands with Ensemble 360’s Tim Horton, and the evening comes to a rollicking end as Ensemble 360 are joined by both Tine and Kathy for a tour de force from Saint-Saëns.
Welcome Drinks
Celebrate the start of the Festival with us and enjoy a post-concert complimentary glass of wine or soft drink in the Crucible Foyer (served to all ticket-holders).
DVOŘÁK Antonín, Slavonic Dances Op.46, Nos.1 & 2
Presto (furiant)
Allegretto scherzando (dumka)
It was Brahms who recommended his publisher Simrock to take on the Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák, then in his thirties but largely unknown outside Prague. After the success of the Moravian Duets in 1878, Simrock immediately asked Dvořák for a set of Czech dances for piano four-hands as companion pieces to Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Dvořák was delighted at the prospect and wrote them quickly between 18 March and 7 May 1878, producing a set of very stylised pieces drawing on the forms and characteristics of Czech folk dances. The Slavonic Dances immediately enjoyed huge success, and in 1886 Dvořák produced a second set. The first dance is a furious Presto in the style of a furiant (very fast, with syncopations and cross-rhythms). The second is the only one of the set for which the composer took inspiration from beyond Czech lands: its origins were a Ukrainian Dumka, a wistful lament which is intercut with livelier episodes.
WEILL Kurt, Nanna’s Lied; Youkali; Je ne t’aime pas
Nannas Lied (1939) Youkali (1934) Je ne t’aime pas [I don’t love you] (1934)(arr. for trumpet and piano)
After Kurt Weill heard Hanns Eisler’s 1936 setting of Bertolt Brecht’sNannas Lied he decided that he wanted to make a version of his own, and just before Christmas 1939, he produced this song, dedicating it to the singer Lotte Lenya. Youkali, subtitled a ‘Tango-habanera’ was originally an instrumental Tango for Weill’s ill-fated French musical Marie Galante which opened in Paris on 22 December 1934. In 1946 a version for voice and piano was published as Youkali. Je ne t’aime pas was a song for voice and piano, on a text by Maurice Magre, also composed in 1934 during Weill’s time in France. As a prominent Jewish composer – renowned for The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny – Weill was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933 and eventually settled in New York in September 1935 where he was able to rebuild his career with successful Broadway works such as Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street Sceneand Lost in the Stars.
DE FALLA Manuel, Pantomime and Ritual Fire Dance from ‘El Amore Brujo’
El amor brujo, known in English as Love, the Magician began as gitaneria (danced entertainment) in 1915. In due course, Falla expanded the orchestration and made some other changes before the definitive version of the ballet was given for the first time on 22 May 1925, at the Théâtre du Trianon-Lyrique in Paris, conducted by the composer. Four years before then, Falla’s own piano arrangement of the Ritual Fire Dance was published in London and it immediately became a very popular recital piece with pianists including Arthur Rubinstein and Myra Hess. The Pantomime that precedes it here begins with some bold splashes of Andalusian colour before turning to a lilting theme in 7/8 time. In the ballet, the Ritual Fire Dance is the moment when the gypsy Candela seeks to cast out the malign ghost of her dead husband. During this dance, which grows from sinister beginnings to a ferocious climax, the ghost is drawn into the flames and vanishes forever. Falla made the present arrangement of the Pantomime and Ritual Fire Dance for piano and string quintet in 1926.
Jean Françaix came from a musical family and took up composing at the age of six. He became a favourite pupil of Nadia Boulanger, and his youthful gifts were also recognised by Ravel. During the 1930s, his output included chamber music, orchestral pieces, ballets, the opera Le diable boiteux and an oratorio, L’Apocalypse selon Saint Jean. After World War Two, Françaix continued to produce a stream of new works, including several film scores. His style remained neo-classical, usually marked by a lightness of touch and wit.
The Dixtuor, for string quintet and wind quintet, is one of his last major works, the manuscript dated at the end 24 October 1986. It was a commission for the Cologne-based Linos Ensemble which gave the premiere in 1987. The Dixtuor opens with a long, gentle introduction which gives way to a vigorous Allegro. The lyrical Andante opens with a melody shared by oboe and clarinet (over strings) before the rest of the ensemble join gradually. Marked Scherzando, the third movement makes virtuoso demands on the players, but it is music of genuine charm, with a slow (and endearingly odd) central Trio section. The finale is a brisk Allegro.
Préambule. Allegro moderato Menuet. Tempo di minuetto moderato Intermède. Andante Gavotte et Final. Allegro non troppo – Più allegro
Saint-Saëns wrote his Septet for the chamber music society ‘La Trompette’ and dedicated the work to its founder, Émile Lemoine. La Trompette gave the first performance of the ‘Préambule’ at one of its soirées in the rue de Grenelle in January 1880 and the complete work was given its premiere on in December 1880, with Saint-Saëns at the piano.
The dedicatee, Lemoine, noted down the origins of the piece on Saint-Saëns’s autograph manuscript: ‘For a long time, I’d been pestering my friend Saint-Saëns to compose something for our evenings at La Trompette, a serious work which included a trumpet mixed with the string instruments and piano which we normally had. At first he joked about this bizarre combination of instruments, saying that he would first write something for guitar and 13 trombones. In 1879 he gave me a piece for trumpet, piano, string quartet and double bass entitled Préambule which was played on 6 January 1880. It no doubt pleased Saint-Saëns because he told me afterwards that “you will have your complete piece and the Préambule will be the first movement”. He kept his word, and the Septet was played for the first time on 28 December 1880.’
The four movements give a clear indication of Saint-Saëns’s classical leanings and his fondness for ancient dance forms, but what gives the work its delightful individuality is the unusual mixture of instruments combined with particularly fertile melodic invention.
A tour through the wondrous world of chamber music, specially created for young audiences, combining some of the most well-known music ever written as well as some new works from surprising places.
This brand-new concert includes thrilling adventures told through music, cheeky characters and epic heroes along with mind-blowing musical games and the chance to join in and make music together.
Introduced by Aga Serugo-Lugo, this is a friendly hour of fun and the finest string quartet music. Ideal for 7-11 year olds.
The concert includes extracts from:
SCHUBERT ‘Death And The Maiden’ HAYDN ‘The Bird’
MOZART String Quartet In E Flat WEIR String Quartet
SUK Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale
MEREDITH Short Tribute to Teenage Fanclub BEETHOVEN ‘The Harp’
BURLEIGH Oh Lord, What a Morning
STRAVINSKY Pieces for String Quartet DVOŘÁK‘American Quartet’
SCHUBERT String Quartet in D Minor (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
Hey Presto! We begin with a twitchy chase from Franz Schubert, which he told the string players should be played ‘presto’ meaning ‘very quick or very fast’. How does the sound change when each musician plays on their own? How do you feel when they all play the same tune together? This tense piece kicks off an exciting hour of music…
HAYDN Russian Quartet No.3 (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
Haydn was the composer who did most to first create a form of music for two violins, a viola and a cello: a group we know as a string quartet. This piece has the nickname ‘The Bird’ — can you hear why?
MOZART String Quartet In E Flat K428 (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This beautiful tune is almost like a lullaby and shows how gentle the sound of the strings can be. Listen to the way the first violin plays a tune and the other three instruments rock gently back and forth underneath, creating a warm blanket of sound. This is music to wrap up warm within. How does it make you feel?
WEIR String Quartet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This string quartet was written by a composer who is making music today, the wonderful Judith Weir. A piece full of mysteries, inspired by a medieval Spanish tune. This quartet sounds like a strange landscape where it’s easy to get lost among these lopsided rhythms where nothing is quite as it seems…
SUK Josef, Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This piece was written at the start of the first world war and is full of the drama and sadness of a scary time. But it ends full of hope with long notes seeming to climb into the air. Look and listen out for all the times the musicians play across the strings to make two or more notes sound at once — a technique called double stopping.
MEREDITH Anna, Short Tribute to Teenage Fanclub (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
Anna Meredith is another musician writing music today. She makes music for her band as well as for classical musicians, often mixing up instruments usually seen in an orchestra with rock and pop instruments. This piece combines the two and is a tribute to one of her favourite bands performed by string quartet who don’t use their bows at all but pluck their instruments in a technique called ‘pizzicato’.
BURLEIGH Henry Thacker, Oh Lord, What A Morning (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This is a traditional song created by enslaved Africans in America. The composer and singer Harry Burleigh was the grandchild of slaves who became a famous musician and helped share music by black people with the rest of the world. This simple song looks forward to a better time when injustices like slavery and racism will end. Perhaps you can hear both the sadness and the hope in this beautiful music.
BEETHOVEN ‘The Harp’ Quartet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This beautiful quartet is known as ‘the harp’ because in the first part, all four musicians have sections where they pluck the strings their instruments rather than using the bow. Can you hear the difference?
STRAVINSKY Igor, Three Pieces for String Quartet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This spiky, short piece of music was created in Russia at the same time Suk wrote the piece we heard earlier. Stravinsky uses the plucking technique we heard in the Meredith and Beethoven, as well clashing notes and unexpected changes in pulse and speed. Stravinsky keeps us guessing what he’ll do next!
DVOŘÁK ‘American’ String Quartet (excerpt for ‘Close Up’)
This piece brings our concert to a celebratory end, from Czech composer Anton Dvořák. Listen out for all the places it gets louder, or faster — or both! — or where the quartet hang back to build tension. This piece uses folk tunes from Czechoslovakia, where Dvořák was born and started writing, and includes a native American tune, and music from all the people like him who had travelled to live and work in the USA. Bringing these together, our concert ends with an explosion of joy!
When King Colin’s golden underpants go missing, it’s Sir Scallywag to the rescue! Brave and bold, courageous and true, he’s the perfect knight for the job… even if he is only six years old!
Original music by our children’s Composer-in-Residence, Paul Rissmann, features instruments including strings, woodwind, and horn, presented together with story-telling and projected illustrations from the best-selling children’s book by Giles Andreae and Korky Paul.
Performed by the wonderfully dynamic and hugely engaging Ensemble 360 and Polly Ives, this concert is a great introduction to live music for children. It’s full of wit, invention, songs and actions, and plenty of opportunities to join in.
SUK Meditation on an Old Czech Chorale (7’) SMETANA String Quartet No.1 From My Life (31’) Arr. BURLEIGH (adapted for string quartet by Jeremy Birchall) I’ve been in the storm
Oh Lord, what a morning (7′) DVOŘÁK String Quartet No.12 American Quartet(26’)
Opening with Suk’s Meditation on the Chorale St Wenceslas and including the African-American composer Burleigh’s quartet settings of I’ve been in the storm and Oh Lord, what a morning, this sumptuous evening of music concludes with Dvořák’s most famous quartet.
This turbulent and thrilling selection of music tracks the relationship between nineteenth century quartet writing in eastern Europe and the musical conversations that played a decisive role in the evolution of chamber music.
SMETANA Bedřich, String Quartet No.1 in E minor ‘From my Life’
Allegro vivo appassionato
Allegro moderato à la Polka
Largo sostenuto
Vivace
In 1874 Smetana fell ill with an infection that led within months to total deafness. For peace and quiet he moved to the village of Jabkenice in Central Bohemia, and it was here that he produced this overtly autobiographical quartet in 1876. Smetana supplied his own commentary on the work. It opens with ‘the call of fate (the main motif, first heard on the viola) into the struggle of life. The love of art in my youth; inclination towards romanticism in music as well as in love and life in general; a warning about my future misfortune – that fateful ringing of the highest tones in my ears which told me of my coming deafness.’
The second movement (à la Polka) brings back, according to Smetana, ‘memories of the merry time of my youth’, while the third ‘reminds me of the beauty of my first love for the girl who later became my faithful wife. The struggle with unhappy fate, the final achievement of my goal.’ For the fourth movement Smetana wanted to depict: ‘the recognition of a national awareness of our beautiful art, the pleasure derived from it and the happiness of success along the way until a terrible-sounding high tone starts ringing in my ear (in the quartet a high E) … as a warning of my cruel fate.’
The first performance took place in Prague on 29 March 1879. During his last years, Smetana’s behaviour became increasingly erratic. Early in 1884 he was moved to an asylum in Prague where he died a few months later.
BURLEIGH Henry Thacker, I’ve been in the storm & Oh Lord, what a morning
Henry (Harry) Burleigh was born in Pennsylvania in 1866 – his grandfather had been emancipated from slavery in the 1830s and his father fought for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. As a child, Burleigh’s grandfather taught him the melodies that were commonly sung by enslaved African-Americans. In his teenage years he developed into a fine classical singer, making regular solo appearances at churches and synagogues.
At the age of 26 he moved to New York to study at the National Conservatory of Music, which coincided with the arrival of the Conservatory’s new director, Antonín Dvořák, who’d been brought to America with the specific role of laying the foundations of an authentic national musical style. Dvořák was thrilled by Burleigh’s voice, and there’s some evidence to suggest that it was Burleigh who introduced certain melodies to Dvořák which would find their way into the ‘New World’ Symphony and ‘American’ String Quartet.
Burleigh’s long career was centred around performing and publishing his arrangements, helping to popularise Swing Low, Deep River and Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. He died at the age of 82 and his body is interred in Erie, the town where he was born and which celebrates his music and wider legacy with a week-long annual festival.
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.
BERWALD Grand Septet in B-flat (25′) MOZART Clarinet Quintet in A K581 (35′) BEETHOVEN Septet in E-flat, Op.20 (40′)
An evening featuring three celebrated works of chamber music, all on a larger scale.
Beethoven’s Septet was his most popular work; an inventive, celebratory piece, full of youthful energy and generosity of spirit, punctuated by fanfares, solos, cadenzas and exuberant fireworks! The evening begins with a Romantic septet, inspired by Beethoven, and written by his Swedish younger contemporary, Berwald; Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Quintet follows.
BERWALD Franz, Grand Septet in B flat
Adagio
Allegro molto
Poco adagio
Prestissimo
Poco adagio
Finale: Allegro con spirito
The influence and popularity of Beethoven’s Septet spread across Europe and the work was regularly performed in Berwald’s native city of Stockholm. Now widely regarded as the most important Swedish composer of the nineteenth century, during his lifetime Berwald was seldom able to earn a living from his music, working instead as a successful physiotherapist and, later, manager of a glass works. None of this should lead us to underestimate either Berwald’s creative talent or his imaginative handling of musical form. Both are apparent in this Septet. Completed in 1828, it may have been a reworking of an earlier piece for the same forces. Even so, it is a relatively early work, composed two decades before his best-known pieces such as the Symphonie sérieuse and Symphonie singulière. The musical language is consistently appealing, owing something to contemporary opera and to composers such as Spohr, but the melodies and harmonies have an idiosyncratic character that is entirely Berwald’s own (as at the start of the Allegro molto in the first movement, or the opening of the finale). In terms of the Septet’s design, the most striking innovation comes in the second movement which has a very quick Scherzo embedded within a seemingly conventional slow movement.
MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Clarinet Quintet in A K581
Allegro Larghetto Menuetto Allegretto con variazioni
The Clarinet Quintet was completed on 29 September 1789 and written for Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler (1753–1812). The first performance took place a few months later at a concert in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 22 December 1789, with Stadler as the soloist in a programme where the premiere of the Clarinet Quintet was a musical interlude, sandwiched between the two parts of Vincenzo Righini’s cantata The Birth of Apollo, performed by “more than 180 persons.”
From the start, Mozart is at his most daringly beautiful: the luxuriant voicing of the opening string chords provides a sensuously atmospheric musical springboard for the clarinet’s opening flourish. The rich sonority of the Clarinet Quintet is quite unlike that of any other chamber music by Mozart, but it does have something in common with his opera Così fan tutte (premièred in January 1790), on which he was working at the same time. In particular, the slow movement of the quintet, with muted strings supporting the clarinet, has a quiet rapture that recalls the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ (with muted strings, and prominent clarinet parts as well as voices) in Così. The finale of the Quintet is a Theme and Variations which begins with folk-like charm, then turns to more melancholy reflection before ending in a spirit of bucolic delight.
R SCHUMANN Kreisleriana Op.16 (32′) STOCKHAUSEN Klavierstück VII (7’) CHOPIN Two Nocturnes Op.27 (12’) CHOPIN Three Mazurkas Op.59 (11’) CHOPIN Sonata No.3 in B minor Op.58 (26’)
Tim Horton continues his exploration into the music of one of the greatest composers for piano, Frédéric Chopin. Few musicians have had an influence on other composers quite like Chopin, and Tim has selected a sequence of some of his most beautiful music to illustrate this. Robert Schumann’s music is of intense passion that leaps without warning from tender to wild melodies, while Karlheinz Stockhausen’s approach to the piano was to find an entirely new world of sound, creating fascinating spine-tingling sonorities.
Please note the change to the previously advertised programme for this concert. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause.
SCHUMANN Robert, Kreisleriana Op.16
Writing to a Belgian friend in 1839, Schumann wrote that of all his piano pieces, ‘I love Kreisleriana the most’, though he went on to admit that ‘only Germans will understand the title.’ In the same letter, he explained that ‘Kreisler was created by E.T.A. Hoffmann, an eccentric, wild and ingenious musician. There are many things about him you will like.’ The volatile mood-swings of Kreisleriana and the almost improvised feeling of some pieces are brilliantly imaginative musical evocations of the fictitious Kreisler’s personality. By turns passionate, intimate, capricious, dream-like and dramatic, Schumann wrote the pieces for Clara Wieck (whom he was to marry in 1840). Schumann told her that in Kreisleriana ‘you will play the main role, and I wish to dedicate it to you. You will smile so sweetly when you recognize yourself in them.’ Ultimately, the dedication was changed (Clara was afraid that accepting it would risk worsening the strained relations with her father), and the first edition, published in 1838, had an inscription from Schumann ‘to his friend F. Chopin’. Although Chopin’s reaction to the work was lukewarm, the following year he reciprocated by dedicating his Second Ballade to Schumann.
Nigel Simeone
STOCKHAUSEN Karlheinz, Klavierstück VII
Karlheinz Stockhausen began his series of Klavierstücke in 1952 while he was studying with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. Klavierstück VII was composed in 1954 (a year after he left Paris) and extensively revised in 1955. One of the most remarkable features of the piece is the use of silently depressed keys allowing sympathetic vibrations to be set up. The result is that different sonorities are created by the same pitch – a technique that can be heard throughout the work.
Chopin completed the pair of Nocturnes Op.27 in 1836 and they were dedicated to Countess Thérèse d’Apponyi, wife of the Austrian ambassador in Paris. In the rather desolate first nocturne, in C sharp minor, the Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley detected hesitation and anxiety, and a mood of night-time and mystery. Its companion piece, in D flat major, serves as a complete contrast, bringing light where there had been darkness. The opening melody – described by Hugo Leichentritt as ‘achingly beautiful’ – unfolds over a gently undulating accompaniment. Listening to this magnificent pair of pieces, it is no surprise that Schumann welcomed Chopin’s nocturnes as heralds of a new age in piano composition.
Chopin’s mazurkas, inspired by the folk dances of his homeland, are often where he was at his most experimental, particularly with harmonies. The three Mazurkas Op.59 were composed in 1845. The first, in A minor, contains daring modulations, the second (dedicated to Mendelssohn’s wife, Cécile) is richly melodic (the main theme subtly varied and decorated as the piece progresses), while the third presents a rather brittle angular melody, often supported by chromatic harmonies.
Chopin developed many new forms of piano music, from the kind of audacious miniatures found among the mazurkas to extended single-movement works such as the ballades and scherzos. But he also wrote three piano sonatas, drawing on structures inherited from Mozart and Beethoven. The Piano Sonata No.3, Op. 58, was completed in 1844 and its first movement is in sonata form. Even so, the music seems closer to the world of Chopin’s ballades than to any classical models, particularly in the rhapsodic development section. The outer sections of the Scherzo are filled with rapid movement, the ideas delicate and airy, while the slow Trio is richly harmonised but never loses its hints of unease. After a declamatory opening, the slow movement – a Chopin nocturne in all but name – is dominated by the song-like melody heard near the start, the mood changing for a dream-like central section before returning to the opening idea. The finale has a seemingly unstoppable momentum and energy, and for Marceli Antoni Szulc, Chopin’s first Polish biographer, this movement evoked images of the Cossack Mazeppa on a galloping horse.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending (15’) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Concerto for Oboe and Strings (19’) RAVEL Sonatine for piano (12’) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Piano Quintet in C minor (30’)
Celebrating the 150th birthday of the celebrated composer who embodies the sound of English music. The evening opens with Vaughan Williams’ most famous work, The Lark Ascending, recently voted No.1 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame for a record 12th time, in its original version for piano and violin. This is followed by his Concerto for Oboe and Strings, the compact Sonatine by the composer’s friend and mentor Maurice Ravel, and the evening concludes with his expansive Quintet.
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.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, Concerto for Oboe and Strings
Rondo pastorale
Minuet and Musette
Finale (Scherzo)
Vaughan Williams started to compose his oboe concerto in 1943, immediately after the Fifth Symphony, and it was completed in 1944. His friend and biographer Michael Kennedy wrote that ‘a discarded scherzo from the symphony was turned into part of the oboe concerto’, and he described it as a ‘satellite work’ to the symphony. It was written for the oboist Léon Goossens and the premiere was planned for the 1944 Proms. That concert was cancelled due to the risk of flying-bombs over London and Goossens gave the first performance in Liverpool on 30 September 1944.
The bucolic first movement – an unconventional rondo – is marked Allegro moderato and it uses both the oboe’s spiky agility and its lyrical capabilities, with short cadenzas near the start and finish. In his book on Vaughan Williams, Frank Howes noted that the Minuet and Musette was ‘wayward in its key scheme’ and described the whole movement as ‘pseudo-classical’ in character. The central ‘Musette’ section is based on drones, played by the oboe. Headed ‘Finale (Scherzo)’, the last movement is predominantly very fast, but perhaps the highlight of the whole Concerto is the slower central section, the soloist musing over richly-harmonised string chords, before a return of the fast material and a quiet, sustained close.
Ravel composed his Sonatine in 1903–5, just after finishing the String Quartet and the song-cycle Shéhérazade. After several fruitless attempts to win the Prix de Rome, Ravel finally decided that he should pursue his own musical path, and the Sonatine was one of the first results – a work of great refinement, on a much smaller scale than the piano cycle Miroirs that he worked on at the same time.
Ravel’s title evokes something of the elegance of the Classical period, though from the very start it is obvious that Ravel is not attempting any kind of pastiche. Even so, the first movement is in a clearly defined sonata form. The opening presents a singing theme in octaves with a shimmering accompaniment in the inner parts. The second theme is gentler, supported by typically luminous harmonies. The Minuet is a graceful dance, and the finale is driven by the almost omnipresent rapid notes heard at the start of the movement. There are moments of repose, but the movement surges to a flamboyant conclusion.
Ravel dedicated the Sonatine to his friends Ida and Cipa Godebski. The premiere was given in Lyon on 10 March 1906 by Mme Paule de Lestaing, and first performed in Paris on 31 March 1906, by Gabriel Grovlez.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, Quintet in C minor for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano
Allegro con fuoco
Andante
Fantasia, quasi variazioni
This Quintet in C minor, scored for the same instrumentation as Schubert’s Trout, was composed in 1903 and revised twice before the first performance at the Aeolian Hall on 14 December 1905, but after a performance in 1918 it was withdrawn by Vaughan Williams. It was finally published in an edition by Bernard Benoliel a century after its composition. Vaughan Williams’s friend and biographer Michael Kennedy speaks of ‘the shadow of Brahms looming over’ the work, and this seems especially true of the expansive first movement. The expressive, romantic melody of the Andante second movement is more characteristic of its composer at this stage in his career, and it has some similarity to the song Silent Noon, composed the same year. The finale is a set of five variations, ending with a beautiful bell-like coda.
As Michael Kennedy observes, what matters with an early work such as this is not whether it anticipates Vaughan Williams’s later masterpieces (for the most part, it doesn’t), but that it is impressive in its own right. He does, however, make an intriguing observation: ‘Vaughan Williams may have withdrawn the Quintet but he did not forget it, for in 1954 he used the theme of the finale, slightly expanded, for the variations in the finale of his Violin Sonata.’
MOZART Fantasia in C Minor K475 (13’) R SCHUMANN Fantasy in C Op.17 (30’) RACHMANINOV Variations on a Theme of Corelli (19’) LISZT Légende No.1: ‘St François d’Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux’ (10’) LISZT Mephisto Waltz No.1 (11’)
Llŷr Williams is known and loved by television and radio audiences the world over for his role as pianist in the finals of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. In this solo recital, Llŷr brings together some of the most captivating works for piano. The endlessly inventive fantasies of Mozart and Schumann are a prelude to Rachmaninov’s set of Variations that take us deep into the heart of the piano. Llŷr’s recital ends with works by the master of pianistic virtuosity, Franz Liszt, one a work of profound religious sentiment followed by a second diabolicaldance.
MOZART Amadeus, Fantasia in C minor K475
Mozart completed his Fantasia in C minor on 20 May 1785 and it was published in December 1785 (in tandem with the Piano Sonata in C minor K457) with a dedication to Therese von Trattner (1758–96), one of Mozart’s favourite pupils. The Fantasia shows Mozart at his most audacious and the Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein wrote that the work ‘gives us the truest picture of Mozart’s mighty powers of improvisation – his ability to indulge in the greatest freedom and boldness of imagination, the most extreme contrast of ideas, the most uninhibited variety of lyric and virtuoso elements.’ This extraordinary work combines tragic grandeur with a relish for extreme chromaticism and bravura, alongside moments of great tenderness.
In December 1836, Robert Schumann finished a ‘Sonata for Beethoven’ but revised it in 1838 and gave it the new title Fantasie. It was published in 1839 with a dedication to Franz Liszt. Schumann marks the first movement to be played with ‘imagination and passion’. It is a highly original reinvention of sonata form, with unconventional key relationships and structural innovations, notably the interlude placed at the moment when the recapitulation might be expected to arrive. The second movement depicts Schumann’s imaginary army of Davidsbündler marching against the Philistines. Dominated by obsessive dotted rhythms, this colourful movement ends with a vertiginous coda. The third movement is a complete contrast. It is poetic, restrained, and noble – and surely full of quiet longing for Clara. When Clara first received a copy of the Fantasie she wrote to Schumann that it made her ‘half ill with rapture.’ Just over a year later, on 12 September 1840, they were finally able to marry. Liszt was immensely proud of the dedication, considering the Fantasie to be among the greatest of Schumann’s piano works, but he never performed it in public. Only with the next generation of pianists – many of them pupils of Liszt and Clara Schumann – did the Fantasie take its rightful place as a pinnacle of the Romantic piano repertoire.
RACHMANINOV Sergei, Variations on a Theme of Corelli
Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Corelli have a singular place in the composer’s output as the only major work for solo piano that he composed after leaving Russia in 1917. The title is slightly misleading since these are variations on La Folia, an ancient tune that was used by Corelli – as well as by Lully and Vivaldi among others – but certainly wasn’t composed by him. This set of twenty variations (with an Intermezzo between the 13th and 14th variations) was composed in Switzerland and the manuscript is dated 19 June 1931. Rachmaninov himself gave the first performance in Montreal on 12 October 1931. Dedicated to his friend Fritz Kreisler, the variations show Rachmaninov at his most concentrated and ingenious.
LISZT Franz, Légende No.1: St François d’Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux
In 1862–3, Liszt composed two Legends which he dedicated to his daughter, Cosima von Bülow (later Cosima Wagner). The first legend is a brilliantly evocative musical depiction of St Francis of Assisi praying to the birds. Liszt’s inspiration came not only from religious texts but also from the birds he observed on Monte Mario near Rome, while he was on a retreat – an occasion when he was visited by Pope Pius IX who may have been given a private performance of the piece. Liszt first played it in public at a concert in Budapest on 29 August 1865.
Liszt composed the Mephisto Waltz No.1 in about 1859, at the same time as a version for orchestra. It was dedicated to Carl Tausig, the Polish virtuoso who was considered Liszt’s most gifted pupil, still in his teens at the time. As well as being a dazzling concert waltz that calls on all a pianist’s technical resources, it is also a programmatic work derived from the 1836 Faust by Nikolaus Lenau (indebted to Goethe, and to Byron). Liszt quotes part of Lenau’s preface in the score to explain the story, which is closely mirrored by the music: A wedding feast is in progress with music and dancing. After encouraging Faust to join the festivities, Mephistopheles snatches a violin and draws seductive sounds from it. Faust whirls about with a beautiful woman in a wild dance, out of the hall and into the woods as a nightingale warbles its song.
MOZART Kegelstatt Trio K498 (20’) SCHUMANN Märchenerzählungen (16′) KURTÁG Hommage à R Schumann (11’) CLARKE Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale (15′) BRUCH Selection from 8 pieces Op.83 (c.20’)
Pianist Tim Horton is joined by the two newest members of Ensemble 360, Rachel Roberts on viola and Robert Plane on clarinet, for a varied programme. Programme will include a selection of Bruch’s elegiac, lush fragments and Mozart’s innovative ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio.
The perfect introduction to these fabulous musicians.
MOZART Amadeus, Trio in E flat K498 Kegelstatt
Andante
Menuetto
Rondo. Allegretto
This is Mozart’s only trio for his three favourite instruments: clarinet, viola and piano. The nickname ‘Kegelstatt’ means ‘skittle alley’, and legend has it that Mozart wrote the work during a game of skittles. This may be far-fetched, especially given the rather noble character of the music, but what is certain is that he wrote the trio in Vienna, and entered it in his own thematic catalogue on 5 August 1786. The first movement is a marvellous example of Mozart’s invention at its most concentrated and unforced: every element in this sonata-form movement derives from the ornamental turn that is such a distinctive feature of the opening. The Minuet surprises by its almost grand character – no mere courtly dance, but something more imposing – and this is followed by an unhurried Rondo that brings this radiant work to a lyrical conclusion.
Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell
Lebhaft und sehr markiert
Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck
Lebhaft, sehr markiert
Schumann wrote his Märchenerzählungen (‘Fairy Tales’) for the unusual combination of clarinet, viola and piano in October 1853. Whether he chose these instruments with Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio in mind is uncertain, though it was the only other significant work for that particular ensemble. The pieces are haunting and enigmatic: if these miniatures were intended to depict particular stories, Schumann never said. Soon after finishing Märchenerzälungen he had a catastrophic breakdown and spent the last years of his life in an asylum. The pieces are dedicated to Albert Dietrich, who studied with Schumann and was a friend of Brahms. All three collaborated on the F-A-E Sonata for Joseph Joachim.
KURTÁG György, Hommage à R Schumann for clarinet, viola and piano, Op. 15d
Vivo Molto semplice piano e legato Feroce agitato Calmo scorrevole Presto Adagio poco andante
Kurtág scored his Hommage à R. Sch. for the same instrumental combination as Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132, completing the work in 1990. Each of the movements has a subtitle, and most of them refer to the imaginary characters that were such a significant spur to Schumann’s imagination. The first – whimsical and capricious – is headed ‘Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler’s Curious Pirouettes’, a reference to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s character who inspired Kreisleriana. Next is a quiet canon subtitled ‘Eusebius: the delimited circle’, alluding to the introspective Eusebius figure in Schumann’s own writings. After this comes ‘Florestan’s lips tremble in anguish once more’, evoking Florestan, Eusebius’s outgoing counterpart. The fourth movement has a subtitle in Hungarian which translates as ‘I was a cloud, now the sun is shining’, a quotation from a poem by Attila Jószef (1905–1937). It is followed by ‘In the Night’, an urgent and restless night piece. The sixth movement is much the longest, subtitled ‘Meister Raro discovers Guillaume de Machaut’. Raro was the moderating influence in Schumann’s imaginary brotherhood, between the extremes of Florestan and Eusebius. Here the music resembles a solemn processional recalling both the Medieval spirit and technical procedures of Machaut.
After studies at the Royal College of Music (where her teachers included Stanford for composition and Lionel Tertis for the viola), Rebecca Clarke began her career as a viola player in Sir Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra, one of London’s first female professional orchestral players. After moving to the United States, Clarke completed her best-known work, the Sonata for Viola and Piano, in 1919. It tied for first place (with a piece by Ernest Bloch) in a composition prize offered by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Clarke followed this with a Piano Trio in 1921. Coolidge commissioned Clarke’s Rhapsody for Cello and Piano in 1923. After returning to London in 1924, Clarke became a busy chamber music performer with less time to devote to composition. When war broke out in 1939, Clarke was in the United States visiting her brothers, one of whom was Hans Clarke, a distinguished biochemist. With the war at its height, she could not return to Britain and in the end she settled in New York. There, by chance, she met James Friskin, a pianist and composer she had known in their student days. They married in 1944 and Clarke stopped composing.
The Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale is one of her last works, written in 1941. It was dedicated to Clarke’s brother Hans and his wife Fietzchen. In an interview in 1978, Rebecca Clarke described the Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale as ‘very simple’ and admitted that she didn’t offer it to any publishers: it ‘came at a time when I was just not bothering about showing things to publishers.’ This was partly due to modesty, but it also reveals something of the obstacles Clarke had to overcome in order to achieve the recognition she deserved (it was eventually published in 2000). Writing for clarinet and viola without piano accompaniment was clearly a challenge Clarke relished and the ingenuity of the dialogue between the two instruments is testimony to her inventiveness and skill. The work is in three sections: the quiet sobriety of Prelude (marked Andante semplice) leads to an angular Allegro vigoroso followed by a rather melancholy Pastorale, marked Poco lento. The quality of the musical ideas here reveals a composer of real character whose career had been blighted by discouragement and depressive illness.
BRUCH Max, Eight Pieces Op.83 for clarinet, viola and piano (extracts)
Bruch composed these pieces in 1908 for his son, Max Felix, who was a clarinettist. Three of the pieces were originally written with an additional harp part, but by the time the work was published in 1910, Bruch had settled on a trio of clarinet, viola and piano. Discussing publication with Simrock in February 1910, Bruch wrote that the pieces had been ‘met with great approval where they were played from the manuscript’ and it’s easy to see why. Bruch always intended separate performances of individual pieces (indeed, he advised against playing all of them together), and selections can be used to make an effective suite.
STRAVINSKY Three Pieces for String Quartet (7′) SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.3 Op.73 (32′) BEETHOVEN String Quartet Op.135 (26′)
“Must it be? It must be!” Beethoven inscribed these words on the manuscript of his profoundly moving final string quartet. This Op.135 quartet was written towards the very end of his life, and is touched by the wisdom of his years yet as full of contrast, quick wit and struggle as any of earlier works.
Two masterpieces of the 20th century are presented alongside Beethoven’s quartet: Stravinsky’s wonderfully inventive short pieces and Shostakovich’s masterful third quartet, which encompasses the scope of a symphony in an intimate chamber work.
STRAVINSKY Igor, Three Pieces for String Quartet
Composed in 1914, Stravinsky revised these pieces in 1918 when he dedicated them to the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. The first performance was given in Paris in May 1915 by a quartet which included the composer Darius Milhaud playing violin, while the 1918 version had its premiere in London on 13 February 1919. The work comprises three short movements without titles or tempo markings. Though the dimensions of the pieces are slight, Stravinsky managed to baffle (and infuriate) early critics with the unusual sound effects and performance markings in places, and the deliberate absence of any conventional forms or traditional thematic development. Instead, the mood is by turns stange and grotesque. The second piece was inspired by the comedian Little Tich (Harry Relph) whose jerky stage act had impressed Stravinsky during a visit to London in 1914. The result might almost be described as an anti-quartet, and as the critic Paul Griffiths later remarked, these little pieces are ‘determinedly not a “string quartet”. The notion of quartet dialogue has no place here, nor have subtleties of blend: the texture is completely fragmented, with each instrument sounding for itself.’
Nigel Simeone
SHOSTAKOVICH Dmitri, String Quartet No.3 in F major Op.73
Shostakovich began his Third String Quartet in January 1946 but made no progress beyond the second movement until May when he went with his family to spend the summer at a dacha near the Finnish border. According to Beria (head of the Soviet secret police) in a letter to Shostakovich, this retreat was a personal gift from Stalin. It was a productive summer and the quartet was completed on 2 August 1946. The same day Shostakovich wrote to Vassily Shirinsky, second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet: ‘I have never been so pleased with a composition as with this Quartet. I am probably wrong, but that is exactly how I feel right now.’ The Beethoven Quartet gave the first performance at the Moscow Conservatory on 16 December 1946. Though there was an ominous silence from official critics, Shostakovich’s reputation was still high among the nation’s leaders: on 28 December he was given the Order of Lenin and each member of the Beethoven Quartet received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Just a year later the Third Quartet was denounced in the journal Sovetskaya musika as ‘modernist and false music.’
Although Shostakovich had no overt programme in mind, he invested a great deal of private emotion in the work – sufficient, as Fyodor Druzhinin (violist of the Beethoven Quartet) recalled, for the music to move the composer to tears when he attended a rehearsal in the 1960s, twenty years after he had written it. The start of the first movement, in F major, recalls the Haydn-like mood of the Ninth Symphony (completed in 1945) and this is followed by a contrasting idea, played pianissimo. The development includes some turbulent fugal writing, injecting a sense of unease that hovers over the rest of the movement. The Moderato con moto (in E minor) is based on a series of sinister ostinato figures and frequent repetitions while the third movement is a violent scherzo in G sharp minor. The Adagio is an extended passacaglia (ground bass) that gives way to a Moderato in which some kind of resolution is found in the closing bars, ending with three pizzicato F major chords.
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