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THE NIGHT OVERTOOK US: An evening of Scottish folk music

Donald Grant & Friends

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 9.15pm

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Fiddle player Donald Grant
Home› What's on› THE NIGHT OVERTOOK US: An evening of Scottish folk music

Donald Grant, Elias Quartet violinist, is also a master of the folk fiddle. Raised in the Highlands, Donald was immersed in Gaelic song and Scottish music from an early age. His folk projects are infused with his life-long passion for this music tradition and inflected, through his many collaborations, with the spirit of jazz and the musical rigour of his classical work. He brings his band of exceptional musicians from Glasgow to collaborate with Ensemble 360 to perform excerpts from his new piece Thuit an Oidhche Oirnm (The Night Overtook Us) as well as classic tunes from his album ‘The Way Home’.  

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About the Artists

APPALACHIAN SPRING

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Musicians from the Elias String Quartet
Home› What's on› APPALACHIAN SPRING

BARBER Canzonetta op.48 (8′) 
STRAUSS Metamorphosen (septet version) (25′) 
BARBER Adagio from String Quartet Op.11 (9′) 
COPLAND Appalachian Spring (30′)  

 Members of the celebrated Elias Quartet join forces with their friends and former colleagues in Ensemble 360 for this very special concert. The first half features Strauss’s beloved late work Metamorphosen in its rare string septet version; a brooding meditation on change that is deeply moving and filled with yearning. Barber’s sumptuous and iconic Adagio also features, alongside Copland’s large-scale chamber suite, Appalachian Spring. Originally a ballet score, it’s a celebration of peace and freedom, and a depiction of Appalachia that weaves together folk melodies in a joyous, life-affirming piece. 

This concert is generously sponsored by Kim Staniforth, in memory of Margaret Staniforth.

 

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BARBER Samuel, Canzonetta for Oboe & Strings Op.48

Originally composed for oboe and string orchestra, and here presented in a new chamber arrangement by Ensemble 360’s oboist, Adrian Wilson, Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings was meant to be the slow movement of an oboe concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. However, soon after starting work on the piece (in 1978) Barber was diagnosed with cancer. The other two movements of the concerto were never completed, and this was to be the composer’s final work (Barber died in 1981). The piece was orchestrated posthumously by Barber’s longtime friend and former student, Charles Turner, and was premiered on December 17th, 1981, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. Principle oboist of the New York Philharmonic (and a former classmate of Barber’s at the Curtis Institute of Music), Harold Gomberg played the solo part. 

In many ways, the Canzonetta is typical of Barber’s style, with a tendency towards vocal lyricism and neo-romantic tonality. In this regard, Historian and Barber specialist Barbara Heyman calls the Canzonetta an “appropriate elegy to the conclusion of Barber’s career.” The work, like others in Barber’s oeuvre, combines elements of post-Straussian chromaticism with what we might think of as a typically American lyrical simplicity. A simple, meandering melodic line is at times presented in a strictly diatonic context, and at others with a highly chromatic harmonisation. Throughout, the oboe’s melody floats above the string texture, seemingly weightless with Barber showing the instrument at its best. Indeed, Turner quotes Barber (in the preface to the 1993 edition of the work for oboe and piano) as having said, “I like to give my best themes to the oboe”. 

Dr. Benjamin Tassie

STRAUSS Richard, Metamorphosen, preliminary version for string septet ed. Rudolf Leopold

In September 1944, Richard Strauss wrote to his friend Karl Böhm, telling him that he had been working on an Adagio for string instruments, which would probably become an Allegro since he couldn’t ‘remain very long at a Brucknerian snail’s pace’. Early in 1945, Strauss gave the new piece a name – Metamorphosen – and completed a version for seven string instruments, a score that was only discovered in 1990. Whether Strauss ever intended this for performance is questionable, but it serves as a fascinating comparison with the final version for 23 solo strings that was completed on 12 April 1945, just two weeks after the septet score. Metamorphosen was first performed on 25 January 1946, by the Collegium Musicum Zurich under Paul Sacher who had commissioned it. According to Michael Kennedy, Strauss conducted two of the rehearsals and he was in the audience for the premiere. Metamorophosen is an overwhelmingly powerful lament for Strauss’s native city of Munich – which had been all but destroyed by more than 70 bombing raids – especially its Opera House. The introductory chords and the falling theme heard near the opening are the most important components of a work marked by the most fluid and complex counterpuntal development. On the last page of the score, Strauss has written ‘In Memoriam!’ and the falling theme appears over a quotation in the bass from the Funeral March of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Thus ends one of the most moving and profound of all Strauss’s works.

Nigel Simone 2014

BARBER Samuel, Adagio for Strings

It’s an amusing accident of history that Barber’s Adagio, one of the totems of American music, was composed in Austria (where Barber was spending the summer and autumn with Gian-Carlo Menotti) and first performed on 14 December 1936 at a concert in Rome (as the slow movement of the String Quartet Op.11). Barber was delighted with this movement, describing it to his friend Orlando Cole as ‘a knockout!’ While finishing the whole quartet, he arranged the Adagio as an independent movement for string orchestra and this was first performed in 1938 in a broadcast concert in New York given by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Barber’s fellow composer Aaron Copland spoke about the piece in 1982 for a BBC radio programme, praising ‘the sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch … from beginning to end. It’s gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

COPLAND Aaron, Appalachian Spring

It was the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a new ballet for Martha Graham’s dance company in 1943, for performance in the Coolidge Auditorium (named after her) at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. Copland was delighted with the idea, particularly after Graham sent him the first version of her scenario concerning a young married couple in rural Pennsylvania. The ballet went through various titles during the composition process, and Copland’s manuscript was simply headed ‘Ballet for Martha’, but Graham settled on ‘Appalachian Spring’ just before the premiere, taking the title from a poem by Hart Crane. One of the attractions for Copland was the challenge of writing for an ensemble of 12 instruments (the largest group that could fit into the very small pit in the Coolidge Auditorium), and the result was described in a review of the first performance by the ballet critic John Martin as ‘a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit.’ Copland himself was typically self-effacing, admitting that ‘people seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.’ In 1945 he made a very successful arrangement for large orchestra, but the sound of the original has a beauty and intimacy all its own. Copland decided quite early on to use the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ (written in 1848), and this melody is woven through much of the score, notably in the set of variations. But while the score perfectly matches the ‘local’ elements of the story, it also transcends them to become a piece of universal appeal: Copland’s great achievement in Appalachian Spring is to have created a quiet and heartfelt vision of hope in troubled times.

Nigel Simeone 2024

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

Musicians from the Elias String Quartet

Members of the Elias Quartet

Donald Grant violin, Simone van de Giessen viola & Marie Bitloch cello

The Elias String Quartet take their name from Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, of which Elias is its German form, and have quickly established themselves as one of the most intense and vibrant quartets of their generation. The Quartet was formed in 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where they worked closely with the late Dr. Christopher Rowland. They also spent a year studying at the Hochschule in Cologne with the Alban Berg quartet. Between 2005 and 2009 they were resident String Quartet at Music in the Round as part of Ensemble 360, taking over from the Lindsay Quartet. They are now ensemble in residence at the RNCM and regularly go back there to teach and perform. Read more.

RELAXED CONCERT: APPALACHIAN SPRING

Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets:
£5 / carers free

Past Event
Musicians from the Elias String Quartet
Home› What's on› RELAXED CONCERT: APPALACHIAN SPRING

BARBER Adagio from String Quartet Op.11 (9′) 
BARBER Canzonetta Op.48 (8′) 
COPLAND Appalachian Spring (30′)  

For this ‘Relaxed’ concert of American music featuring Barber’s much-loved Adagio and Copland’s joyful Appalachian Spring, doors will be left open, lights raised, a break-out space provided and there will be less emphasis on the audience being quiet during the performance. People with an Autism Spectrum, sensory or communication disorder or learning disability, those with age-related impairments and parents/carers with babies are all especially welcome. 

BARBER Samuel, Adagio for Strings

It’s an amusing accident of history that Barber’s Adagio, one of the totems of American music, was composed in Austria (where Barber was spending the summer and autumn with Gian-Carlo Menotti) and first performed on 14 December 1936 at a concert in Rome (as the slow movement of the String Quartet Op.11). Barber was delighted with this movement, describing it to his friend Orlando Cole as ‘a knockout!’ While finishing the whole quartet, he arranged the Adagio as an independent movement for string orchestra and this was first performed in 1938 in a broadcast concert in New York given by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Barber’s fellow composer Aaron Copland spoke about the piece in 1982 for a BBC radio programme, praising ‘the sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch … from beginning to end. It’s gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

BARBER Samuel, Canzonetta for Oboe & Strings Op.48

Originally composed for oboe and string orchestra, and here presented in a new chamber arrangement by Ensemble 360’s oboist, Adrian Wilson, Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings was meant to be the slow movement of an oboe concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. However, soon after starting work on the piece (in 1978) Barber was diagnosed with cancer. The other two movements of the concerto were never completed, and this was to be the composer’s final work (Barber died in 1981). The piece was orchestrated posthumously by Barber’s longtime friend and former student, Charles Turner, and was premiered on December 17th, 1981, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. Principle oboist of the New York Philharmonic (and a former classmate of Barber’s at the Curtis Institute of Music), Harold Gomberg played the solo part. 

In many ways, the Canzonetta is typical of Barber’s style, with a tendency towards vocal lyricism and neo-romantic tonality. In this regard, Historian and Barber specialist Barbara Heyman calls the Canzonetta an “appropriate elegy to the conclusion of Barber’s career.” The work, like others in Barber’s oeuvre, combines elements of post-Straussian chromaticism with what we might think of as a typically American lyrical simplicity. A simple, meandering melodic line is at times presented in a strictly diatonic context, and at others with a highly chromatic harmonisation. Throughout, the oboe’s melody floats above the string texture, seemingly weightless with Barber showing the instrument at its best. Indeed, Turner quotes Barber (in the preface to the 1993 edition of the work for oboe and piano) as having said, “I like to give my best themes to the oboe”. 

Dr. Benjamin Tassie

COPLAND Aaron, Appalachian Spring

It was the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a new ballet for Martha Graham’s dance company in 1943, for performance in the Coolidge Auditorium (named after her) at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. Copland was delighted with the idea, particularly after Graham sent him the first version of her scenario concerning a young married couple in rural Pennsylvania. The ballet went through various titles during the composition process, and Copland’s manuscript was simply headed ‘Ballet for Martha’, but Graham settled on ‘Appalachian Spring’ just before the premiere, taking the title from a poem by Hart Crane. One of the attractions for Copland was the challenge of writing for an ensemble of 12 instruments (the largest group that could fit into the very small pit in the Coolidge Auditorium), and the result was described in a review of the first performance by the ballet critic John Martin as ‘a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit.’ Copland himself was typically self-effacing, admitting that ‘people seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.’ In 1945 he made a very successful arrangement for large orchestra, but the sound of the original has a beauty and intimacy all its own. Copland decided quite early on to use the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ (written in 1848), and this melody is woven through much of the score, notably in the set of variations. But while the score perfectly matches the ‘local’ elements of the story, it also transcends them to become a piece of universal appeal: Copland’s great achievement in Appalachian Spring is to have created a quiet and heartfelt vision of hope in troubled times.

Nigel Simeone 2024

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

Musicians from the Elias String Quartet

Members of the Elias Quartet

Donald Grant violin, Simone van de Giessen viola & Marie Bitloch cello

The Elias String Quartet take their name from Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, of which Elias is its German form, and have quickly established themselves as one of the most intense and vibrant quartets of their generation. The Quartet was formed in 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where they worked closely with the late Dr. Christopher Rowland. They also spent a year studying at the Hochschule in Cologne with the Alban Berg quartet. Between 2005 and 2009 they were resident String Quartet at Music in the Round as part of Ensemble 360, taking over from the Lindsay Quartet. They are now ensemble in residence at the RNCM and regularly go back there to teach and perform. Read more.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

Ensemble 360 & George Morton - conductor

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Monday 19 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Ensemble 360 in concert with film
Home› What's on› BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

MEISEL (arr. Morton) Battleship Potemkin (74’) 

Legendary Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein’s silent masterpiece tells the heroic story of the 1905 rebellion of the crew of the Potemkin. The film is most famous for its iconic fourth act, a dramatic montage of visceral images of the crushing of the uprising in Odessa and the citizenry’s last stand on the stark stone steps.  

A technical masterpiece, and Soviet cinema at its finest, we are screening this influential and visionary piece of cinema with the original soundtrack performed live by Ensemble 360 to mark the film’s centenary year. 

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MEISEL Edmund (Arr. George Morton), Battleship Potemkin

Edmund Meisel was born in Vienna but moved to Berlin as a child. Little is known about his musical education, but he was working as a violinst in Berlin orchestras while still in his teens. The vibrant theatrical life of Berlin in the Weimar years provided his first work as a composer, writing incidental music for the agitprop stage productions by Erwin Piscator and including at least one project with Bertolt Brecht (a radio adaptation of Mann ist Mann). It was thanks to his association with Piscator that Meisel became involved with composing the score for the silent film Battleship Potemkin. In 1925, the Soviet Central Committee asked Mosfilm to make a new film to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, the film is based on a real historical event. It is set in 1905 aboard the Imperial Navy battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Sailing out of port with the red Socialist flag, the other Imperialist ships refuse to open fire and cheer the defiant sailors of the Potemkin. On its release, Battleship Potemkin was a great success in the Soviet Union and it was quickly distributed to other European countries. In Britain its central themes of promoting revolution and social change worried the film censors, but in Germany it was a huge success, distributed by Prometheus Films.

Prometheus decided that for the film to make its fullest impact, it needed a musical score to accompany the silent images. Meisel was asked to compose the score and was given less than two weeks to write it, as the German release date was already announced. Eisenstein was enthusiastic about the idea of adding music, and even made specific suggestions to Meisel, asking for the inclusion of some revolutionary songs (from Russia, France and elsewhere) and also to produce music of ‘deafening fury and stark rhythms’ for moments of the greatest dramatic power.

So it was that a Viennese-born Berliner composed the score for Eisenstein’s Russian classic. He did so without any of the synchronisation tools used by more recent film composers, and a tight budget meant that as well as time pressure, he was also limited to an orchestra of 16 players. Meisel’s remarkable achievement in Battleship Potemkin has been well summarised by the film music critic Craig Lysy: ‘In every way [Meisel] succeeded in empowering Eisenstein’s narrative with inspired music which helped earn the film the accolade as one of the greatest films in cinematic history.’

Meisel’s pioneering score started a trend for new large-scale film scores in the final years of the silent era. In 1927, Eisenstein asked Meisel to provide a score for his film October: Ten Days that Shook the World, and Gottfried Huppertz composed his score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Major figures in European symphonic music also became involved in writing for epic film dramas: Arthur Honegger composed a score for Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) and Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his music for New Babylon, a Soviet film set at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune.

In other words, Meisel should be considered one of the great innovators in film music history, producing a specially-composed score for a full-length film in which images and sound were integrated to create – together – a vastly richer dramatic effect. Previous scores had usually been pot-pourris of existing music, strung together to be an approximate match for the on-screen action. Meisel broke with that tradition, creating a score whose architecture (and detail) matched Eisenstein’s montage-like construction. In 1934, the commentator Ernest Borneman wrote about Meisel’s technique in an article for Sight and Sound: ‘Meisel analysed the montage of some famous silent films in regard to rhythm, emphasis, emotional climax and mood. To each separate shot he assigned a certain musical theme. Then he directly combined the separate themes, using the rhythms, emphasis and climaxes of the visual montage for the organisation of his music. He wished to prove by this experiment that the montage of a good film is based on the same rules and develops in the same way as music … By far the best result was from Eisenstein’s Potemkin.’ Meisel’s own career as a ground-breaking composer of film music lasted barely five years: he died in 1930 at the age of 36.

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

George Morton

George Morton is the Musical Director of the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra and is Principal Conductor of the Picture House Orchestra.  George made his debut with the Babylon Orchester Berlin in September 2022, and has since given over 30 performances with the orchestra.  In Autumn 2023 he’ll make his debut with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, Southbank Sinfonia, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Stockholm Concert Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, and Nordic Chamber Orchestra, as well as returning to the Babylon Orchester Berlin.

Upcoming engagements with the Picture House Orchestra include the Snowman Tour in December 2023 in major venues across the UK, alongside the 30th Anniversary performances of Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.  With the same orchestra George conducted the Stand By for Action Concert (a celebration of Gerry Anderson) in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall (April 2022), with the concert being recorded for BluRay and CD.

Recent guest conducting engagements include the Orchestra of Opera North, Northern Chamber Orchestra , Vaasa City Orchestra, Roma Tre Orchestra, Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra, Northern Ballet Sinfonia (a studio recording), London Mozart Players, Covent Garden Sinfonia, Hallam Sinfonia, and the British Symphony Orchestra.

George is founder and Artistic Director of Rep Orchestra, an ensemble based in Sheffield which devotes its concerts to exploring innovative and exciting projects.  Recently the ensemble has given the world premiere of George’s chamber orchestra version of Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica, given sold-out performances at Sheffield International DocFest, Latitude Festival, and Festival of the Mind, and has performed the Snowman and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights and the Gold Rush (live film with orchestra).

SCHUMANN & RAVEL: MOTHER GOOSE

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Monday 19 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Ensemble 360 musicians
Home› What's on› SCHUMANN & RAVEL: MOTHER GOOSE

RAVEL (arr. Farrington) Mother Goose Suite (20′)
FARRENC Sextet (20′)
DURUFLÉ Prélude, récitatif et variations (12′) 
SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E flat Op.44 (28′)  

This afternoon concert begins with the ‘Mother Goose’ Suite. Ravel’s delightful, whimsical work sets fairytales to music, performed here in a chamber arrangement. Starting life as a composition for piano four hands, and best known in an orchestral version, this chamber arrangement has been a favourite of players and audiences alike over the decades. Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat, widely considered to be his greatest chamber work, is an epic piano concerto in quintet form: serene, reflective and ultimately exultant. 

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RAVEL Maurice (Arr. Walter for wind quintet), Ma Mere l’Oye (Mother Goose)

Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant
Petit Poucet
Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes
Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête
Le jardin féerique

 

Originally composed as ‘five children’s pieces’ in 1910, Ravel’s Mother Goose was orchestrated by the composer the following year, and expanded into a ballet (with the addition of a prelude and a dance). The pieces are mostly based on familiar fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, The Green Serpent (in which Laidronette is one of the princesses), and Beauty and the Beast. The final ‘Enchanted Garden’ doesn’t appear to be based on a traditional tale. Ravel is at his most colourful and inventive in these exquisite miniatures which lend themselves to imaginative arrangement.

 

© Nigel Simeone 2015

FARRENC Louise, Sextet in C minor Op.40

Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Allegro vivace

The composer of three symphonies and an impressive body of chamber music as well as an extensive catalogue of works for piano (her own instrument), Louise Farrenc has thankfully been rediscovered after a century of neglect. Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont, she came from an artistic family and was encouraged to develop her gifts as a pianist and composer. She studied the piano with Moscheles and Hummel, and her composition teacher was Anton Reicha. In 1821 she married the flautist Aristide Farrenc who subsequently established a publishing business. After a successful career as a travelling virtuoso, Louise Farrenc was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1842, a post she held for thirty years. The Sextet for piano and wind quintet was written in 1851–2, immediately after the successful premiere of her Nonet for strings and wind (in which Joseph Joachim was one of the performers).

The first movement – the longest of the three – opens with a dramatic theme, decorated by elaborate piano writing, while the second theme is more lyrical. Broadly-conceived, this movement ends in grand style. The main theme of the slow movement is introduced by the wind alone before the being taken up by the piano, then by the whole ensemble with several short wind solos. The finale begins with an urgent and uneasy theme on the piano which gives way to a delicate second idea. But dramatic intensity is maintained throughout the movement, right up to the turbulent ending.

© Nigel Simeone

DURUFLÉ Maurice, Prélude, Récitatif et Variations, Op.3

Duruflé was an exceptionally self-critical composer, leaving a very small output. He was even disparaging about the music allowed to be published, including pieces that enjoyed considerable success. He is best remembered for his organ music, and for choral works such as the Requiem and the Four Motets based on Gregorian chants. There are two purely instrumental pieces: the Trois Danses for orchestra (which Duruflé also arranged for two pianos and for solo piano), and the present Prélude, Récitatif et Variations, written in 1928 and dedicated to the memory of the great Parisian music publisher, Jacques Durand (1865–1928) who had published most of the major works of Debussy and Ravel as well as Saint-Saëns, Roussel and others. Scored for the unusual ensemble of flute, viola and piano, Duruflé’s ‘Prélude’ opens with a brooding piano introduction (notable for some beautiful harmonies) over which the viola introduces a song-like theme. The flute enters with a tender, plaintive melody as the texture becomes lighter and the tempo starts to ease forwards, soon engaging in a duet with the viola over an increasingly animated piano accompaniment. The music reaches an imposing climax before subsiding into the ‘Récitatif’, marked ‘Lent et triste’. An unaccompanied viola recitative leads to the final Variations. These begin with the theme played by the flute, followed by a rhapsodic set of variations full of imaginative instrumental colours and ending with a sense of joyous abandon. 

Nigel Simeone 2024

SCHUMANN Robert, Piano Quintet Op.44

1. Allegro brillante
2. In modo d’una Marcia
3. Scherzo: Molto vivace
4. Allegro ma non troppo

 

Immediately after finishing his three string quartets, Schumann turned to a genre that was much rarer at the time: a quintet for piano and strings. His first sketch, dated 23–28 September 1842, is an outline of the complete work, and it has several surprises. Two are particularly startling. The first is that Schumann originally intended the quintet to be in five movements – with an Adagio between that March and the Scherzo. The second is that there is no hint of the fugal coda using themes from the first and last movements that crowns the finale. (Less important but no less surprising is the location of this manuscript. It was given by Schumann to his French friend Jean-Joseph Bonaventure Laurens and for more than a century it has been one of the treasures of the Municipal Library at Carpentras in the South of France). By 12 October 1842, Schumann had completed the work in its final four-movement form, and dedicated it to his wife Clara. Despite the apparent speed, the work cost Schumann a great deal of effort and left him exhausted – he wrote in his diary that ‘I spent most of the month pretty much without sleep. The music had kept me overly agitated.’

 

The first performance was given privately at Schumann’s house a few weeks later, on 29 November – by which time Schumann had not only recovered his strength but had found the time to compose a companion masterpiece: the Piano Quartet Op. 47 (dated 26 November 1842). A second private performance was scheduled in December, but Clara fell ill. Mendelssohn stepped in and the story goes that he sight-read the piano part. He also made a few suggestions about revisions, which Schumann duly made in time for the first public performance, on 8 January 1843, with Clara at the piano. One early enthusiast was Wagner, who wrote to Schumann in February 1843: he ‘liked the Quintet very much: I asked your lovely wife to play it twice. I still vividly recall the first two movements in particular … I see where you are headed and assure you that I want to head there too – it is our only salvation: Beauty!’

 

An extraordinary anecdote about Schumann’s Piano Quintet involves several giants of nineteenth-century musical life in June 1848. Liszt was passing through Dresden and announced that he would like to pay a surprise visit to the Schumanns and to hear the Piano Quintet. At very short notice, Clara rounded up four string players for the evening and all was ready at 7 p.m. Liszt eventually showed up two hours late, with Wagner in tow. Liszt’s biographer Alan Walker has described what followed as ‘a dreadful scene’: Liszt dismissed the quintet: ‘No, no, my dear Schumann. This is not the real thing at all; it’s just provincial music.’ During the dinner that followed, the atmosphere worsened still further when Liszt made some disparaging remarks about Mendelssohn (who had died the previous November). Schumann exploded and stormed out of the room. Liszt made his apologies and left, and Clara wrote in her diary that ‘I have done with him forever’. Liszt’s recollection tallies with Clara’s: he remembered ‘a very agitated evening’. The dedication of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor to Schumann in 1854 is usually thought to be a reciprocal gesture for Schumann’s dedication of the Fantasy Op. 17 in 1836, but perhaps it was also a peace offering to a musician he always held in high regard. If that was the intention, it didn’t work: by the time the first edition of the Sonata appeared in July 1854, Schumann himself was in a lunatic asylum, and Clara resented having the thank Liszt for a work she thought ‘dreadful’. There’s a bittersweet irony to this story: in 1839, a composer friend urged Schumann to try his hand at ‘some chamber music: trios, quintets or septets’. That friend was Franz Liszt.

 

Nigel Simeone 2010

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

THE NOSTALGIC UTOPIAN FUTURE DISTANCE

Ensemble 360

Firth Hall - University of Sheffield, Sheffield
Sunday 18 May 2025, 8.00pm

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Ensemble 360 wind musicians
Home› What's on› THE NOSTALGIC UTOPIAN FUTURE DISTANCE

SAARIAHO Petals (10′) 
BOULEZ Dialogue de l’ombre double (20′)
NONO La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (40′-50′) 

An electrifying and electrified evening of duets between soloists drawn from Ensemble 360, and tape or live electronics, all presented in multi-speaker, 360-degree surround-sound.  

 Saariaho’s energetic and colourful Petals for cello is as invigorating as it is haunting, while Boulez creates an intricate dance between the clarinet and its own shadow in his Dialogue de l’ombre double. The concert concludes with one of Luigi Nono’s final works: his monumental in-the-round piece for violin and eight tapes is by turns sparse, intricate, beautiful and thrilling. 

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SAARIAHO Kaija, Petals

In the early 1980s, Kaija Saariaho experienced a shift in her musical outlook, switching from the strict serialism she had studied previously in the pursuit of something more eclectic and experimental. At IRCAM, the computer music research centre in Paris founded by Pierre Boulez in 1977, she began experimenting with different ways of creating sound, particularly with using electronics in the interrogation of sound’s properties, and used spectral composers such as Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey as models. Early works from Saariaho’s new period included the Jardin Secret trilogy (1985-7), for tape alone and instruments with electronics, and Lichtbogen (1986), the first time Saariaho worked with computers in the context of purely instrumental music. 

 

Saariaho’s Petals, written in 1988, was another work that resulted from that creative shift. Petals came directly from discarded or unused ideas she had in the creation of Nymphèa, the third of the Jardin trilogy, for string quartet and electronics. (“It was like she collected these petals and made them into a cello piece,” the cellist Anssi Karttunen, who premiered the piece, has said.)  

 

For solo cello with or without electronics, in Petals there’s an emphasis on finding new sounds and textures through a variety of live techniques: varying the pressure, speed and placement of the bow on the instrument, changing the density of the sound through the use of harmonics, and playing with a mix of different types of vibrato. The electronics—consisting of a cellist playing through a microphone into a mixer, with the sound being put back the system via a  reverb dial and a harmonizer—can be played live, or be pre-programmed. “If the sound is already 3-D,” Karttunen has said, the electronic element of Petals represents “the opening up of a fourth dimension.” 

Hugh Morris 2024 

BOULEZ Pierre, Dialogue de l’ombre double

Pierre Boulez, composer, conductor, and arch polemicist, described the intention of his 1952 piece Structures I as follows: 

 

“I wanted to eradicate from my vocabulary absolutely every trace of the conventional, whether it concerned figures and phrases, or development and form; I then wanted gradually, element after element, to win back the various stages of the compositional process, in such a manner that a perfectly new synthesis might arise, a synthesis that would not be corrupted from the very outset by foreign bodies—stylistic reminiscences in particular.” 

 

It’s interesting, then, to compare this sentiment with Dialogue de l’ombre double, a piece from three decades later which is indelibly linked to a particularly pungent “foreign body”: the theatre. The inspiration for the piece came from a scene in Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de Satin, an eleven-hour verse epic written in 1929. Boulez’s title, meaning “dialogue of the double shadow,” comes from a moment in Claudel’s thirteenth scene when a man and a woman are projected together onto a wall. The piece uses this as its jumping off point; live clarinet plays with its sonic shadow, a pre-recorded clarinet spatialized around the concert space using loudspeakers. 

 

The piece is not theatrical, but has a certain literary feel, like one of the long unbroken multi-voiced monologues you might find in the works of James Joyce. The music contrasts between “stanzas” (played live) and “transitions” (prerecorded), and dialogue between the two parts, though this aspect is better imagined as two forks of a split personality than a conversation between two different voices. Dialogue is full of a darting and rhythmic vitality, and serves as a great inroad into Boulez’s art. 

 

Hugh Morris 2024 

NONO Luigi, La lontananza nostalgica utopica

The nostalgic-utopian distance 

is friend to me and despairing  

in continuous restlessness 

 

Luigi Nono was a lifelong Marxist. Brought up in Mussolini’s Italy, he joined the Italian Communist Party in 1952, and early works—Il canto sospeso, Intolleranza 1960, La fabbrica illuminata—demonstrated Nono’s desire to create socially engaged art. He ploughed an individual furrow which few followed (though, in Maurizio Pollini and Claudio Abbado, he had some high-profile supporters): an enthusiastic proponent of serial techniques, Nono was also driven by the belief that all artistic creation should be motivated by egalitarian principles. He was a keen proponent of using the most up-to-date technologies available to him, under the belief that this was the only way to best speak to the current moment. 

 

La lontananza is crammed full of ideas, both musical and philosophical. Subtitled “madrigal for many wanderers with Gidon Kremer,” the “wanderers” idea refers to a section of a poem by Antonio Machado that Nono discovered on a wall of a cloister in Toledo—“Wanderer, there are no ways, only the wandering”—that Nono reflected on in other late works. (La lontananza was one of the last works he wrote before he died.) The “wanderer” also refers to the mechanics of La lontananza’s realisation. Sheet music is divided across multiple music stands, and the performer travels through the space. (The first performer, Gidon Kremer, is imbued directly into the work, with recordings of his speech and other off-cuts from Nono and Kremer’s recording sessions making it into the final tape recording. Performers today wander with Nono and Kremer together.) 

 

The title, meanwhile, references a complicated bit of Marxist thought. Its dedicatee, the composer Salvatore Sciarrino, explained it as follows: “the past reflected in the present (nostalgica) brings about a creative utopia (utopica), the desire for what is known becomes a vehicle for what will be possible (futura) through the medium of distance (lontananza).” It seems that Nono, through this piece, is prefiguring ideas of hauntology popularised by Jacques Derrida, and later Mark Fisher. But for contemporary audiences, where future nostalgia is an ever-present part of pop culture, and where the radical, futuristic dreams of previous generations fade further into the distance with each passing day, perhaps this idea isn’t as complicated as first thought. 

 

The piece lasts for a maximum of sixty minutes. The solo violinist is accompanied by eight channels of tape, controlled by a sound technician who must be as attentive as the soloist. And, across the eight tapes, it’s not just other violin sounds that are heard, but everyday ephemera recorded during the process too (doors, voices, words, chairs). La lontananza is a haunted essay on time—looking forward, falling back, remembering, dreaming, and remembering how to dream. 

Hugh Morris 2024 

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

GOLDBERG: BACH AT BREAKFAST

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 18 May 2025, 7.30am

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Ensemble 360 string trio musicians
Home› What's on› GOLDBERG: BACH AT BREAKFAST

 BACH Goldberg Variations (String trio version) (70′)  

 A breakfast concert of Bach’s hugely popular Goldberg Variations, at Samuel Worth Chapel. Intricate counterpoint and life-affirming spirituality are the hallmarks of this most intimate of works presented in a breathtaking, conversational arrangement for violin, viola and cello. Legend has it, these Variations were written for a sleepless Count: this early start will live long in your dreams. 

Our sunrise concerts at the sensitively restored Grade-II* listed chapel always sell out, so for their 20th anniversary, Ensemble 360 wanted to give more people a chance to join them for a special early morning experience.  

This year, the Sunrise concert will be immediately repeated with the same programme, so you can choose to join us for Bach at dawn or Bach at breakfast! 

Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction. 
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction. Find out more. 

BACH Johann Sebastian, Goldberg Variations (arranged for String Trio by Dmitri Sitkovetsky)

Bach originally wrote the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and this was one of the very few works published during the composer’s lifetime, by the firm of Baltasar Schmid at Nuremberg in 1741. The original title page describes the work as ‘Clavier-Übung [Keyboard Practice], consisting of an Aria, with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, prepared to delight the souls of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach.’ There was no irony here: Bach, as a devout Lutheran, was deeply conscious of the spiritual dimension of music, and its aspiration to enrich the soul as well as to divert and entertain. But the work was also an extraordinary feat: if we count each prelude and fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier as self-contained pairs of works, then the Goldberg Variations is by far the largest piece of keyboard music published in the eighteenth century and it attracted international attention early on. Bach is often thought of as a composer whose music was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century (thanks in large part to Mendelssohn and Schumann), but his keyboard music was the exception to this. In his pioneering General History of the Science and Practice of Music published in 1776, Sir John Hawkins devotes several pages to Bach, thanking Johann Christian Bach (then in London) for supplying some of the information. But he then goes on to quote three full pages of music examples comprising the Aria (‘Air’), Variation 9 and Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations, making this one of the first pieces of Bach to appear in print in England.

But where is Goldberg in all this, and who was he? In 1741, Bach stayed with Count Keyserlingk in Dresden, who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his 1802 biography of Bach, the story goes as follows: ‘The Count was often unwell and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.’

It’s a fine tale – and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia – but it’s mostly fictitious. As Peter Williams has demonstrated, Goldberg was only born in 1727 (and was thus in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk), so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had actually been published before Bach’s visit to Dresden, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a

copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also explains the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition of the score – and the presence of the Aria in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier. Williams has also speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedmann, a brilliant performer and who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733.

The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to Bach. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments – as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi. This arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose astonishing 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant bestseller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

GOLDBERG: BACH AT DAWN

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 18 May 2025, 5.00am

Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Ensemble 360 string trio musicians
Home› What's on› GOLDBERG: BACH AT DAWN

BACH Goldberg Variations (String trio version) (70′) 

As the day breaks and birdsong surrounds Samuel Worth Chapel, Bach’s hugely popular Goldberg Variations, will greet the dawn. Intricate counterpoint and life-affirming spirituality are the hallmarks of this most intimate of works presented in a breathtaking, conversational arrangement for violin, viola and cello. Legend has it these Variations were written for a sleepless Count: this early start will live long in your dreams. 

Our sunrise concerts at the sensitively restored Grade-II* listed chapel always sell out, so for their 20th anniversary, Ensemble 360 wanted to give more people a chance to join them for a special early morning experience.  

This year, the Sunrise concert will be immediately repeated with the same programme, so you can choose to join us for Bach at dawn or Bach at breakfast! 

Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction. Find out more. 

BACH Johann Sebastian, Goldberg Variations (arranged for String Trio by Dmitri Sitkovetsky)

Bach originally wrote the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and this was one of the very few works published during the composer’s lifetime, by the firm of Baltasar Schmid at Nuremberg in 1741. The original title page describes the work as ‘Clavier-Übung [Keyboard Practice], consisting of an Aria, with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, prepared to delight the souls of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach.’ There was no irony here: Bach, as a devout Lutheran, was deeply conscious of the spiritual dimension of music, and its aspiration to enrich the soul as well as to divert and entertain. But the work was also an extraordinary feat: if we count each prelude and fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier as self-contained pairs of works, then the Goldberg Variations is by far the largest piece of keyboard music published in the eighteenth century and it attracted international attention early on. Bach is often thought of as a composer whose music was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century (thanks in large part to Mendelssohn and Schumann), but his keyboard music was the exception to this. In his pioneering General History of the Science and Practice of Music published in 1776, Sir John Hawkins devotes several pages to Bach, thanking Johann Christian Bach (then in London) for supplying some of the information. But he then goes on to quote three full pages of music examples comprising the Aria (‘Air’), Variation 9 and Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations, making this one of the first pieces of Bach to appear in print in England.

But where is Goldberg in all this, and who was he? In 1741, Bach stayed with Count Keyserlingk in Dresden, who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his 1802 biography of Bach, the story goes as follows: ‘The Count was often unwell and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.’

It’s a fine tale – and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia – but it’s mostly fictitious. As Peter Williams has demonstrated, Goldberg was only born in 1727 (and was thus in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk), so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had actually been published before Bach’s visit to Dresden, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a

copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also explains the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition of the score – and the presence of the Aria in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier. Williams has also speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedmann, a brilliant performer and who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733.

The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to Bach. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments – as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi. This arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose astonishing 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant bestseller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

ECHOES FROM THE BIRDCAGE

Evelyn Glennie, Jill Jarman, Paul Booth, Ian East, Brian O'Kane & Angie Newman (BSL interpreter)

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Saturday 17 May 2025, 7.15pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Percussionist Evelyn Glennie performing in Echoes of the Birdcage
Home› What's on› ECHOES FROM THE BIRDCAGE

Experience the vibrant soundscape of London’s King’s Cross with Echoes from the Birdcage. 

In the first half, immerse yourself in a collection of percussion solos performed by Dame Evelyn Glennie, curated by Jill Jarman. These works capture the diversity of the city, from the meditative echoes of Messiaen to the energetic beats of Steve Reich and works infused with jazz and Balkan folk dance. 

The second half brings to life the dynamic spirit of King’s Cross with Echoes from the Birdcage in a stunning collaboration between Jill Jarman and Evelyn Glennie. Don’t miss this sonic journey that weaves together history, culture and the everyday rhythms of city life! 

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world’s premier solo percussionist. A double GRAMMY winner and BAFTA nominee, she led 1000 drummers in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. 

“[Evelyn Glennie is] quite simply a phenomenon of a performer” The New York Times 

Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction. Find out more. 

 

Echoes from the Birdcage is an Arts Trust Production originally supported by King’s Cross, PRS Foundation and Arts Council England.

 

ECHOES FROM THE BIRDCAGE

The first half of the programme brings together a collection of short pieces curated by composer and pianist Jill Jarman (who worked with Evelyn Glennie to create the second half of the concert and who is performing as part of the ensemble here today). This diverse collection of music aims to immerse us in the diverse sounds and atmospheres of the city. Bach’s well-known ‘Prélude’ from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, resonates with spaces of meditation and worship away from the urgency of urban life.

In contrast, Jarman’s composition for saxophones and piano reflect a vibrant multiculturalism, drawing on diverse musical genres, as do two pieces by Ian East. East’s Dance of the Awakening & Secret Spaces, are inspired by Balkan folk dance, and Jarman’s Chick Pea, nods to jazz fusion, both foreground and celebrate a rich musical diversity. Vincent Ho’s solo Tam Tam piece, Sandman’s Castle, captures the duality of city life, moving between calm and chaos, hard and soft. This dynamic journey culminates with Reich’s Clapping Music and in Orologeria Aureola (composed by Glennie and Sheppard), which embody the energy and drive which inspired this concert.

About the Artists

Percussionist Evelyn Glennie performing in Echoes of the Birdcage

Evelyn Glennie

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world’s premier solo percussionist. Her solo recordings exceed 40 CDs. A double GRAMMY award winner and BAFTA nominee, Evelyn composes for film, theatre and television. The Evelyn Glennie Podcast was launched in 2020. Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and has over 100 international awards to date, including the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. Evelyn is Curator for The Evelyn Glennie Collection. Her iconic film Touch the Sound, TED Talk and charity The Evelyn Glennie Foundation embody her life-long mission to Teach the World to Listen. Read more.

INTIMATE LETTERS

Ensemble 360 & Paul Hawkyard

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Saturday 17 May 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

Past Event
Ensemble 360 string musicians in performance
Home› What's on› INTIMATE LETTERS

SCHUBERT Quintet in C D956 (50’)
JANÁČEK String Quartet No.2 ‘Intimate Letters’ (with script by Paul Allen) (50′) 

Janáček’s exceptionally candid second quartet – nicknamed ‘Intimate Letters’ – is skillfully interspersed with the Czech composer’s own writing, performed by Paul Hawkyard (King Minos, Monster in the Maze, 2024), in the role of ‘Leoš’. 

The introspection and innovation evident in so much of Janáček’s work is brought to life through a compelling combination of words with music. 

Schubert’s final and perhaps finest chamber work, his sublime quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos, is one of his most highly prized works: pensive, symphonic, intricately structured and ultimately exuberant and triumphant. This glorious afternoon celebrates the epic within the intimate in two dramatic gems of chamber music repertoire. 

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SCHUBERT Franz, String Quintet in C D956

Allegro ma non troppo

Adagio

Scherzo. Presto

Allegretto

 

‘Heavenly length’ was a term coined by Schumann to describe Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony, but it seems even more apt for the C major String Quintet that Schubert finished in 1828, two months before his death. His only string quintet, for string quartet with an extra cello – an instrumental combination pioneered by Luigi Boccherini, while Mozart (and Beethoven) preferred a second viola.

 

Schubert never heard the work played during his lifetime. He sent it to the publisher Probst in Leipzig on 2 October 1828, announcing proudly that he had ‘at last finished a Quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos’. But the reply was disheartening, suggesting that he’d have a better chance of success with some more songs or popular piano pieces. The first performance did not take place until 17 November 1850 when it was given in the small hall of the Musikverein in Vienna by a quintet led by Joseph Hellmesberger, and the Viennese firm of Spina eventually published the work in 1853. Reactions at the time were mixed, but the young Brahms fell under the spell of the music, and the original version of his Piano Quintet Op.34 – before it was extensively reworked for piano and strings –was scored for the same instrumentation as Schubert’s quintet, with two cellos (unlike Brahms’s later string quintets, which use the two-viola combination).

 

In a programme note on the String Quintet for an Aldeburgh Festival performance in 1955, Benjamin Britten wrote about some of the qualities he found most remarkable in the work: ‘Listening to it, as the beauties unfold one after another and the mood changes from light to darkness and back again to light, the overwhelming impression is of the wholeness of the music. Schubert’s effortless spontaneity is not only the result of his rapid and ‘instinctive’ writing; it is also the result of his miraculously mature understanding of form.’

 

The String Quintet opens with a first movement of expansive proportions. For Britten, in a brilliantly perceptive comment, the first few bars represented a kind of microcosm of what was to follow: ‘In the very opening bars of the Allegro ma non troppo, the mood and structure of the whole work can be heard in the serenity of the C major chord and its passionate crescendo towards the tragic diminished seventh and its gradual lessening of the tension.’ What is most memorable about this opening is not so much the thematic interest (though there’s plenty of that) but for the sense of anticipation, of expectancy that the music suggests. The second theme of this movement is one of Schubert’s most sublime inventions, a miracle of lyricism presented by the two cellos. The development starts with a particularly striking modulation into A major – a typically inspired surprise, while the movement ends with tranquil recollections of the second theme, its calm disturbed only by the fortissimo C major chord in the penultimate bar.

 

The Adagio is in the remote key of E major – transcendent and ethereal in its outer sections. Britten wrote of the slowly changing chords at the opening seeming ‘to hang motionless in the air while … flowing onwards’ as the first violin plays an expressive, slightly hesitant theme. The central section, in F minor, is a startling contrast: after serenity, suddenly the mood is wracked with turmoil – and uneasy hints of that even lurk in the reprise of the opening material, before stillness and peace are finally reached on the last E major chord.

The Scherzo is back in the home key of C major. The music is strongly driven by a kind rustic energy: Schubert makes the most of open strings with a theme that suggests hunting calls. After an

excursion into A flat major, the opening idea returns exultant before giving way to contrasting Trio section in D flat – ghostly and veiled in quality until the thrilling reprise of the Scherzo. The finale is a kind of Gypsy Rondo – with an obvious influence from Hungarian music. It begins in C minor before turning to C major. The second subject is a glorious lyrical theme that is soon decorated with triplet. The Quintet ends with a wilder reprise of the dance tune – and with one of the most memorable gestures in the entire Viennese Classical repertoire – a grinding, dissonant D flat resolving on to C.

JANÁČEK Leoš, String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters”

Andante 
Adagio 
Moderato 
Allegro  

This extraordinary work was the result of extraordinary circumstances. As a married man in his 70s, Janáček had been head over heels in love with the much younger Kamila Stösslová for a decade by the time he wrote his 2nd String Quartet. This was a passionate (if largely one-sided) love that is eloquently expressed in the hundreds of letters he wrote her, and in the pieces that were directly inspired by her – from operas such as Katya Kabanova to the much more private world of chamber music. On 29 January he told Kamila about the latest piece to be inspired by her: ‘Today it’s Sunday and I’m especially sad. I’ve begun to work on a quartet; I’ll give it the name Love Letters.’ By 19 February the sketch was finished, and a couple of weeks later Janáček had written out a fair copy. He changed his mind several times about the title, eventually settling on Intimate Letters. The original scoring, noted on the manuscript, was to include a viola d’amore – the viola of love – but this was more symbolic than practical and after a private play-through, Janáček abandoned the idea.   

Janáček’s letters to Kamila are revealing about the programmatic content of this quartet. The first movement he described as ‘the impression of when I saw you for the first time!’ and the third evokes a moment ‘when the earth trembled’. The fourth movement was ‘filled with a great longing – as if it were fulfilled.’ As for the whole work, he confided in April 1928 that ‘it’s my first composition whose notes glow with all the dear things that we’ve experienced together. You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving.’  

Janáček died on 12 August 1928, and the quartet had to wait another decade before it was published, by which time both Kamila and Janáček’s long-suffering wife Zdenka were dead. Intimate Letters stands as one of the most personal and original works in the twentieth-century quartet repertoire. The Czech novelist Milan Kundera summarized the essence of Janáček’s art as ‘capturing unknown, never expressed emotions, and capturing them in all their immediacy’. 

Nowhere is it more immediate – or more emotional – than in this quartet.  

© Nigel Simeone

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

FAMILY CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

Ensemble 360 & Lucy Drever

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Saturday 17 May 2025, 11.00am

Tickets:
£12
£7 UC, DLA & PIP
£5 Under 16s 

Past Event
Giddy Goat family concert image
Home› What's on› FAMILY CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

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, the sheep? 

This family concert based on the best-selling children’s book by Jamie Rix and Lynne Chapman features original music by Music in the Round’s Children’s Composer-in-Residence, Paul Rissmann, for strings, wind and piano. Presented together with story-telling and projected illustrations from the book, it’s a great introduction to live music for children aged 3 – 7 and includes plenty of opportunities to join in! 

 

Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction.
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About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

Lucy Drever

Lucy Drever is a presenter, workshop leader and narrator. She regularly presents and leads workshops with some of the leading orchestras, arts venues and music charities in the UK including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Wigmore Hall and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of which she is Associate Artist. She has recently narrated concerts for Lambert Jackson at the London Palladium and is the Head of Creative Learning at the Benedetti Foundation. Furthermore, she was recently appointed trustee of the Samuel Gardner Memorial Trust.

Lucy works in a variety of settings including arts venues, schools, Early Years spaces, hospitals, conservatoires and prisons. As well as education consultancy she works across various industries, helping people with their presenting and public speaking skills.

Read more.

20 YEARS OF ENSEMBLE 360: FESTIVAL LAUNCH

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Friday 16 May 2025, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s 

Past Event
Musicians from Ensemble 360
Home› What's on› 20 YEARS OF ENSEMBLE 360: FESTIVAL LAUNCH

WATKINS Broken Consort (20′)
SWEENEY Equinox [World Premiere] (10’)
SCHUBERT Octet (60’)  

Schubert’s rousing Octet (perhaps the piece most closely associated with Ensemble 360 over their two decades) showcases the range and breadth of the ensemble, with its jaunty, memorable tunes and high drama. It is coupled here with two works written especially for the group.  

Huw Watkins’ Broken Consort premiered in 2008 and features different instrument groups and fanfares, before all 11 Ensemble 360 players come together for the exuberant finale. It is followed by the world premiere of a brand-new piano trio from Royal Philharmonic Society 2024 Composer Aileen Sweeney. A great way to start the 20th birthday celebrations! 

To celebrate 20 years of extraordinary music-making, ticket-holders are invited to join us for a free glass of wine or soft drink in the Crucible bar after the concert. 

RPS | Royal Philharmonic Society
Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction.
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round concerts in one transaction. Find out more. 

Please note, the title of Aileen Sweeney’s piano trio has changed since the previously published listing.

WATKINS Huw, Broken Consort

Broken consort is a term used to describe an instrumental ensemble that developed in Europe during the Renaissance. It originally referred to ensembles featuring instruments from more than one family of instruments, as for example a group featuring both string and wind instruments. It also neatly describes what I have done with the eleven instruments from Ensemble 360 (a group featuring string, wind, brass and keyboard instruments). There are four main movements – a lament, a study, a sicilienne and a finale – which all use different groups of instruments with the whole ensemble only playing together in the finale. Each movement is preceded with a brief interlude (or introduction in the case of the lament) which all use the same fanfare-like material in different ways. This material occasionally finds its way into the main movements, more or less overtly, at important structural moments.

Huw Watkins, 2008

SWEENEY Aileen, Equinox [world premiere]

After coming off the back of a 4 month stint writing a slightly mad piece for symphony orchestra filled with drum grooves, riffs and polyrhythms galore, I jumped straight into this piano trio without really catching my breath. Having spent time listening to and being inspired by the simplicity of composers such as Max Richter and Philip Glass, I took this piece as an opportunity to relax into some meditative sounds and explore repetitive textures, mainly through improvisation at the piano.

Coincidentally, I was writing this piece in February/March during the approach to the spring equinox and couldn’t help but notice the evening skies gradually becoming brighter and more colourful with each passing day. I then began to see how the piece mirrored this transition from dark to light, starting with cold, slow moving harmonies that gradually blossom into brighter tonal centres and faster moving material, giving the piece a sense of optimism towards the end.

Aileen Sweeney, 2025

SCHUBERT Franz, Octet

Adagio–Allegro–Più allegro 
Adagio 
Allegro vivace–Trio–Allegro vivace 
Andante–variations. Un poco più mosso–Più lento 
Menuetto. Allegretto–Trio–Menuetto–Coda 
Andante molto–Allegro–Andante molto–Allegro molto 
 

Schubert wrote no chamber music between 1821 and 1823, but made up for this hiatus in 1824 with three extraordinary masterpieces: the String Quartets in A minor and D minor (Death and the Maiden) and the Octet. He was commissioned to write the Octet by Count Ferdinand Troyer, a clarinettist who was also chief steward to Archduke Rudolf. Troyer asked Schubert to compose a work that could stand alongside Beethoven’s Septet, an immensely popular piece at the time. To Beethoven’s ensemble of clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass, Schubert added a second violin, giving himself the scope to explore sonorities that had almost orchestral possibilities. There are close similarities between the two works: both are in six movements, with the same key relationships between the movements, with a set of variations at the centre, and with both a Minuet and a Scherzo. But while Beethoven’s Septet was conceived as a kind of large-scale divertimento, Schubert’s Octet is more ambitious in scale and has a much greater (and more serious) expressive range. 

 

Schubert completed the work on 1 March 1824. It was first performed privately at Troyer’s home (in Vienna’s Graben) soon afterwards and the first public performance was given in the Musikverein by an ensemble led by the great violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh on 16 April 1827. When the work was eventually published in 1851 it was shorn of the fourth and fifth movements and but it appeared complete in the Collected Edition in 1889. 

 

The emotional range of the Octet is extraordinary for a work that appears, on the surface at least, to be quite benign. After the expansive but closely argued first movement, the sublime and tender clarinet melody that opens the slow movement has echoes of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony (1822). The exuberant Scherzo, full of Schubert’s favourite dotted rhythms, is a complete contrast, though one that contains some surprising excursions into remote keys. The central variations are on a theme from Schubert’s early Singspiel Die Freunde von Salamanka (1815), the charming duet for Laura and Diego, ‘Gelagert unter’m hellen Dach der Bäume’ (‘Lying under the bright canopy of trees’) and the leisurely set of variations muse on aspects of the theme with unhurried inventiveness. The Minuet is markedly more relaxed than the Scherzo and contains some of the subtlest instrumental colouring in the whole work. The finale begins with stormy tremolos and a mood of foreboding that is seemingly dispelled when the main Allegro arrives, though in the course of this long movement there are more episodes of high drama (including a surprise return of the turbulent introductory music), until the exhilarating close – bringing to an end a work that 20th century composer Hans Gál described as ‘a romantic landscape whose delights are  numberless’. 

 

© Nigel Simeone 

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players.