QUARTET FOR HEART & BREATH

Phaedra Ensemble & Lotte Betts-Dean

The Guildhall Lens Studio, Portsmouth

Monday 23 February 2026, 7.30pm

Tickets:
£8 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› QUARTET FOR HEART & BREATH

RICHARD REED PARRY Quartet for Heart and Breath (6’)
KATE WHITLEY Six Charlotte Mew Settings (16’)
JOHN TAVENER The World (10’)
JAMIE HAMILTON A Mouth in Search of a Voice Part 1 (9′)
MEREDITH MONK String Songs (20’)
CASSANDRA MILLER Thanksong (12’)

Music by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry opens this concert of sumptuous, 21st century compositions for string quartet, performed by Phaedra Ensemble with Lotte Betts-Dean, a vocalist praised by The Guardian for her “unmissable, urgent musicality”.

Following its collaboration with American composer Meredith Monk, performer and Godmother of the New York experimental music scene, Phaedra performs the composer’s only string quartet, String Songs. Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean then joins the quartet to present works by Kate Whitley and John Tavener, as well as Cassandra Miller’s modern masterpiece Thanksong, a tender reflection on Beethoven’s late Quartet in A minor (Op.132).

Series Discount: 20% discount if you book all 5 Portsmouth Chamber Music concerts.

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Richard Reed Parry is best known as a guitarist in the Canadian rock band Arcade Fire. Quartet for Heart and Breath is one of a series of pieces that Parry began work on during the band’s mammoth 2004-5 tour, that all have the same conceptual starting point: every note is played in sync with the heartbeat or breath of the musicians. While they are performing, the musicians wear stethoscopes under their clothes so they can clearly hear their own heartbeats, which in turn regulate their individual tempos.

The idea for Parry’s concept came about through reaction. After listening to a tranche of electroacoustic music that didn’t he didn’t feel any profound connection to, Parry sought a way to make music intimately connected to musicians’ bodies. Rather than opting for repetitive rhythms or dance figures, he decided to go deeper, beyond the skill of trained musicians, and straight for corporeal intuition. He began conceiving music directly related to the involuntary aspects of bodily functions: the speed of breath, eyes blinking, hearts beating.

When composing for others, Parry’s musical world brings together the minimal musical palettes of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, and the musical systems of John Cage. Parry was interested in the latter through his pieces like I Ching, which use chance procedures to gradually relinquish the control the composer has over the realisation of the work. The result here is a naturally jumbled collection of tumbling rhythms, that manages to find a surprisingly soothing character amid the chaos.

Hugh Morris 2024

“I think her very good and interesting and unlike anyone else,” Virginia Woolf remarked of the poet Charlotte Mew. Born in 1869, Mew lived precariously in London; a life punctuated by tragic family circumstances, and with an aversion to any kind of publicity, she nevertheless possessed a selection of high-profile admirers from the city’s literary scene, including Thomas Hardy and Siegried Sassoon. Mew’s poem The Farmer’s Bride (1912) brought her wider acclaim. In that verse, a farmer takes a bride, and laments that she won’t reciprocate his desires. The folksy metre and bucolic imagery disguise what is a creepy, at times startling poem on a young woman’s objectification at the hands of an older man maddened by desire.

In 2020, Whitley, a composer and founder of Peckham’s Multi-Story Orchestra, reworked two separate collections of Mew settings (for male and female voice) into a new six-movement work for soprano and quartet. (“I like how the gender of the speaker in Mew’s poems is often ambiguous, so it has seemed to make sense,” she wrote in 2020.) Sea Love reminisces on a lover through a folk dialect, accompanied by waves of solo violin arpeggios. The folk-tinged feeling continues in The Farmer’s Bride, with scuttling string figures giving this movement a darkly theatrical quality. The sea returns as a theme in Rooms; where in Sea Love, it’s “everlastin,’” by Rooms, the sea becomes a “maddening” sound, outside a room “with a seaweed smell.” (Some of Mew’s artistic preoccupations involve confinement, feeling trapped, and longing to explore, themes that crop up in the first three settings.)

The fourth movement, I so liked Spring, works in a mirror form. For voice and solo violin once more, the two stanzas give reflections on a season before and after a lover. Where there’s a slight defiance to the previous text, Absence speaks to the intense anguish of the narrator’s loss; Whitley’s setting is sparse and spacious, with soprano accompanied mostly by gently plucked strings. There’s more pain in the final poem, Moorland Night, but it’s a pain that arrives through searching rather than inward reflection. Travelling through a harsh-weathered landscape, the narrator describes the search for “The Thing.” Mew’s narrator soon finds this Thing, yet, after such anguish, seems to find solace as she vows to return that Thing to the earth. Whitley’s animated setting is similarly journeying.

Hugh Morris 2024

“The World for string quartet and soprano solo should be performed at maximum intensity throughout. White hot, white cold – intensely loud, intensely soft – almost unbearable – that which is nowhere and everywhere – not human but divine – theanthropic.” These, the words of the piece’s composer, John Tavener. His ten-minute setting of the poet Kathleen Raine for soprano and quartet certainly lends itself to such extremities of thinking.

Despite the serene timbres, The World works in a currency of simple gestures taken to their limits, but the extremes Tavener finds comes through austerity rather than exuberance. The piece is built around a few key ideas: beginning with striking plucked chords, the soprano introduces a coupletted stepping motion which is passed around the ensemble. The fiendish soprano part finishes this theme with a flourish—a long, quiet, sustained note, suspended above the ensemble. A squiggly chorale-like passage brings the strings back together in rhythmic unison around an anchoring mid-range drone, and the whole sequence repeats again. Through these kinds of creative austerity, Tavener achieves a steely focus.

Hugh Morris 2024

A Mouth In Search Of A Voice is a music and multimedia work exploring stammering and dysfluency. Part 1: To Do This We Find A Shadow is the first movement of a larger evening-length work.

The work is built from recordings of people who stammer. Each instrumentalist carries their own playback device containing stammered voices: a kind of shadowed self, echoing theories within stammering of a divided or bifurcated identity. The ensemble listens and navigates, their musical material shaped by what they hear. Dysfluency is transplanted into the ensemble; the musicians become readers of a map that keeps redrawing itself.

The texts are drawn from recordings of multiple stammerers reading the same passages. Each voice filters the material differently: mumbling, muting, pausing, stuttering – creating iterations that never quite align. The friction of these voices evokes an unstable, unreliable narrative voice.

Jamie Hamilton 2026

Meredith Monk’s string quartet Stringsongs was written in 2004, and premiered at the Barbican in 2005 by the Kronos Quartet. Her first creation for these forces represented yet another strand for an artist whose uninhibited creating has seen her touch disciplines as varied as singing, composing, dance, choreography, visual art and playwriting.

In creating this extremely coherent yet slightly strange quartet, Monk got to know the players of the Kronos Quartet intimately. “The music came to life in surprising ways, colored by the distinctive ‘voice’ of each musician,” she wrote in a programme note. Perhaps the best example of this is Tendrils, the beautifully drawn-out, delicately crafted second movement which serves as the piece’s emotional core. Each player plays a wistful monologue, woven into an ensemble texture that spins forward for nine unbroken minutes.

Tendrils follows Cliff Edge; Monk’s straightforward harmonic and melodic building blocks never quite move as you expect, creating dissonances that are unexpectedly raw, while further intensifying the austere double-stopped chords that become a theme of the movement. The third movement, Obsidian Chorale, is the most ostensibly vocal of the four movements—after the unbroken polyphony of Tendrils, the quartet moves through a sequence of dark, quiet chords in unison, for barely two minutes. Phantom Strings, a fast final movement based on a chugging, uneven ostinato, doesn’t so much conclude as stop, ending this enigmatic piece with more questions than answers.

Hugh Morris 2024

Over the course of her career, Cassandra Miller, a Canadian composer currently living in London, has developed her own idiosyncratic way of composing that she calls “transformative mimicry.” Her music is usually rooted in other music that already exists; she listens to it, sings back a version of the parts, and then either sketches them using musical notation, or, in the case of Thanksong, creates an aural score out of her recordings. In a performance of Thanksong, each member of the ensemble listens to their own part on headphones, and plays by ear.

For this piece, her source material was the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 Op. 132 in A minor, known as the Heiliger Dankgesang, after the thankful message Beethoven put at the heading of this movement. He had recently recovered from an intense intestinal illness, and described the third, a slow movement, as a “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity.”

Miller’s piece is one to get lost in. It has few grand milestones, preferring instead a more intimate language of blurred, burbling lines, encoding the feeling of players feeling their way through the piece into the composition. It’s delicate, and personal.

Hugh Morris 2024

About the Artists

Phaedra Ensemble

Phaedra Ensemble is a London-based collective of like-minded performers, pushing the boundaries of contemporary chamber music in bold and creative ways. Known for their innovative performances, this group of musicians curates cutting-edge new music alongside modern classics from the last 100 years. Creative collaboration is central to their approach, and over the last decade, they’ve partnered with exceptional artists from across the spectrum. Read more.

Lotte Betts-Dean

Lotte is a mezzo soprano and vocalist who has established herself as a leading interpreter of contemporary repertoire, art song and chamber music. She is equally at home in early music, vocal ensemble, opera, experimental music and non-classical collaborations, and has a passion for curation, programming, and interdisciplinary projects, and a fast-growing discography.

Lotte won the 2024 Young Artist of the Year at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, and in 2023 she was elected as Ambassador for Donne UK. Lotte was made Associate (ARAM) of the Royal Academy of Music in 2022, an honour reserved for alumni who have contributed significantly to the music profession. Read more.

THE LARK ASCENDING

Ensemble 360

The Guildhall, Portsmouth

Monday 19 January 2026, 7.30pm

Tickets
£8 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› THE LARK ASCENDING

HOLST Phantasy String Quartet (10′)
BRITTEN Three Divertimenti for String Quartet (10′)
HOLBROOKE Ellean Shona (4′)
HOWELLS Phantasy String Quartet (13′)
PURCELL Three-part Fantasias (8′)
HARRISON Clarinet Quintet (12′)
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (arr. Gerigk) The Lark Ascending

The violin soars melodiously above the rest of the quartet in the gorgeous arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ most popular work The Lark Ascending, which concludes this concert of English music for strings and clarinet. Fantasies from the Baroque gems of Purcell’s Three-part Fantasias to Imogen Holst’s Phantasy String Quartet sit alongside this perennial favourite.

Seri es Discount: 20% discount if you book all 5 Portsmouth Chamber Music concerts.

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

Britten planned these movements as part of a five-movement Quartetto serioso with a subtitle from Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: “Go play, boy, play!” An earlier version of the opening March was written for a suite inspired by the film Emil and the Detectives (the children’s novel by Erich Kästner was a great favourite of Britten’s), but this was never completed. Eventually he settled on a work in three movements, and the first performance was given by the Stratton Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 25 February 1936. The audience response was chilly and a hurt Britten withdrew the Three Divertimenti, which were only published after his death. His brilliant gift for idiomatic quartet writing is already apparent in this early work – from the arresting rhythms and textures of the March to the beguiling central Waltz, and the driving energy of the closing Burlesque.

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

Nigel Simeone 2024

Herbert Howells (1892–1983): Phantasy String Quartet, Op. 25

In 1905, W.W. Cobbett launched a competition to breathe new life into British chamber music by reviving the ‘Phantasy’, an archaic form which Henry Purcell had made his own in about 1680. The competition’s criteria stated that ‘The parts must be of equal importance, and the duration of the piece should not exceed twelve minutes. Though the Phantasy is to be performed without a break, it may consist of different sections varying in tempi and rhythm.’ Composers including Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Arnold Bax and Frank Bridge all rose to the challenge, composing works under Cobbett’s auspices. In the 1917 competition, second prize (of 10 guineas) was awarded to Herbert Howells for his Phantasy String Quartet Op. 25 (the first prize that year went to Harry Waldo Warner). In Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, he wrote that in Howells’s Quartet ‘the fine tunes on which it is built are not traditional, but are by Howells himself … modal colouring persists throughout, and the themes are subjected to a process of permutation, rather than development, which is analogous to the process which tunes undergo when transmitted orally.’ Cobbett went on to say that Howells ‘contrives in the single movement of a phantasy to let his themes pass through a series of moods which are equivalent, in miniature, to the fully expressed phrases of a four-movement work’. The result is a quartet that has moments of striking beauty, with occasional echoes of the Tallis Fantasia by his friend Vaughan Williams.

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

Allegro moderato
Lento
Allegro molto e agitato

Pamela Harrison is a lesser-known English composer of the 20th Century. Born in Orpington, Greater London in 1915, Harrison produced many of her works during the Second World War. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music under Australian pianist Arthur Benjamin, and regularly performed her own piano compositions as a student. Her Clarinet Quintet (1956) was one of three pieces inspired by and written for her friend Jack Brymer, who was one of the most renowned clarinettists of the 20th Century. The opening Allegro Moderato begins in a jaunty manor, but quickly gives way to an unsettled feeling, in both the rhythm and the melody. The Lento movement is spacious and full of emotional intensity, with the clarinet line floating above a static string accompaniment. The final movement, the Allegro molto e agitato sees the return of the opening theme, riding a flurry of notes in the accompanying parts. Ensemble 360’s Robert Plane has championed Harrison’s music and was responsible for the world premiere recordings of her clarinet chamber pieces.

© Nigel Simeone

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.

About the Artists

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.

DEATH & THE MAIDEN

Dudok Quartet

The Guildhall Lens Studio, Portsmouth

Monday 17 November 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets:
£8 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› DEATH & THE MAIDEN

SAARIAHO Terra Memoria (18’)
GESUALDO Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (4’)
MUSSORGSKY Songs and Dances of Death (selection) (10’)
LISZT Via Crucis (selection) (10’)
SCHUBERT String Quartet No.14 in D minor, ‘Death & the Maiden’ (35’)

Described as “quite simply revelatory” (The Irish Times) and “stylish, open-minded and adventurous” (The Guardian), the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam has made its name as playful, inventive interpreters of the string quartet repertoire. Coached by Peter Cropper (first violin of the Lindsay String Quartet and founder of Music in the Round) in the early years of their collaboration, they have since gone from strength to strength. Presenting Schubert’s extraordinary and profound ‘Death and the Maiden’ String Quartet alongside their own arrangement of a 17th century Italian madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo and Kaija Saariaho’s modern masterpiece, Terra Memoria (‘Earth Memory’), this concert promises to thrill, intrigue and delight.

Series Discount: 20% discount if you book all 5 Portsmouth Chamber Music concerts

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“I feel when writing for a string quartet that I’m entering into the intimate core of musical communication,” the late Kaija Saariaho wrote of her second string quartet, Terra Memoria, in 2006. Twenty years separated her first and second outings for these forces, and while the electronics have departed in the journey from the initial Nymphéa to here (and the acute focus on timbre has relaxed), the pieces share a common musical argument. For one, there’s Saariaho’s continued fascination with the particular timbres and textures available to stringed instruments, like tremolandos, trills, and bowing techniques like playing at the bridge. What the two quartets also share is the sense of the music gleaming, resulting from these carefully chosen combinations.

Terra Memoria is a pretty straightforward title. “Earth refers to my material, and memory to the way I’m working on it,” Saariaho wrote. “The piece is dedicated “for those departed,” she continued. “Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive.”

Saariaho died from brain cancer in 2023, so the piece becomes a kind of meta memorial today. But Terra Memoria is no redolent, misty-eyed tribute. Score indications vacillate frequently and distinctly, between misterioso, espressivo, and dolce (sweetly), followed by rasping sections called things like con violenza, impetuoso. The piece aches like a piece written a century before, full of expressive anguish and volatility. Listen for the waterfall-like constructions of limpid textures, and the stunning moment halfway through when the tiny, sky-high texture is delicately snuffed out.

The name of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, first spread across Italy because of a grand scandal. In 1590, after discovering his wife and her lover in flagrante, Gesualdo killed them both on the spot. Given all of the actors in this honour killing were drawn from nobility, news of the murder travelled particularly quickly; only later did his idiosyncratic corpus of strange harmonies emerge.

Moro, lasso, al mio duolo, a morose yet sparkily inventive madrigal for five voices, comes from Gesualdo’s sixth and most stylistically adventurous book of madrigals, published in 1611, two years before his death aged 47. Gesualdo’s late madrigals are notable for their harmonic ingenuity. They are heavily chromatic, emotionally volatile, and utilise false relations—chromatic contradictions, where two voices overlap by a semitone at the same time to create a particularly scrunchy moment—frequently. The effect is polarising. Eminent 18th century music historian Charles Burney described the opening of Moro, lasso as “extremely shocking and disgusting.” But, over 400 years since Gesualdo’s death, it still sounds strikingly unlike anything else in the musical canon.

© Hugh Morris 2025

Like Pictures at an Exhibition and his opera Khovanshchina, Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death number among the many works that required finishing or orchestrating by his composer friends. Today, they exist in many orchestrated versions, even serving as a jump-off point for Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony, but the first version to exist was completed by Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, published in 1882, a year after Mussorgsky’s death.

Each of the four songs—Lullaby, Serenade, Trepak, and Field Marshal—are a poetic snapshot of a specific death; respectively, of a child, a girl, a drunken peasant, and a soldier. Mussorgsky set texts by Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a younger friend of the composer, who lodged with Mussorgsky in the mid 1870s.

In some ways the collection is a tale of Mussorgsky’s domestic situation, setting words by one housemate, and later having it orchestrated by another, in Rimsky-Korsakov. It also tells of Mussorgsky’s preoccupations. Death was firmly on his mind, having experienced the loss of friends—the death of painter Victor Hartmann inspired him to write Pictures at an Exhibition—as well as suffering from frequent alcohol-induced health problems himself.

This cycle is certainly shadowed by death, but it’s interesting to note how death becomes an inevitable, inescapable fact, and in that way, a figure approaching the benign. (In this way, it bears a resemblance to Schubert’s calm, consoling figure who appears in the second stanza of Death and the Maiden.) In the first setting, Death appears at the door of a mother, then as a mysteriously seductive knight in the second, an enticing figure to a drunken figure in the third, and finally, the inevitable consequence of battle.

© Hugh Morris 2025

One of the great surprises of 19th century musical history was the about turn of Franz Liszt, the flamboyant pianist and supporter of radical progressive motion in music, who later took minor orders at the Vatican in 1865, and closed out his life as Abbé Liszt. However, Liszt approached church music with the much the same spirit that he sought the music of the future among the members of Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in his earlier years; writing in 1835 in De la musique religieuse, Liszt sought a “regeneration” of religious music, and saw the composer’s social role extending into the church as well as secular musical contexts.

Though there is a continuation of spirit, this is a Liszt unlike the fireworks of the B Minor sonata, the symphonic poems or the piano concerti. Via Crucis is a collaged work of musical pictures corresponding to the stations of the cross found in many Catholic churches. He finds a passionate if contained expressivity in this collection, which draws on plainchant and Bach’s Passion settings.

© Hugh Morris 2025

i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Scherzo
iv. Presto
The beginning of 1824 was a very difficult period for an ill, penniless and depressed Franz Schubert. “I find myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world,” he wrote to his friend Josef Kupelwieser. “I might as well sing every day now, for upon retiring to bed each night I hope that I may not wake again, and each morning only recalls yesterday’s grief.”

But he succeeded in channeling this moroseness into creation, and Schubert produced some of his most celebrated contributions to chamber music literature during this sorrow-filled period. Not only did he produce the String Quartet in A Minor D804, he returned—perhaps driven by his own reckoning with mortality—to his 1817 setting of Matthias Clodius’s Death and the Maiden, a two-stanza text which opens with the maiden’s frightened plea and closes with Death’s calm response.

This music forms the basis of the second movement, a theme which spins out in variations before turning towards its somber home. It follows an explosive first movement which introduces the composition’s underlying principles: a throbbing, unrelenting triplet figure, and a hewing towards minor tonalities. This is a work that plumbs the depths of despair.

The triplet theme returns as an accompaniment to the first violin’s descant in the first variation of the second movement. Then, two dances of death: A fast, jolting Scherzo, with a rare glimpse of the major mode sets up a galloping tarantella-rondo finale. It ends, completely spent, with two huge chords.

© Hugh Morris 2025

About the Artists

Dudok Quartet

The Dudok Quartet (Amsterdam) has forged a reputation as one of the most creative and versatile quartets of its generation. With its ethos of ‘sharing the heart of music’, the quartet believes that chamber music is an act of friendship and play to be shared directly with audiences, and is committed to crafting unique and eclectic programmes that engage listeners in imaginative ways. Read more.

INTIMATE EPICS: BEETHOVEN & JANÁČEK

Fibonacci Quartet

The Guildhall, Portsmouth

Monday 6 October 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets:
£8 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› INTIMATE EPICS: BEETHOVEN & JANÁČEK

HAYDN String Quartet Op.33 No.4 (16’)
JANÁČEK String Quartet No.2 ‘Intimate Letters’ (26’)
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in C sharp minor Op.131 (40’)

With a glittering array of prizes and accolades, this young quartet has rapidly made a name as one of the most exciting European quartets working today. Through three great string quartets, they will showcase their staggering range and committed artistry. Janáček’s ‘Intimate Letters’ is a rich late work of love and longing, and this programme is crowned by Beethoven’s towering final achievement blending a lightness of touch with the depth of a lifetime of music: both intimate and epic.

Series Discount: 20% discount if you book all 5 Portsmouth Chamber Music concerts.

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Allegro moderato
Scherzo. Allegretto – Minore
Largo
Presto

Haydn’s Opus 33 quartets, also known as the “Russian” quartets, are a collection of six string quartets composed in 1781. These works represent a significant milestone in the development of the string quartet as a genre, and they are widely regarded as Haydn’s finest compositions.

This quartet in B flat major opens with a vibrant and exuberant Allegro moderato showcasing Haydn’s signature humour and wit, with playful exchanges between the four instruments. The Scherzo is a lively and rhythmic dance that is full of energy and syncopation. The Adagio is a poignant and expressive, aria-like movement that showcases Haydn’s gift for melody and his ability to evoke deep emotion through music. The quartet concludes with a dazzling and virtuosic finale, that brings the work to an exhilarating conclusion. Throughout the quartet, Haydn’s use of form and inventive musical ideas play with tonality, harmonic structure and texture to create a rich and complex musical tapestry. The quartet is marked by surprise, unexpected turns, and humour, while maintaining a sense of coherence and unity. Haydn’s Opus 33 No.4 is a landmark in the development of the genre: a work of great beauty, depth, and complexity.

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.

i. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
ii. Allegro molto vivace
iii. Allegro moderato
iv. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile
v. Presto
vi. Adagio quasi un poco andante
vii. Allegro

Beethoven himself considered the C sharp minor Quartet to be his finest work: an immense single span comprising seven movements that are performed without a break. When Richard Wagner heard the work performed by the Maurin-Chevillard Quartet in Paris, he was overcome with admiration. It’s always fascinating to read one great composer writing about another, and despite the purple prose, Wagner’s remarks are a wonderful tribute. He likens the Quartet to a “Beethoven day”, and describes the music as follows:

“I should designate the long introductory Adagio – than which, probably, nothing more melancholy has ever been expressed in sound – as the awakening on the morning of a day … It is, at the same time, a penitential prayer, a conference with God. The introspective eye views (Allegro, 6/8) there, too, the comforting phenomenon in which Desire becomes a sweet, sorrowful play with itself: the innermost dream-image awakens in a most charming reminiscence. And now (in the short transitional Allegro moderato) it is as though the Master, recollecting his art, addressed himself to his magic work. He employs (Andante, 2/4) the revived power of spells peculiarly his own, to charm a graceful shape … in order that he may enrapture himself by ever new and unprecedented transformations … We now fancy (Presto 2/2) that we see him who is so completely happy, cast a glance of indescribable serenity upon the outer world. … Everything is rendered luminous by his inner happiness. … He now reflects on how he must begin (Adagio, 3/4), a short but troubled meditation … He awakens, and now strikes the strings for a dance, in such a way as the world has never yet heard (Allegro Finale). It is the dance of the world itself: wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture … and sorrow: suddenly, lightning quivers, the angry tempest growls; and above all this, the mighty player … smiles at himself, for the incantation was to him, after all, only a play. Night beckons to him. His day is finished.”

Nigel Simeone 2013

About the Artists

Fibonacci String Quartet, photo by Julia Bohle

Fibonacci Quartet

The Fibonacci Quartet are one of Europe’s leading young string quartets. Formed at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the quartet teach as Quartet in Residence at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as well as at the Royal Academy of Music in their position as Nina Drucker Fellows. Winners at the 2024 Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) International auditions, they were also recently appointed as Grand Résident ensemble at ProQuartet in Paris for seasons 2025-2027.

The only ensemble ever to win both the First and Audience Prize at the Premio Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in 2024, the Fibonacci’s are prolific prize winners, winning prestigious awards including First Prize in the Royal Overseas League Chamber Music Competition, First Prize in the Cavatina Chamber Music Competition, The RPS Henderson Chamber Ensemble Award, First Prize in the International Triomphe de l’Art Competition in Belgium, The Kirckman Society Award, Audience Prize at the Schiermonnikoog Festival and Special Prizes of the Shostakovich Association in Paris and Peermusic in Hamburg.

The 2025/26 season sees them continue their busy schedule, with performances including performances at Vienna Musikverein, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Wigmore Hall, Munich Prinzregententheater and Philharmonie de Paris. Read more.

SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: THE STORM WHALE

Ensemble 360 & Lucy Drever

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield

8-10 October 2025, 10.45am / 1.30pm

To book, please email lucy@musicintheround.co.uk

Home› What's on› SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: THE STORM WHALE

Music in the Round invites your class to take part in a brilliant music project, culminating in a live concert at the Crucible Theatre this October.

Paul Rissmann (composer) has created a brand-new piece of music based around the modern-classic children’s books by Benji Davies, which includes songs for your class to learn and join in with in the concert.

The Storm Whale tells the story of a boy, a whale washed up on the beach and friendships that will change their lives forever and echo down the generations. Benji Davies’ heart-warming tales of friendship, love and courage are brought to life through music specially written to accompany the book.

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

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

Current availability for tickets (each concert is 55 mins):
Weds 8 Oct, 10.45am low availability
Weds 8 Oct, 1.30pm limited availability
Thurs 9 Oct, 10.45am sold out
Thurs 9 Oct, 1.30pm good availability
Fri 10 Oct, 10.45am low availability
Fri 10 Oct, 1.30pm good availability

These schools concerts are supported with an in-person training session at the Crucible Theatre on Thursday 4 September. Please choose from 1pm–3pm or 4pm–6pm.

An educators’ classroom pack and other resources are available here.

“The Storm Whale tells a simple but powerful story about loneliness and the love between a parent and child… The world may be as big and lonely and incomprehensible as the ocean, but still it’s possible to find tremendous, heart-stopping tenderness.” The New York Times on the book

With many thanks to all our funders, including:

The Sarah Nulty Power of Music Foundation, Gripple Foundation, JG Graves Charitable Trust, Sheffield Town Trust and Wise Music Foundation

“The musicians did a wonderful job of introducing the young audience to enjoyment of the theatre, live music and engaging story-telling. Proof of their success [were] the lines of excited children coming up to meet the musicians who had gathered in the foyer with their instruments.”

The Yorkshire Post (on a previous Music in the Round storybook concert)

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

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.

SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

Ensemble 360 & Elinor Moran

Palace Theatre, Mansfield

Thursday 25 September 2025, 11.00am

To book, please contact the Palace Theatre Box Office on 01623 463133

Home› What's on› SCHOOLS’ CONCERT: GIDDY GOAT

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

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

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

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

Download our educators’ info pack for further information.

Download

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

Elinor Moran

Elinor is in demand as a vocal workshop leader and animateur. She regularly works in learning and participation teams with such companies as ROH, ETO, Opera North, Snape Maltings, Garsington Opera and as far away as The Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus in Toronto.

Elinor has just returned from singing with André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra as a soloist on a world tour. She was a soloist on a SONY BMG recording “The Best Of Gilbert And Sullivan” which reached the top of the Classical Chart and can be heard on Blossom Street’s new Naxos recording of choral music by female composers “This Day”. Her recent roles include Mimi La Boheme (in the Olivier Award winning OperaUpClose production at the Soho Theatre and Charing Cross Theatre and Tour) and she has been the recipient of a Garsington Opera Chorus Award.

Elinor studied voice at Chetham’s School Of Music and The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2012 she performed a dance role in Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony but has since put away her hip hop shoes (until the right future opportunity…).

THE LARK ASCENDING

Ensemble 360

Palace Theatre, Mansfield

Thursday 25 September 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets
£15*

*Delivery charges may apply.

Past Event

Home› What's on› THE LARK ASCENDING

HOLST Phantasy String Quartet (10′)
BRITTEN Three Divertimenti for String Quartet (10′)
HOLBROOKE Ellean Shona (4′)
HOWELLS Phantasy Sting Quartet (13′)
PURCELL Three-part Fantasias (8′)
HOWELLS Rhapsodic Quintet (12′)
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (arr. Gerigk) The Lark Ascending

The violin soars melodiously above the rest of the quartet in the gorgeous arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ most popular work The Lark Ascending, which concludes this concert of English music. Fantasies from the Baroque gems of Purcell’s Three-part Fantasias to Imogen Holst’s Phantasy String Quartet sit alongside this perennial favourite.

Nigel Simeone 2024

Lento, ma appassionato – A tempo, tranquillo – Piu mosso, inquieto – Doppio movimento ritmico, e non troppo allegro – Più elato – Meno mosso – Lento, assai tranquillo – Più adagio

Herbert Howells is probably best remembered for his church music (including the famous hymn tune ‘All my hope on God is founded’ as well as several outstanding settings of service music) and for his choral masterpiece Hymnus paradisi. But he was also a gifted composer for instruments and wrote a good deal of chamber music at the start of his career. The Rhapsodic Quintet was completed in June 1919 and Howells himself said that there was ‘a mystic feeling about the whole thing’. Still, mystic feelings didn’t come without some serious hard work, and the Howells scholar Paul Spicer has drawn attention to an entry in the composer’s diary where he noted that the quintet had involved quite a lot of preparatory thinking. Howells wrote of his ‘long ponderous thoughts on problems of musical form … hours spent in an easy-chair, fire-gazing, form-thinking.’ The ‘form-thinking’ was clearly productive, since this beautifully written quintet for clarinet and strings in one movement appears to flow effortlessly from one idea to the next as well as having overall coherence. This was an early work – Howells had only recently finished his studies at the Royal College of Music with Stanford and Charles Wood – but his handling of the instruments shows tremendous assurance. Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music makes particular mention of this, describing the work as having a ‘sensitive appreciation of instrumental needs’, but there is more to it than that, since Howells also shows a great gift for unfolding long, lyrical melodies, and contrasting these with more capricious ideas. It’s this combination of fluent and idiomatic writing with memorable thematic material that led Christopher Palmer, in his biography of Howells, to call the Rhapsodic Quintet ‘an outstanding achievement’.

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

SCHOOLS’ CONCERT Close Up for KS2

Ensemble 360 & Guest presenter

The Stables, Milton Keynes

Tuesday 7 October 2025, 11.00am / 1.00pm

Tickets £8
Free teacher ticket with every 10 seats booked

Past Event

Home› What's on› SCHOOLS’ CONCERT Close Up for KS2

Take a tour through the wondrous world of chamber music, specially created for young audiences, combining well-known classical favourites with new works from surprising places. This concert for Key Stage 2 includes thrilling musical adventures told through music, cheeky characters and epic heroes, mind-blowing musical games and the chance to join in and make music together.

The concert includes extracts from: Schubert’s String Quartet in D Minor ‘Death And The Maiden’, Stravinsky Three Pieces, Haydn’s Op.33 No.3 ‘Russian Quartet’ and Mozart’s String Quartet In E Flat (full repertoire list is available on stables.org)

Classroom resources will also be provided to support the concert.

ROMANTIC & CLASSICAL STRING QUARTETS

Consone Quartet

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley

Friday 21 November 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets*:
£14.50

DLA, PIP and UC £10
Under 35s £5

*Additional £1.50 booking fee for purchase via The Civic

Past Event

Home› What's on› ROMANTIC & CLASSICAL STRING QUARTETS

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F H.34
HAYDN String Quartet in G Op.33 No.5 ‘How do you do?’
MOZART String Quartet in A K464

Music in the Round’s Visiting String Quartet make their Barnsley debut! The Consone Quartet has won great acclaim for its authentic interpretations of Romantic and Classical works, with prestigious awards including the Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble prize and as BBC New Generation Artists.

i. Allegro

ii. Allegretto

iii. Rondo. Allegro comodo

String Quartet in F major is an unusual work, in that it is the only piece that Beethoven arranged from his own works. The original piece, Piano Sonata no.9 in E major, was composed in 1798 and dedicated to Baroness Josephine von Braun who was wife of the manager of the Theater an der Wien. He later arranged it for string quartet in 1801 and transposed it from the key of E major to F major, to better fit the open strings on the viola and cello. Beethoven displays great skill by knowing, not only what to add, but also what to leave out when re-imagining piano music for strings, transforming the piece but not replicating it directly. There is great drama in the contrast between the lyrical passages and the lively thematic sections, showcasing that the piece has just as much flair on the strings as it does the piano.

i. Vivace assai
ii. Largo e cantabile
iii. Scherzo. Allegro – Trio
iv. Finale. Allegretto

Haydn’s Op.33 came after a ten-year gap from his previous string quartet. In 1781 he wrote this set of six pieces that have since been called the ‘Russian’ quartets, as Haydn dedicated them to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia. ‘Russian’ quartet No. 5 is also known as ‘How Do You Do’, due to the four-note sequence that opens the first theme, and that is repeated at various intervals throughout all four movements. The second movement is set apart from the other lively and upbeat movements, holding a darker, more melancholy feeling to it. The Scherzo is by far the most playful of the four pieces, containing displaced accents and long pauses that constantly fool the listener into believing the piece is reaching its end. Together, Op.33 No.5 is a set of sophisticated pieces full of energy and momentum, that audiences have adored since Haydn first composed them.

i. Allegro
ii. Menuetto and Trio
iii. Andante (theme with variations)
iv. Allegro non troppo

Mozart wrote this String Quartet in A major in 1785, and it was the fifth of his six quartets that he dedicated to contemporary composer Joseph Haydn. Haydn and Mozart held each other’s work in high regard, even sitting down together to play the last three ‘Haydn’ quartets, with Haydn on first violin and Mozart playing viola. String Quartet in A major is much more frugal in its makeup than many of Mozart’s other works, with only a couple of short musical themes being established and explored in each piece. Ironically though, it is one of his longest quartets. It is sometimes known as the Drum because in the sixth variation of the Andante, the cello part has a repeated staccato section that has been likened to a drumbeat. The coda in the Allegro non troppo picks up on Haydn’s practice of ‘joke’ endings, bringing the set to a playful conclusion.

About the Artists

Consone Quartet

The first period instrument string quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists, the Consone Quartet are fast making a name for themselves with their honest and expressive interpretations of classical and romantic repertoire. Music in the Round is delighted to welcome the Quartet to ‘the family’ as our Visiting Quartet. Supported by the Frost Trust, they visit schools across the city, working in partnership with Sheffield Music Hub and performing at concerts promoted by us around the country.

Formed at the Royal College of Music in London, the Consone Quartet launched their professional career in 2015, shortly after which they were awarded two prizes at the 2015 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, including the EUBO Development Trust Prize and a place on the EEEmerging Scheme in France. They went on to win the 2016 Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Prize, and in 2022 were awarded a prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) fellowship. Read their full biography here.

MOZART VIOLIN SONATAS

Ensemble 360

Emmanuel Church, Barnsley

Friday 3 October 2025, 7.30pm

£14.50
DLA, PIP and UC £10
Under 35s £5

Past Event

Home› What's on› MOZART VIOLIN SONATAS

Programme includes:
MOZART Sonata in E minor K304 (12′)
SCHUMANN F-A-E sonata, ‘II. Intermezzo’ (3′)
LUTOSLAWSKI Subito (6′)
SCHUMANN Sonata No.1 in A minor Op.105 (17′)
MOZART Sonata in G K301 (15′)
MESSIAEN Theme and variations (11′)
MOZART Sonata in A K.305 (15′)

Mozart’s glorious violin sonatas – among the composer’s most charming works – nestle between music by Robert Schumann in this gorgeous recital for violin and piano. Violinist Claudia Ajmone-Marsan and pianist Tim Horton promise an evening of exuberant, lyrical, and joyful music from two of the greatest composers of the Classical and Romantic periods.

Allegro
Tempo di Menuetto

Mozart’s visit to Paris in 1778 – fifteen years after his dazzling first appearance in the city as a child prodigy – was not a success, and the composer was irritated by the apparent indifference of both the musical public and the aristocracy. The highlight of his stay was probably the first performance of the ‘Paris’ Symphony K297 on 18 June. Among the works he composed in Paris was the Violin Sonata in E minor (a key seldom used by Mozart). It has been suggested that the desolate mood of this work – headed “Sonata IV à Paris” in Mozart’s hand on the manuscript – may reflect the tragic illness and death (on 3 July) of Mozart’s mother, who was with him in Paris. While this may be an unduly Romantic interpretation, it is certainly one of Mozart’s bleakest works from this period, and also one of remarkable concentration – in just two movements, the second of which is a melancholy, restrained Minuet in which both players are directed to play sotto voce at several points in the score.

The F-A-E Sonata was created in 1853, as a gift for violinist Joseph Joachim. Written for violin and piano, and made up of four movements, the sonata was actually composed by 3 individuals; Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahams, and Albert Dietrich, who was a pupil of Schumann’s. The three composers had recently befriended the violinist and challenged Joachim to work out who had composed which movement. Schumann was responsible for movements 2 and 4, the 2nd movement being a short Intermezzo. The Sonata’s movements are all based on the musical notes of F, A and E, and are taken from the first letters of Joachim’s adopted motto “Frei aber einsam”, meaning “free, but lonely”. Schumann would later add two more movements to the ones written for Joachim, to make his Violin Sonata No.3 in A minor. The F-A-E Sonata wasn’t published in its entirety until 1935, 82 years after it was first written.

One of Lutosławski’s final works, Subito was commissioned in 1992 by Joseph Gingold for the 1994 Indianapolis International Violin Competition. He had learned to play the violin as a child, something that served him in good stead when composing for strings throughout his life. Lutosławski believed the piece to be a “functional” challenge that would show off a competitor’s virtuosity, with a refrain from the opening bars being used to form four episodes that come together to create a story of violinistic excellence. This commission arrived shortly after Lutosławski was diagnosed with cancer, putting on hold a violin concerto that he had been writing for acclaimed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Fragments of this concerto were only discovered posthumously, making Subito his final published work for violin before his death.

Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck [With passionate expression]
Allegretto
Lebhaft [Lively]

Schumann often composed in bursts of creative speed, and his Violin Sonata No.1 Op.105 was written in less than a week in September 1851 – starting on his wedding anniversary (12 September) and finishing five days later. Originally he described the work as a ‘Duo for piano and violin’ and it was the first of what Linda Correll Roesner has described as ‘an exceptional group of three chamber works’ written within a couple of months – along with the Piano Trio in G minor Op.110 and the Violin Sonata No.2 Op.121. In his articles, Schumann often wrote about the challenges of musical form for any composer after Beethoven. In this sonata, Schumann uses great economy of means, evident right from the start: the themes of the first movement are based on a limited range of notes, characterised by a falling semitone figure that is heavy with melancholy. The central movement is less anguished – a kind of quirky intermezzo in F major –while the finale is urgent and uncompromising. Near the close, a recollection of the sonata’s opening theme is undermined by the restless, rapid semiquavers that dominate the movement.

The sonata was first played by Joseph von Wasilewski (leader of Schumann’s orchestra in Düsseldorf) and Clara Schumann, at a private run-through on 16 October 1851. The public premiere was given a few months later in Leipzig on 21 March 1852, performed by Ferdinand David with Clara Schumann. Both Clara and Wasilewski recalled playing the piece through for Schumann. According to Clara, ‘I was so restless, I had to try Robert’s new sonata this very day. We played it, and were particularly moved by the very elegiac first movement and the lovely second movement. Only the somewhat less charming third movement caused us some difficulty.’ Wasilewski recalled that ‘on the whole Schumann was satisfied with my performance. Only my playing of the finale failed to please him. We went through it three more times, but Schumann said that he had expected the violin part to have a different effect. I was unable to convey the unyielding, brusque tone of the piece to his satisfaction.’ The finale clearly proved troublesome for both pianist and violinist. Clara’s suggestion that it is ‘less charming’ is puzzling. While the music is indeed brusque (as Wasilewski says) – Schumann resists any hint of easy allure by interrupting its more tender moments with abrupt chords – it is strong and intense, bringing this highly original piece to an impassioned conclusion.

Allegretto con spirito

Allegro
The G Major Sonata for Violin and Piano is the first of a group of six for piano and violin composed in Mannheim and Paris during the course of the tour undertaken by Mozart and his mother during 1777 and 1778. Mozart seems to have been inspired to write these works after a chance discovery. On October 6, 1777, he wrote a letter to his father about a set of sonatas by the Dresden musician Joseph Schuster (1748–1812): “I send my sister herewith six duets for harpsichord and violin by Schuster, which I have often played here. They are not bad. If I stay on I shall write six myself in the same style, as they are very popular here.” What seems to have struck Mozart about Schuster’s sonatas is the independence of the two instrumental parts – with much more prominent writing for violin than in Mozart’s earlier sonatas for this combination. These six sonatas were published in Paris in as Mozart’s “Opus 1”, dedicated to Maria Elisabeth, Electress of the Palatinate. The first movement is a variant of sonata form (without a significant development of the ideas), and the second suggests a bucolic dance, with a minor-key episode at its centre providing a contrast to the sunnier outer sections.

Nigel Simeone 2013

Thème – Modéré
Variation 1 – Modéré
Variation 2 – Un peu moins Modére
Variation 3 – Modéré, avec éclat
Variation 4 – Vif et passionné
Variation 5 – Tres modéré

Messian wrote his Theme and variations as a wedding present for his first wife, violinist Claire Delbos in 1932. The first performance of the piece was held at the Cercle Musical de Paris on 22nd November (which also happened to be Delbos’ birthday). Although this was Messiaen’s first piece of chamber music, it is as equally characteristic and emotionally accessible as his most well-known chamber piece, the Quartet for the End of Time. Structurally, Theme and variations is one of more straightforward works, with a tender and lyrical theme that is followed by increasingly animated variations. The use of a classical theme and variation form is unusual in Messiaen’s writing, but the intense slow burn created by the very slow tempo markings creates a fantastical world entirely within keeping of the rapturous individualism that he is known for.

i. Allegro di molto
ii. Andante grazioso

Sonata in A was inspired by Joseph Schuster’s piano and violin duets, which Mozart first played whilst looking for jobs in Mannheim, Germany. The sonata is made of 2 movements. The first is in sonata form, which follows the structure of introducing a musical idea or ideas, exploring it and then returning to the main themes at the end. It is one of Mozart’s most joyous melodies of all his violin sonatas. The second movement is a theme–and–variation form and completely contrasts with the tone of the first. It has a slower tempo and a much more subdued melody and is followed by six variations on the main theme. Typical of theme-and-variation pieces of the time, the penultimate variation is very stark, and in a minor mode. The set ends with an up-tempo dance and is the only piece of the lot that is in triple metre instead of duple.

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

JASDEEP SINGH DEGUN & ENSEMBLE 360

Jasdeep Singh Degun & Ensemble 360

The Stables, Milton Keynes

Tuesday 7 October 2025, 8.00pm

Tickets:
£11 – £27.50

Past Event

Home› What's on› JASDEEP SINGH DEGUN & ENSEMBLE 360

A composer and virtuoso of the sitar with a classical string quintet makes for an electrifying pairing. Ensemble 360 celebrates its 20th birthday with a gift to us – boundary-breaking new music created collaboratively.

Jasdeep Singh Degun is no stranger to forming alliances in the music world. He was composer and co-music director for Opera North’s 2022 award-winning production of Orpheus, weaving a tapestry from the European and Indian traditions. ‘It’s really not a matter of different worlds meeting’, he reflects. ‘It’s just me: as much as I’m immersed in Indian classical music, I’m a product of this country; I’m a British composer.’ Both innovator and custodian of tradition, composer and performer, with a debut album made with the legendary Nitin Sawnhey released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records, he is reshaping the musical landscape.

About the Artists

Jasdeep Singh Degun

Breaking down cultural boundaries with his extraordinary artistry and new approach to composition, virtuoso sitarist, Jasdeep Singh Degun, brings a new energy and vision to both Indian classical and contemporary music. He’s redefining genres and passionate about exposing music from his heritage to audiences across the globe. Learning under the careful guidance of Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE, Jasdeep has performed all over the world in many high profile productions and prestigious venues, including Buckingham Palace, the Amphitheatre in Doha, and Westminster Abbey at the Royal Commonwealth Service 2022 in the presence of the British Royal Family and Prime Minister.

Signed to the prestigious Real World Records, Jasdeep released his much anticipated debut album titled ‘Anomaly‘, working under the guidance of celebrated musician and producer Nitin Sawhney. Jasdeep was announced as Artist-in-Residence at Opera North, and in 2022 he was composer, co-music director and soloist in Opera North and South Asian Arts-uk’s acclaimed opera Orpheus. This production garnered five-star reviews and earned Jasdeep a 2022 Critics’ Circle Music Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Opera”.

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About the Artists

Jasdeep Singh Degun

Ensemble 360

PARRY Richard Reed, Quartet for Heart & Breath

WHITLEY Kate, Mew Settings

TAVENER John, The World

HAMILTON Jamie, A Mouth in Search of a Voice: Part 1

MONK Meredith, Stringsongs

MILLER Cassandra, Thanksong

About the Artists

Phaedra Ensemble

Lotte Betts-Dean

HOLST Imogen, Phantasy String Quartet

BRITTEN Benjamin, Three Divertimenti for String Quartet

HOLBROOKE Joseph, Eilean Shona for Clarinet and String Quartet

HOWELLS HERBERT, Phantasy String Quartet, Op.25

PURCELL Henry, Three-Part Fantasias

HARRISON PAMELA, Clarinet Quintet

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, The Lark Ascending

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

SAARIAHO Kaija, Terra Memoria

GESUALDO Carlo, Moro, lasso, al mio duolo

MUSSORGSKY Modest, Songs and Dances of Death

LISZT Franz, Via Crucis

SCHUBERT Franz, String Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’

About the Artists

Dudok Quartet

HAYDN Joseph, Quartet in B flat Op.33 No.4

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

BEETHOVEN Ludwig van, String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131

About the Artists

Fibonacci Quartet

“The musicians did a wonderful job of introducing the young audience to enjoyment of the theatre, live music and engaging story-telling. Proof of their success [were] the lines of excited children coming up to meet the musicians who had gathered in the foyer with their instruments.”

The Yorkshire Post (on a previous Music in the Round storybook concert)

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

Lucy Drever

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

Elinor Moran

HOLST Imogen, Phantasy String Quartet

BRITTEN Benjamin, Three Divertimenti for String Quartet

HOLBROOKE Joseph, Eilean Shona for Clarinet and String Quartet

PURCELL Henry, Three-Part Fantasias

HOWELLS Herbert, Rhapsodic Quintet for Clarinet and Strings Op.31

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, The Lark Ascending

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

BEETHOVEN, Ludwig van, String Quartet in F major, H.34

HAYDN Joseph, String Quartet in G major ‘How do you do’

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, String Quartet in A major K464

About the Artists

Consone Quartet

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor K304

SCHUMANN Robert, F-A-E Sonata, Movement 2

LUTOSŁAWSKI Witold, Subito

SCHUMANN Robert, Sonata for Violin and Piano in A minor, Op.105

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Sonata for Violin and Piano in G, K301

MESSIAEN Olivier, Theme and variations

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Sonata in A, K305

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

About the Artists

Jasdeep Singh Degun

Ensemble 360