RELAXED CONCERT: THE LARK ASCENDING

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Wednesday 5 February 2025, 2.00pm

Tickets:
£5
carers free

Past Event

Home› What's on› RELAXED CONCERT: THE LARK ASCENDING

I HOLST Phantasy String Quartet (10’)
PURCELL (transc. Warlock) Three-part Fantasias 1, 2 & 3 (8’)
BRITTEN Phantasy Quartet Op.2 (13’)
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (arr. Gerigk) The Lark Ascending (15’)

The violin soars melodiously above the rest of the quartet in the gorgeous, pared-back arrangement of Vaughan Williams’s most popular work The Lark Ascending, which concludes this ‘Relaxed’ concert of music featuring English music for oboe and strings.

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.

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.

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).

Andante con moto – Allegro vivace – Andante con moto

Bridge had already been successful in Walter Wilson Cobbett’s competition to write a ‘Phantasy’ – Cobbett’s reinvention of the Elizabeth Fantasy as new single-movement chamber works – and in 1910 he (along with Vaughan Williams and others) was commissioned by Cobbett to compose a Phantasy Piano Quartet. It’s a work in a satisfying arch form based on free-flowing musical ideas all of which derive from the powerful opening gesture. Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten, wrote in a programme note for the Aldeburgh Festival about this piece. He described the music as ‘Sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound—Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

Nigel Simeone 2013

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.

SOUNDS OF NOW: QUARTET FOR HEART & BREATH

Phaedra Ensemble & Lotte Betts-Dean

Upper Chapel, Sheffield

Saturday 25 January 2025, 8.00pm

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

Past Event

Home› What's on› SOUNDS OF NOW: 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’)
New Commission (8’)
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).

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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

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.

BIRDS & BAGATELLES

Ensemble 360

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Wednesday 22 January 2025, 7.00pm

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

Past Event

Home› What's on› BIRDS & BAGATELLES

BEAMISH The Naming of Birds (12’)
ZEMLINSKY Humoresque (4’)
BARBER Summer Music (12’)
LIGETI Six Bagatelles (12’)
NIELSEN Wind Quintet (25’)

This concert of playful music for wind quintet, performed by members of Ensemble 360, promises to transport you to an English meadow, the Danish countryside, and a sultry New York summer.

A staple of the wind repertoire, Nielsen’s Quintet was inspired by his fellow musicians and reflects the character of each instrument, playfully hinting at friendships and chatter between the players. Sally Beamish’s The Naming of Birds draws on the natural world as inspiration, while Barber’s Summer Music evokes a languid summer’s day in this programme full of melodious twittering and jaunty dance tunes.

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I wrote this piece while also working on Knotgrass Elegy, an oratorio which uses a text by Donald Goodbrand Saunders describing the threat that modern farming methods pose to birds. The birds’ Latin names are chanted by a children’s chorus. While making the sketches for this large scale piece, I became fascinated by the close relationship that the Latin names (and often common names too) have with the actual sound of the bird. I began to notate the birdsongs with that in mind, and these five short movements for wind quintet emerged, each featuring a different member of the quintet as a soloist.

Perdix perdix (the partridge) horn

Vanellus vanellus (the lapwing) oboe

Carduelis cannabina, emberiza calendra (the linnet, the corn bunting) flute/piccolo

Tyto alba (the barn owl) bassoon

Pyrrhula pyrrhula (the bullfinch) clarinet

The work was commissioned by the Reykjavik Wind Quintet, and first performed at the Matt Thompson Hall, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, on 27th April 2001.

Sally Beamish 2001

Zemlinsky was a Bruckner pupil, encouraged by Brahms, admired by Mahler (whom Alma married after a passionate fling with Zemlinsky, her composition teacher), a close friend of Schoenberg (who married Zemlinsky’s sister), one of the most interesting opera composers of his age, and an outstanding conductor who devoted much of his energy to promoting new music. Zemlinsky was forced to flee Vienna by the Nazis, and in 1939, shortly after arriving in New York, he composed the Humoreske, subtitling it a Rondo and describing it as a ‘Schulstück’ (literally a ‘school piece’) for wind quintet. Hans Heinsheimer, an old acquaintance and fellow refugee who had worked for Universal Edition in Vienna, asked the composer to write a piece for a series of newly-composed works for younger players that he wanted to publish. Despite increasingly precarious health, Zemlinsky completed the piece, and the result is a charming work lasting just over four minutes. It was to be one of the last things Zemlinsky wrote: just after finishing it he suffered a massive stroke and moved to Larchmont, where he died in a nursing home three years later.

In 1953, Samuel Barber was commissioned to write a new work for the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the fee to be paid for not in the usual way but by contributions from the Detroit Symphony audience. Originally, he was asked for a septet (three wind, three strings and piano) but settled on the scoring for wind quintet after hearing performances and attending numerous rehearsals by the New York Wind Quintet who offered a great deal of technical advice about writing for this instrumental combination. In spite of this close collaboration, the first performance had been promised to Detroit and was given there by Detroit Symphony principals on 26 March 1956 when it was enthusiastically received, one local critic noting that the audience was delighted by ‘its mood of pastoral serenity.’ Following the premiere, Barber again worked with the New York Wind Quintet, making some cuts and putting Summer Music into its final shape. After performances in Boston and on a tour of South America, the New York ensemble played it at Carnegie Hall on 16 November 1956. Since then, the work has become established as cornerstone of the twentieth-century wind quintet repertoire. Cast in a single movement, the mood is mostly quiet and rhapsodic, and as for the title, Barber wrote that ‘it’s supposed to be evocative of summer – summer meaning languid, not killing mosquitoes.’

Allegro con spirito
Rubato, lamentoso
Cantabile, molto legato
Vivace. Energico
Adagio. Mesto – Allegro maestoso (Béla Bartók in Memoriam)
Vivace. Capriccioso

During the war, most of Ligeti’s immediate family perished in Nazi concentration camps, but he was able study at the Budapest Conservatoire, where his teachers included Zoltán Kodály. In 1951–3 Ligeti wrote a set of piano pieces called Musica ricercata from which he selected six to arrange for woodwind quintet. The influence of Bartók, especially of piano pieces like Mikrokosmos, is apparent throughout – and the fifth movement is explicitly written as a tribute to the composer whose music most inspired the young Ligeti when he was growing up in a repressive regime. The other composer whose music comes strongly to mind in the fourth and sixth of the Bagatelles is Stravinsky. Ligeti’s style was to change rapidly within a few years, after he moved to the more liberal cultural climate of Vienna. But the Bagatelles give an enjoyable indication of how skilful a composer he was at the start of his career.

Nielsen composed his Wind Quintet in 1922 for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, whose Mozart playing had inspired him. As well as this work, Nielsen planned to write concertos for each of the members of the group but only completed those for flute and clarinet. He wrote it during a three-month stay in Gothenburg, immediately after completing the Fifth Symphony. In a letter to a friend he wrote that ‘the externals are very modest, but the technicalities are for that reason all the more difficult’, and he told he wife that it he was ‘greatly amused’ by the challenge. In his is own programme note on the work, Nielsen wrote:

‘The quintet for winds is one of the composer’s latest works, in which he has attempted to render the characters of the various instruments. At one moment they are all talking at once, at another they are quite alone. The work consists of three movements: a) Allegro, b) Minuet and c) Prelude – Theme with Variations. The theme for these variations is the melody for one of Nielsen’s spiritual songs, which has here been made the basis of a set of variations, now merry and quirky, now elegiac and serious, ending with the theme in all its simplicity and very quietly expressed.’

Nigel Simeone

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

SOUNDS OF NOW: RAKHI SINGH violin & electronics

Rakhi Singh

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Saturday 11 January 2025, 8.00pm

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

Past Event

Home› What's on› SOUNDS OF NOW: RAKHI SINGH violin & electronics

NICOLA MATTEIS Alia Fantasia (4’)
ANNA CLYNE October Rose for Two Violins (4’)
MICHAEL GORDON Tinge (4’)
ALEX GROVES Alula (9’)
ANDREW HAMILTON In Beautiful May (13’)
MISSY MAZZOLI Vespers (5’)
PAUL CLARK Natural Remedies (6’)
EDMUND FINNIS Elsewhere (8’)
JULIA WOLFE (arr. Singh) LAD (17’)

Programme subject to minor changes

One of the leading figures in the UK’s contemporary music scene, violinist and composer Rakhi Singh has garnered critical acclaim for her adventurous and boundary-crossing programmes. She has firmly established her reputation touring with cutting-edge artists such as Phillip Glass, Abel Selaocoe and the London Contemporary Orchestra. She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Manchester Collective, the award-winning ensemble known for its daring collaborations and engaging performances in spaces ranging from warehouses to nightclubs.

In her debut solo recital for Music in the Round, Rakhi performs exhilarating music for violin and electronics by Michael Gordon, Andrew Hamilton and others. Edmund Finnis’s Elsewhere sees delicate, whispered tones coaxed from the violin, while Julia Wolfe’s LAD (originally composed for nine bagpipes, arranged here for violin and electronics) is an extraordinary, immersive experience – a wall-of-sound unlike any other.

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About the Artists

Rakhi Singh

Rakhi Singh is a violinist, music director and composer based between Manchester and London, England. In 2016 she co-founded Manchester Collective, who performed their second proms in as many years this Summer, led by Rakhi. In her programming, she continues to endeavour to bring important music to the fore, from 2022’s Julius Eastman Proms performance, to the new wave of British composers in ‘23 with work by Hannah Peel, Ben Nobuto and Oliver Leith (alongside favourites from Lang and Reich).

Alongside her work leading the Collective, Singh has firmly established herself as a violinist and leader of high repute, touring with the likes of Phillip Glass, Abel Selacoe & Hiromi, and guest leading ensembles including the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra, RLPO, CBSO, Hebrides Ensemble, Sinfonia Cymru. Since 2021 she has toured as a solo artist, performing headline sets at the likes of Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Het Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), National Concert Hall (Dublin), Funkhaus (Berlin) and Kings Place (London).

Alongside her 2023 debut solo album ‘Purnima’ on Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music imprint, she has also released a number of records on Bedroom Community, two albums as curator/director of Manchester Collective and her debut composition EP ‘Quarry’.

As a collaborator she has developed and performed collaborative work for the likes of London Southbank Centre (alongside Vessel & NYX Electronic Drone Choir for NMB 2022), Royal Opera House (alongside Blackhaine), on a new collaborative record by acclaimed violinist & recorder player Laura Cannell (also featuring Gazelle Twin, Nik Colk Void and Lori Goldston) as well as, as a recording artist on the records of Fever Ray, Clark and Vessel amongst others.

Born to an English mother and Indian father in rural Wales, Rakhi’s upbringing was influenced by many different cultures and traditions.

GERSHWIN & THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

Lizzie Ball & James Pearson

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Saturday 11 January 2025, 2.00pm

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

Past Event

Home› What's on› GERSHWIN & THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

PIAZZOLLA Escualo (6’)
LAYTON (arr Andrew Cottee) After You’ve Gone (5’)
GERSHWIN (arr. Pearson) The Man I Love (5’)
KREISLER Praeludium and Allegro (6’)
GERSHWIN (arr. Heifetz) ‘Bess, You is my Woman Now’ from Porgy and Bess (10’)
GERSHWIN (arr. Pearson) Gershwin Finale Medley (6’)
COPLAND (arr. Pearson) El Salón México (10’)
PONCE (arr. Heifetz) Estrellita (5’)
KREISLER (arr. Rachmaninov) Liebesleid (4’)
Selections from the Great American Songbook (13’)
BERNSTEIN (arr. Pearson) West Side Story Suite (15’)

Programme subject to minor changes

Violinist Lizzie Ball has performed around the world with stars including Nigel Kennedy, Ariana Grande and Hugh Jackman. She returns to her native Sheffield with pianist James Pearson for an afternoon of timeless music for violin and piano. Join them for a journey through the musical and personal encounters of some of the finest composers of the Great American Songbook and beyond.

This concert features Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein and more, with arrangements of some of the best known showtunes from musicals, including ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Porgy and Bess’, together with some of the most enduring songs of the early 20th century. It promises to be an uplifting afternoon of memorable tunes interspersed with conversation.

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About the Artists

Lizzie Ball

Born in Sheffield, raised in rural Derbyshire, and based in London, Lizzie is a violinist, vocalist, concert producer and founder of Classical Kicks Productions. A prolific performer, Lizzie has been on the international stage for two decades. Lizzie was awarded an Honorary Masters from The University of Derby in 2018 in recognition of her innovative, creative approach to classical music. Shortly after this Lizzie was chosen as one of the UK’s most inspirational females in a list of 50 outstanding UK women making an impact, in a feature run by Daily Mail. Read more.

James Pearson

James Pearson is a pianist, composer and creative tour de force. James is the Artistic Director at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club where his trio are the house band. As one of the country’s most respected musicians, James’ work covers all genres of music, especially contempory music, jazz, and classical. Equally at home as a concert pianist, he has broadcast on all the major radio and television networks, and played concertos with the Philharmonia and the BBC Concert Orchestra, amongst many others. His performance of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano Concerto was broadcast on Classic FM and Gershwin’s Piano Concerto and Rhapsody in Blue on BBC Radio 2. Read more.

THE RITE OF SPRING

Tim Horton & Ivana Gavrić

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Friday 10 January 2025, 7.00pm

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

Past Event

Home› What's on› THE RITE OF SPRING

SHOSTAKOVICH Concertino in A minor for two pianos (10’)
RACHMANINOV Suite No.1 for two pianos (24’)
STRAVINSKY (arr. Stravinsky) The Rite of Spring (34’)

The Romantic lyricism of Rachmaninov’s Suite No.1 for two pianos and Shostakovich’s Concertino featuring rousing Soviet-era dance tunes open this all-Russian evening of music for two pianos. These sit alongside Stravinsky’s riotous masterpiece The Rite of Spring, all performed by two of the UK’s leading concert pianists, Tim Horton and Ivana Gavrić.

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Shostakovich composed this miniature single-movement work for two pianos in 1954, just after completing his Tenth Symphony. It was written for his son Maxim, then a teenager studying the piano at the Moscow Conservatory. He gave the first performance with another student, Alla Maloletkova, on 8 November 1954; soon afterwards Shostakovich father-and-son made the first recording. It opens with a slow introduction in which stern, austere octaves contrast with a chorale-like idea, before launching into a sardonic Allegretto. Slow and fast sections alternate until a final dash to the close. Though some of the material is of a serious nature, much of the Concertino is quite playful, as befits a work originally conceived for young players. For Shostakovich, it must have come as a welcome relief after the Tenth Symphony, one of his most concentrated and fiercely argued masterpieces.

Nigel Simeone

Barcarolle: Allegretto

La nuit…l’amour [The night, the love]: Adagio sostenuto

Les larmes [Tears] Largo di molto

Pâques [Easter]: Allegro maestoso

Subtitled ‘Fantaisie-Tableaux’, Rachmaninov composed his Suite No. 1 for two pianos in 1893. He gave the first performance with Pavel Pabst in Moscow on 30 November 1893. This was an occasion tinged with sadness: Rachmaninov dedicated the Suite to Tchaikovsky, who was planning to attend, but he died a few weeks earlier (and even before the premiere of the Suite, Rachmaninov started work on his tragic Trio élégiaque Op. 9 written in memory of Tchaikovsky). The Suite consists of four movements each of which was inspired by poetry. The ‘Barcarolle’ evokes a melancholy gondolier’s song, based on a poem by Lermontov in which ‘the gondola glides through the water, and time glides over surges of love.’ The second movement, ‘The Night…the love’ was inspired by Byron and depicts a passionate night-time tryst (‘It is the hour when lovers’ vows seem sweet in every whisper’d word’), accompanied by the song of a nightingale. In ‘Tears’, Rachmaninov took a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev about an endless cascade of weeping, evoked in the music by a series of falling phrases. The last movement, ‘Easter’, takes lines by Alexei Khomyakov as its starting point: ‘Across the earth a might bell is ringing … exulting in that holy victory.’ For this, Rachmaninov produced a magnificent evocation of Orthodox church bells – large and small – chiming at different speeds, and he also incorporated the chant ‘Christ is risen’.

Nigel Simeone

Stravinsky composed part of his elemental masterpiece, The Rite of Spring, on his family estate in the Ukraine, but the work was completed in the Swiss village of Clarens, overlooking Lake Geneva, with spectacular views of Mont Blanc and of the Swiss Alps down the Rhone Valley. Coincidentally, Clarens was also where Tchaikovsky had composed his Violin Concerto forty years earlier. The famous premiere, on 29 May 1913, took place at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The riot that ensued was largely the result of engineering by Serge Diaghilev, an impresario who learned early on that all publicity was good publicity for his Ballets Russes. By inviting a large group of students to sit alongside the regular subscribers, and by putting The Rite of Spring at the end of the first half of the programme – straight after the Chopin ballet Les Sylphides – the work had maximum shock value. Stravinsky was furious that his score couldn’t be heard, but delighted when its first concert performance in Paris a year later was greeted with such enthusiasm that he was carried through the streets afterwards. A few weeks before the first night, Stravinsky had played through the work in his piano four-hands arrangement with Debussy, and it was in this form that the work first appeared in print. It is a work that has never lost its power to astonish – and in this four-hand arrangement it loses nothing of its rhythmic daring and what Messiaen called its “magic power”.

About the Artists

Tim Horton

Tim Horton is one of the UK’s leading pianists, equally at home in solo and chamber repertoire. He is a founder member of both the Leonore Piano Trio and Ensemble 360 and has been a regular guest pianist with the Nash Ensemble. He was invited to make his solo debut at Wigmore Hall in 2016 where he will be giving further solo recitals in the coming seasons. Between 2011 and 2015 Tim presented a complete Beethoven Sonata cycle at the Crucible Studio, Sheffield for Music in the Round, and was invited to return to perform a cycle of Schubert Sonatas from 2017-2019. He is currently performing a cycle of concerts based around the composer Chopin for Music in the Round. Read more.

Ivana Gavrić

Ivana Gavrić’s playing has been described as “altogether of an extraordinary calibre” (BBC Music Magazine) and “notable for its beautiful sound, musical integrity and introspection” (The Independent). She has attracted considerable praise for her interpretations of a broad repertoire, the Washington Post describing her playing as “impressive, insightful…ravishing”.

Ivana is drawn to composers like Janáček, Grieg and Chopin, who each take features of their respective homelands to create a distinctive musical voice, whether from the landscape and nature or from elements of folk music and dance. A long-standing collaboration with the award-winning composer, Cheryl Frances-Hoad has led to solo works and more recently a concerto entitled Between the Skies, the River and the Hills written for Ivana. Ivana is also committed to performing works by female composers of the past, particularly Cécile Chaminade and Dora Pejačević. Read more.

SHEFFIELD JAZZ

Tommy Smith & Gwilym Simcock

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Saturday 4 January 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets*
£19
Over 60, Disabled & Unemployed £17
Students with NUS card £10
15–17 -year-olds £5
Under 15s free

*Sheffield Jazz tickets do not qualify for any other Music in the Round ticket offers or discounts.

Past Event

Home› What's on› SHEFFIELD JAZZ

Tommy Smith tenor saxophone
Gwilym Simcock piano

Internationally acclaimed saxophonist Tommy Smith and Gwilym Simcock, renowned as one of the most gifted pianists on the European scene, come together for an acoustic night of intensely musical duets and dazzling improvisation. Both are multi-award winners who have played with the cream of international jazz artists, including Gary Burton, John Scofield and Pat Metheny. This is a meeting of two highly creative musicians, communicating with energy and lyrical fluency through a repertoire drawn from many musical genres. Expect an evening of intimate musical brilliance as they bring two generations of UK jazz mastery to the stage in world-class performances.

“One of the important voices in the tenor players of today” Jack DeJohnette

“Gwilym is one of the most exceptional musicians that I have ever known…he’s a really significant force in music” Pat Metheny

Browse the full programme online, explore the seasons with our digital brochure or download a copy of our 2025 brochure.

Download

SOUNDS OF NOW: GRITSTONE TURNTABLES (DOUBLE BILL)

Leafcutter John & Graham Dunning

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield

Saturday 30 November 2024, 8.00pm

Tickets:

£17

£10 PIP / UC / DLA

£5 Students & Under 35s

Past Event

Home› What's on› SOUNDS OF NOW: GRITSTONE TURNTABLES (DOUBLE BILL)

Sheffield-based electronic musician Leafcutter John performs his new project GRIT in this double-bill concert with experimental turntablist Graham Dunning.

Responding to his love of the Peak District and climbing, GRIT sees Leafcutter John use his home-made quad turntable to conjure reeling melody and rhythm from the very texture of gritstone.

Graham Dunning’s work also explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile. Drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects, Graham works with a DJ turntable as the engine of a ramshackle mechanical music system. He builds extensions and interfaces to sequence patterns, trigger synths, strike percussion and generate textures in this extraordinary, techno-infused performance, which is in turns abstract, clattering, cosmic and polyrhythmic.

Please note the Sounds of Now: Meltwater event originally scheduled for this date has been postponed until autumn 2025. More details to follow.

“Alongside Aphex Twin and Bogdan Raczynski, [Leafcutter John] is one of the UK’s most fearlessly inventive electronicists.”

Time Out London

About the Artists

Leafcutter John

Leafcutter John is the recording name of John Burton, a UK-based musician and artist.

Leafcutter John first found recognition twenty years ago through Mike Paradinas’s Planet Mu record label – a gold standard for the experimental fringes of electronic music.

Like many labelmates on Planet Mu, John’s music is completely unique to him. He blends analog synthesisers, unedited field recordings, processed sounds and audio textures borrowed from folk music – holding it all together with instruments he builds himself.

He makes frequent use of Max/MSP in his compositions. Much of Burton’s style is based in computer music and use of samples of everyday sounds. However, he also has roots as a folk musician, and this influence is apparent in his more recent work. Find out more.

Graham Dunning

Graham Dunning is self-taught as an artist and musician. His live work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He also creates visual work, video and installations drawing on these themes.

Much of the work evolves through experimentation with different processes: considering the methods by which sounds become music; process as a continuum encompassing both improvisational and procedural methods; and testing analogous processes across different media.

Graham has performed solo and in ensembles across the UK, Europe and Canada, and exhibited in the UK, Europe, New Zealand and USA. He teaches Experimental Sound Art at the Mary Ward Centre in London and also gives various independent workshops. He has released through Entr’acte, Seagrave, Tombed Visions and more. Find out more.

MENDELSSOHN, MOZART & MORE

Consone Quartet

White Rock Studio, Hastings

Monday 30 September 2024, 7.30pm

Tickets: £10 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› MENDELSSOHN, MOZART & MORE

R SCHUMANN (extracts arr. Friedrich Hermann) Bilder aus Osten, Op.66 (8′)
HAYDN String Quartet in F sharp minor Op.50 No.4 (21’)
MENDELSSOHN Theme and Variations and Scherzo from Four Pieces Op.81 (10′)
MOZART String Quartet in D “Hoffmeister” (25’)

Former BBC New Generation Artists, the Consone Quartet’s musicians are captivating and virtuosic performers, whose concerts are marked by warmth, honesty and expressiveness. Here two of their favourite composers, Haydn and Mozart, sit alongside Romantic masterpieces that followed generations later.

PART OF THE CLASSICAL SERIES
presented by The Guildhall Trust and Music in the Round.

Robert Schumann wrote Bilder aus Osten (‘Pictures from the East’) for piano four-hands in December 1848, as a Christmas present for his wife Clara. According to a preliminary note by Robert in the first edition, the pieces were inspired by the poet Friedrich Rückert’s German translations of Arabic Maqāmāt (tales of Arabic life). The central character of Rückert’s selection, Abu Seid, was likened by Robert to Germany’s own folk character Till Eulenspiegel and Schumann wrote that his aim in these pieces was to ‘express oriental poetry and thinking in our own art, as has already been done in German poetry’.

Violinist Friedrich Hermann (1828–1907) studied with Felix Mendelssohn and Ferdinand David, played in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and became professor of violin at the Leipzig Conservatory. His string quartet transcriptions of Bilder aus Osten demonstrate great skill in reimagining Schumann’s piano duets for entirely different forces, with thoroughly convincing results.

Allegro spiritoso
Andante
Minuet – Trio
Fuga. Allegro moderato

Composed by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) in 1787, the String Quartet No. 39 in F sharp minor is the fourth of the composer’s six so-called ‘Prussian Quartets’. Dedicated to King Frederick William II of Prussia (in thanks for the gift of a golden ring), the quartets are widely considered among Haydn’s most sophisticated works in the medium. In this quartet, for example, Haydn deploys a complex harmonic language, dramatizing a tussle between major and minor. Beginning (ordinarily enough) in the home key of F sharp minor, the first movement ends with a turn to the major which Richard Wigmore described as “too blunt to constitute a happy ending”. In the second movement, similarly, the cello heralds a sudden and dramatic turn to A minor, while in the third movement – a ‘Menuetto’ dance in triple time – Haydn boldly interjects with a D major chord quite alien to the home key. Only in the fugue of the final movement are the motifs of the first three movements built on, returning, at last, to F sharp minor.

This Theme and Variations – composed in 1847 – was published posthumously as the first of Mendelssohn’s Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81. Like its companion Scherzo, the undated manuscript is believed to have been written in the last few weeks of Mendelssohn’s life. Marked Andante sostenuto, the poised, elegant theme is presented by the violin, before being taken over by the viola, against a gentle, syncopated accompaniment. The next variation, in triplets, is slightly faster and gives way to a variation where the first violin plays a florid semiquaver descant over sustained chords. The fast-moving phrases are then transferred to the cello before the tempo changes to a vigorous Presto (in 6/8 time), the key now shifting from major to minor. A brief solo violin cadenza leads to coda back in the home key of E major, based on a varied recollection of the opening material and a serene close.

1. Allegretto
2. Menuetto and Trio. Allegretto
3. Adagio
4. Allegro

Like Haydn before him, Mozart habitually published his string quartets in groups of six (the ‘Haydn’ Quartets) or three (the ‘Prussian’ Quartets). Between these two sets there is a single work, entered in Mozart’s manuscript catalogue of his own works on 19 August 1786 as ‘a quartet for 2 violins, viola and violoncello’. The autograph manuscript (in the British Library) is simply titled ‘Quartetto’. It was published in 1788 by the Viennese firm founded by Mozart’s friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister and it has come to be known as the ‘Hoffmeister’ Quartet as a result. The first movement opens with a theme in octaves that outlines a descending D major arpeggio – an idea that dominates much of the movement despite some startling harmonic excursions along the way. The development section is marked by almost continuous quaver movement that gives way magically to the opening theme at the start of the recapitulation. The Minuet has an easy-going charm that contrasts with the sterner mood (and minor key) of the Trio section. The great Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein thought the Adagio spoke ‘of past sorrow, with a heretofore unheard-of-depth’. It is not only a deeply touching movement but also an extremely ingenious one, not least when the initial idea heard on two violins returns on viola and cello, investing the same music with a darker, richer texture. The finale is fast and playful, but there’s also astonishing inventiveness in the flow of ideas, from the opening triplets with their chromatic twists to a contrasting theme which scampers up and down the scale. A few sudden and surprising dynamic contrasts keep the listener guessing right to the end.

Nigel Simeone

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 MASTERPIECES FOR HORN & STRINGS

Ensemble 360

White Rock Studio, Hastings

Monday 12 May 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets: £10 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› MOZART MASTERPIECES FOR HORN & STRINGS

MOZART Horn Quintet (16’)
MOZART String Quintet in G minor (35’)
MOZART Clarinet Quintet (31’)

Praised by The Guardian as “one of the most adaptable chamber groups in the country”, Ensemble 360 is renowned for its virtuoso performances, bold programming and engaging interpretations of music. Here they present three of Mozart’s best loved works, including the deeply expressive Horn Quintet which is playful, lyrical and gloriously optimistic and the string quintet which charts a journey from haunting melancholy to triumphant hope.

PART OF THE CLASSICAL SERIES
presented by The Guildhall Trust and Music in the Round.

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

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

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

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010

Allegro
Larghetto
Menuetto
Allegretto con variazioni

The Clarinet Quintet was completed on 29 September 1789 and written for Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler (1753–1812). The first performance took place a few months later at a concert in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 22 December 1789, with Stadler as the soloist in a programme where the premiere of the Clarinet Quintet was a musical interlude, sandwiched between the two parts of Vincenzo Righini’s cantata The Birth of Apollo, performed by “more than 180 persons.”

From the start, Mozart is at his most daringly beautiful: the luxuriant voicing of the opening string chords provides a sensuously atmospheric musical springboard for the clarinet’s opening flourish. The rich sonority of the Clarinet Quintet is quite unlike that of any other chamber music by Mozart, but it does have something in common with his opera Così fan tutte (premièred in January 1790), on which he was working at the same time. In particular, the slow movement of the quintet, with muted strings supporting the clarinet, has a quiet rapture that recalls the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ (with muted strings, and prominent clarinet parts as well as voices) in Così. The finale of the Quintet is a Theme and Variations which begins with folk-like charm, then turns to more melancholy reflection before ending in a spirit of bucolic delight.

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

FANFARE! TRUMPET CLASSICS

Aaron Azunda Akugbo & Zeynep Özsuca

White Rock Studio, Hastings

Monday 3 February 2025, 7.30pm

Tickets: £10 – £20

Past Event

Home› What's on› FANFARE! TRUMPET CLASSICS

HONEGGER Intrada (4’)
L BOULANGER Nocturne et Cortège (8’)
TURNAGE True Life Stories: Elegy for Andy (3′)
VIVALDI Agitata da due venti (6’)
BOZZA Aria (4’)
FRANÇAIX Sonatine (8’)
HUBEAU Sonata (15’)
PRICE The Glory of the Day was in Her Face (3’)
PRICE Song to the Dark Virgin (3’)
MAHLER Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft (3’)
ROPARTZ Andante et Allegro (6’)

Having made waves with recent performances at Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms, rising star trumpeter Aaron Akugbo comes to Hastings. Citing Louis Armstrong as his greatest musical influence, this charismatic performer presents an eclectic mix of works. This promises to be an evening of discovery and delight, with music spanning centuries and continents. Works from familiar names such as Vivaldi and Mahler sit alongside new treats to discover from Florence Price and Eugene Bozza.

PART OF THE CLASSICAL SERIES
presented by The Guildhall Trust and Music in the Round.

The Intrada by Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) was composed in April 1947 for that year’s concours at the Geneva Conservatoire. Its maestoso outer sections are ceremonial in character – with angular melodic lines (over sustained piano chords) that are particularly well suited to the trumpet – while the lively central section resembles a kind of toccata for trumpet.

The phenomenal gifts of Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) were recognised when she was in her teens, and in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition at the Paris Conservatoire with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was nineteen at the time, but her musical language was already distinctive. The Nocturne was one of her earlier pieces, originally entitled ‘pièce courte pour flûte et piano’, the manuscript dated 27 October 1911. It was subsequently reworked for violin and piano and is here arranged for trumpet. The Cortège, which is often paired with it, dates from June 1914 when it began as a piano solo which was then arranged for violin and piano and later transcribed for trumpet.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) is much less remembered for his operas than for his instrumental and choral works, but he claimed to have composed more than 90 of them, of which complete scores of around 20 are known to survive. The aria ‘Agitata da due venti’ began life in his opera Adelaide – first performed in Verona during the Carnival season in February 1735, and recycled few months later in Griselda which was given its premiere at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice on 18 May 1735. In both cases, this florid virtuoso aria was performed by the same singer, Margherita Giacomazzi. The title refers to the character Costanza, caught by conflicting emotions like a sailor between opposing winds. The coloratura vocal lines of Vivaldi’s original transfer very successfully to a trumpet.

Eugène Bozza (1905–91) was born in Nice to an Italian father (who was a professional violinist). After graduating from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, he pursued further studies over the next decade (in violin, conducting and composition) at the Paris Conservatoire, winning the Prix de Rome in 1934. He composed the Aria in 1936, scoring it originally for saxophone and piano but its flowing melody over ripely-harmonised piano chords is well suited to the trumpet.

Jean Françaix (1912–97) composed his Sonatine for the 1952 trumpet concours. Cast in three short movements, the opening ‘Prélude’ requires considerable agility while the ‘Sarabande’ presents a long, slow melody on a muted trumpet which gives way to faster and more complex section full of rapid chromatic writing. An unaccompanied cadenza leads directly to an entertaining ‘Gigue’ which brings the work to a high-spirited close.

Jean Hubeau (1917–92) is remembered primarily as a pianist, but he studied composition with Paul Dukas at the Conservatoire and was runner up in the 1934 Prix de Rome competition, coming second to Eugène Bozza. Hubeau composed his Sonata for Trumpet in 1943 and it was published by Durand the following year with a dedication to Jean Bérard, head of the Pathé-Marconi recording company. One of its most celebrated later exponents was the trumpeter Maurice André who recorded the work with the composer at the piano. It is cast in three movements: a Sarabande marked Andante con moto, a rapid Intermède and a concluding blues-inspired Spiritual.

The rediscovery of the African-American composer Florence Price (1897–1953) has not only revealed an impressive body of symphonic music but also a number of songs including The Glory of the Day was in Her Face (on a poem by James Weldon Johnson) and Song to the Dark Virgin (from her 1941 collection Songs of the Weary Blues, four settings of Langston Hughes, the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance).

The rediscovery of the African-American composer Florence Price (1897–1953) has not only revealed an impressive body of symphonic music but also a number of songs including The Glory of the Day was in Her Face (on a poem by James Weldon Johnson) and Song to the Dark Virgin (from her 1941 collection Songs of the Weary Blues, four settings of Langston Hughes, the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance).

‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ is from the Rückert-Lieder by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), composed in the summer of 1901 and evoking the gentle fragrance of a lime tree which the poet associated with his love.

Joseph Guy-Ropartz (1865–1955) composed his Andante et Allegro for the 1903 trumpet concours at the Paris Conservatoire. Born in Brittany, he studied composition with Massenet and the organ with César Franck before becoming director of the conservatoires in Nancy and then Strasbourg. His compositions include five symphonies as well as shorter works including this fluently written competition piece which explores many of the characteristics of the instrument – expressiveness in the slower sections and considerable brilliance towards the close.

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HOLST Imogen, Phantasy String Quartet

BRITTEN Benjamin, Phantasy Quartet in F sharp minor

PURCELL Henry, Three-Part Fantasias

BRAY Charlotte, Bluer than Midnight

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, The Lark Ascending

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

HOLST Imogen, Phantasy String Quartet

PURCELL Henry, Three-Part Fantasias

BRITTEN Benjamin, Phantasy Quartet in F sharp minor

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Ralph, The Lark Ascending

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

PARRY Richard Reed, Quartet for Heart & Breath

WHITLEY Kate, Mew Settings

TAVENER John, The World

MONK Meredith, Stringsongs

MILLER Cassandra, Thanksong

About the Artists

Phaedra Ensemble

Lotte Betts-Dean

BEAMISH Sally, The Naming of Birds

ZEMLINSKY Alexander Von, Humoreske

BARBER Samuel, Summer Music

LIGETI György, Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet

NIELSEN Carl, Wind Quintet

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

About the Artists

Rakhi Singh

About the Artists

Lizzie Ball

James Pearson

SHOSTAKOVICH Dmitri, Concertino in A minor for two pianos, Op. 94

RACHMANINOV Sergei, Suite No.1 in G minor, Op. 5

STRAVINSKY Igor, The Rite of Spring (arr. Stravinsky for piano four hands)

About the Artists

Tim Horton

Ivana Gavrić

“Alongside Aphex Twin and Bogdan Raczynski, [Leafcutter John] is one of the UK’s most fearlessly inventive electronicists.”

Time Out London

About the Artists

Leafcutter John

Graham Dunning

SCHUMANN Robert, Bilder aus Osten, Op.66

HAYDN Joseph, String Quartet No.39 in F sharp minor

MENDELSSOHN Felix, Theme and Variations (from Four Pieces for String Quartet), Op. 81, No. 1

MOZART Amadeus, String Quartet in D K499

About the Artists

Consone Quartet

MOZART Amadeus, String Quintet in G minor K516

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Clarinet Quintet in A K581

About the Artists

Ensemble 360

HONEGGER Arthur, Intrada

BOULANGER Lili, Nocturne et Cortège

VIVALDI Antonio, Agitata da due venti

BOZZA Eugene,

FRANÇAIX Jean, Sonatine

HUBEAU Jean, Sonata

PRICE Florence, The glory of the day was in her face

PRICE Florence, Songs to the dark virgin

MAHLER Gustav, Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft

GUY-ROPARTZ Joseph, Andante et Allegro