THE MONSTER IN THE MAZE

Music-Makers of Sheffield

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Saturday 2 November 2024, 11.00am / 3.00pm

Tickets 
£5 for everyone  
Carers free 

Book Tickets
Silhouette of a Minotaur head

DOVE The Monster in the Maze (50’)

An opera production for the people of Sheffield and with the people of Sheffield.

Music: Jonathan Dove
Libretto: Alasdair Middleton
Music Director: John Lyon

Director: Rosie Kat
Theseus: Anthony Flaum
Mother: Camille Maalawy
Daedalus: Robert Gildon
King Minos: Paul Hawkyard

Featuring ENSEMBLE 360, CONSONE QUARTET, BRIDGE ENSEMBLE, SHEFFIELD MUSIC HUB SENIOR STRINGS, SHEFFIELD YOUTH CHOIRS featuring JUNIOR VOICES, YOUTH VOICES & CONCORDIA and SINGERS FROM SHEFFIELD

“Here they are – the children of Athens!
The hope of Athens, the future of Athens!
Deep in the maze, the monster, already
paws the sand and tosses his horns…”

      - libretto, Monster in the Maze

King Minos has a labyrinth in his palace. Inside there lurks a Minotaur. This monster, half man and half bull, feeds on human flesh.  

Minos decrees that the Athenians should provide a regular supply of their young people to be sacrificed to the monster. The Athenian hero Theseus steps in, determined to enter the maze and take on the monster at its heart…

Jonathan Dove’s ‘The Monster in the Maze’ receives its Sheffield premiere on the iconic Crucible stage. Our most ambitious project to date, this will be Music in the Round at its best: a bold collaboration, forged in the crucible of creativity that is our City of Makers. 

Commissioned and first performed in 2015 by the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle, it was praised by the Financial Times as “an exhilarating, visceral take on the ancient Greek myth”.  

This amazing new production will showcase people of all ages coming together from across the city to perform alongside our professional resident artists and guests, highlighting the best of music-making in Sheffield. 

An epic story: millennia in the making and a fitting celebration for our 40th anniversary year! 

With thanks to our funders: Blakemore Foundation, JG Graves Charitable Trust, Music for All, Scops Arts Trust Sheffield Music Hub, Sheffield Mutual and individual donors.

View the brochure online here or download it below.

DOWNLOAD

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

THE MONSTER IN THE MAZE

Music-Makers of Sheffield

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Friday 1 November 2024, 3.00pm / 7.15pm

Tickets 
£5 for everyone  
Carers free 

Book Tickets
Silhouette of a Minotaur head

DOVE The Monster in the Maze (50’)

An opera production for the people of Sheffield and with the people of Sheffield.

Music: Jonathan Dove
Libretto: Alasdair Middleton
Music Director: John Lyon

Director: Rosie Kat
Theseus: Anthony Flaum
Mother: Camille Maalawy
Daedalus: Robert Gildon
King Minos: Paul Hawkyard

Featuring ENSEMBLE 360, CONSONE QUARTET, BRIDGE ENSEMBLE, SHEFFIELD MUSIC HUB SENIOR STRINGS, SHEFFIELD YOUTH CHOIRS featuring JUNIOR VOICES, YOUTH VOICES & CONCORDIA and SINGERS FROM SHEFFIELD

“Here they are – the children of Athens!
The hope of Athens, the future of Athens!
Deep in the maze, the monster, already
paws the sand and tosses his horns…”

      - libretto, Monster in the Maze

King Minos has a labyrinth in his palace. Inside there lurks a Minotaur. This monster, half man and half bull, feeds on human flesh.  

Minos decrees that the Athenians should provide a regular supply of their young people to be sacrificed to the monster. The Athenian hero Theseus steps in, determined to enter the maze and take on the monster at its heart…

Jonathan Dove’s ‘The Monster in the Maze’ receives its Sheffield premiere on the iconic Crucible stage. Our most ambitious project to date, this will be Music in the Round at its best: a bold collaboration, forged in the crucible of creativity that is our City of Makers. 

Commissioned and first performed in 2015 by the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle, it was praised by the Financial Times as “an exhilarating, visceral take on the ancient Greek myth”.  

This amazing new production will showcase people of all ages coming together from across the city to perform alongside our professional resident artists and guests, highlighting the best of music-making in Sheffield. 

An epic story: millennia in the making and a fitting celebration for our 40th anniversary year! 

With thanks to our funders and supporters: Blakemore Foundation, JG Graves Charitable Trust, Music for All, Scops Arts Trust, Sheffield Music Hub, Sheffield Mutual and individual donors.

View the brochure online here or download it below.

DOWNLOAD

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

COME & SING FAURÉ’S REQUIEM with RODERICK WILLIAMS

Roderick Williams

Victoria Hall, Sheffield
Saturday 25 May 2024, 2.00pm / 5.00pm

Workshop tickets:
£15
£10 UC, DLA & PIP
£5 Under 35s & Students

Informal performance:
Free, no need to book

Past Event
Baritone Roderick Williams, Singer-in-Residence with Music in the Round

Share in the delight of joining a large chorus. Expertly guided by our Singer-in-Residence, Roderick Williams, you’ll be singing selected movements from Fauré’s much-loved Requiem. Music available in advance.

Participant numbers are limited. Early booking recommended.

Part of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024. 

View the brochure online here or download it below.

DOWNLOAD

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FOR ALL with special guests

The Hermes Experiment

Crucible Adelphi Room, Sheffield
Saturday 2 December 2023, 1.00pm

Tickets

£5

Past Event

Join Contemporary Music for All Sheffield (CoMA) for this presented workshop that interweaves explorations of the human voice into the unique colours of an open ensemble. CoMA are joined by composers Héloïse Werner (Hermes Experiment) and Ellen Sargen (MD CoMA Manchester) to explore pieces for mixed ensemble and voice. Either join in as an instrumentalist or vocalist on the day (all abilities of instrument and voice are welcome), or simply relax and watch as an audience member, with opportunities for Q&A throughout. Either way, this is an event to bring you closer to the music and scores will be available to peruse on the day.

Allcomers participants will be supported on the day to engage with these open scores, which invite players to make small decisions about what and how to play, and consider new ways of thinking about music.

If you’d like more information about this event, please email Learning and Participation lp@musicintheround.co.uk.

This event is hosted by Music in the Round. It is the third in our series of Participation Events around our Sounds of Now concerts. Don’t miss Hermes Experiment in the evening at 8pm in the Crucible Playhouse. Tickets for the 8pm event are available here.

Read more about CoMA here, and see what previous participants have said about their Allcomer Events here.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS (for string trio)

Ensemble 360

St Peter's Church, Edensor
Sunday 24 September 2023, 5.30pm

Tickets will be available on the door

5.30pm Performance at St Peter’s Church only (no guided walk)
£16 / £10 UC, PIP & DLA / £5 Students & Under 35s

Past Event

5.30pm St Peter’s Church, Edensor
JS BACH Goldberg Variations (arr. for string trio) (60’) 

Enjoy an hour-long tea-time concert at St Peter’s Church on the Chatsworth Estate. Violin, viola and cello showcase the intricacy and spirituality of one of Bach’s most ambitious works. 

This is the final performance in a day of walking and concerts. To book tickets for the guided walk plus all three performances, please visit this page.

You are also welcome to join the guided walk participants in Edensor at approx 4.45pm for a self-catered picnic tea. Please bring your own drinks and a picnic. 

Please note that this is an all-weather event.

Directions and parking information is available here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nigel Simeone © 2010

THE BACH WALK

Ensemble 360

St Anne's Church & St Peter's Church, Beeley & Edensor
Sunday 24 September 2023, 1.30pm

Tickets

Complete guided walk and 3 performances
£37 / £24 UC, PIP & DLA / £20 Students & Under 35s
Limited availability, early booking highly recommended

Past Event

Schedule:
1.30pm St Peter’s Church, Edensor
JS BACH Selection of Partitas and Sonatas (30’) 

2.00pm Walk to Beeley (Approx. 3 miles – moderate) 

3.30pm St Anne’s Church, Beeley
MILLER About Bach (30’) 

4.00pm Walk to Edensor (Approx. 1.8 miles – easy) 

4.45pm Break for picnic tea 

5.30pm St Peter’s Church, Edensor
JS BACH Goldberg Variations (arr. for string trio) (60’) 

In 1705, a young JS Bach set off on a 250-mile journey to hear his hero, the organist Dietrich Buxtehude, play the organ.  

Back by popular demand: join Ensemble 360 for an afternoon of music and walking on the Chatsworth Estate, honouring the musical genius of JS Bach, the great composer in whose footsteps we are walking.  

We start in Edensor, with a selection of sonatas and partitas by Bach. After a guided walk to Beeley, we plunge forward in time with Cassandra Miller’s hauntingly beautiful ‘About Bach’ for string quartet, which takes a fragment of Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin and brings it seamlessly into the 21st century. 

Finally, we return to Edensor for an arrangement of The Goldberg Variations for string trio. Violin, viola and cello showcase the intricacy and spirituality of one of Bach’s most ambitious works in this fitting conclusion to a musical and physical journey from the early 18th century to present day and back again. 

There will be an opportunity in Edensor at approx 4.45pm to have a self-catered picnic tea. Please bring your own drinks and a picnic. 

Sturdy footwear will be required, and please note that this is an all-weather event. Further practical information is available here. 

Tickets are also available for the 5.30pm performance only, without the guided walk. Visit this page for tickets

 

 

BACH Johann Sebastian, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin

Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were composed at Cöthen in 1720 (the date on Bach’s beautifully written fair copy of the set), at about the same time as his Cello Suites. The three Sonatas follow the pattern of the sonata da chiesa, with four movements, alternating slow and fast, while the three Partitas are suites of dances. Even though they were not published until 1802, Bach’s contemporaries recognized his superlative achievement in these pieces. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote that his father ‘understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments. This is evidenced by his solos for the violin and violoncello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist.’ Which violinist Bach may have had in mind when he first wrote the pieces remains unknown. 

© Nigel Simeone 

MILLER Cassandra, About Bach

This string quartet is an expansion of a solo work for viola (of the same name) which was commissioned by philanthropist Daniel Cooper for violist Pemi Paull. It’s a piece about process, about Pemi’s musicality, about Bach of course, and in the end, about the Quatuor Bozzini. 

I first took a recording of a short phrase (the first phrase in major) of the famous Chaconne from Bach’s Partita no. 2, performed live by Pemi. I then meticulously transcribed the recording with the help of some software — this is a process I’ve developed over some years to apprehend the exact rhythmic musicality of a performance, capturing as well various artifacts such as the viola’s upper partials as they change within each bow-stroke.   

The opening of the piece is simply this transcribed phrase of Bach, with a harmony of my own making, which turns the phrase into a gently jaunty chorale. From there the phrase goes through a somewhat inaudible process that is simply let to run, until it runs itself out. It’s a constant meandering, a non-developmental piece in an extreme sense. My interest (and freedom) in exploring such a simple form comes directly from working with the Quatuor Bozzini, and this string quartet version is a souvenir of gratitude for years of great inspiration.  

© Cassandra Miller 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nigel Simeone © 2010

COME & SING: KATE RUSBY

Kate Shipway

Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
Saturday 13 May 2023, 1.00pm / 3.30pm

Workshop: SOLD OUT
Performance tickets:
Free
Tickets for the public performance must be booked in advance through Sheffield Theatres box office here.

 

 

Sold Out

Workshop: 1.00pm – 3.30pm SOLD OUT (register on our waitlist via the Eventbrite Page)
Performance: 3.30pm – 4.30pm

The workshop portion of this event is now sold out. Please keep an eye on our Eventbrite page for details of any returned spaces or to join the waiting list.

Tickets for the public performance must be booked in advance through Sheffield Theatres box office here.

This workshop for singers of all ages and abilities is a chance to come together for music-making and an informal performance of brand new choral settings of songs by folk superstar Kate Rusby.  

Choral leader and arranger Kate Shipway will lead a workshop on the iconic Crucible Theatre stage, featuring her own arrangements of Rusby’s much-loved songs. Either learn by ear or from provided notation. This event is for both beginners and experienced singers alike (although some experience of singing in a choir will be helpful). 

BRAHMS, RABL & ZEMLINSKY

Ensemble 360

Cast, Doncaster
Saturday 16 April 2022, 7.00pm

Tickets: £13.50 / £9 under 26s

Past Event
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No.2 in A
RABL Quartet in E flat for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano
ZEMLINSKY Clarinet Trio
Ensemble 360 return with a sumptuous and sparkling concert of strings and clarinet repertoire. Opening with Brahms’s virtuosic sonata, the concert begins with lyricism, grace and warmth. The programme continues with two of the composers lesser-known inheritors who crackle with fin-de-diècle verve: Rabl’s optimistic quartet is an overlooked gem of the chamber repertoire, by turns languid and vivacious. Closing with Zemlinsky’s passionate trio, this is a programme full of energy which concludes with an explosive flourish.

SOUNDS OF NOW WORKSHOP

Sheffield CoMA

Site Gallery, Sheffield
Thursday 19 May 2022, 4.30pm / 5.30pm

FREE, please book through box office

Past Event

*Please note the new start time for this event*

You are welcome to attend from 4.30pm to observe the process of this workshop, or to join the group at 5.30pm to watch the partcipants’ performances of Sarah Hennies’ Growing Block and Joanna Bailie’s Hildegardestraße Bundesallee.

Led by Sheffield CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) in partnership with Sheffield Music School, this workshop features new works for mixed ensemble. Edward Henderson of Bastard Assignments also joins the session to reflect on the branches of experimental practice that have informed both CoMA and his group, ahead of their Sounds of Now concert the same evening.

OBSERVE: COMPOSITION WORKSHOP

Helen Grime, Ensemble 360 & students from The University of Sheffield

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Wednesday 18 May 2022, 11.00am

FREE, please book through box office

Past Event

Join us for the final hour of a morning in which composition students from The University of Sheffield work on their latest compositions with Ensemble 360 as they are coached by Helen Grime.

*Please note the change to the previously advertised venue for this event and the new time. This workshop will now be held in the Crucible Studio Theatre, as originally advertised.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.*