Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2022
The nine days of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival, featuring Ensemble 360 and guests, are an absolute highlight of our year.
It’s an opportunity to enjoy a huge range of music in just a few days; for audiences to gain more in-depth knowledge about our Ensemble 360 musicians, a composer or a piece of music; and for us to present music that’s rarely heard.
For this year’s Festival, we’ve been working with Guest Festival Curator, the Scottish composer Helen Grime MBE.
Winner of a British Composer Award in 2003, Helen’s work has been widely performed across the world, with commissions from prestigious organisations such as the BBC Proms, London Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center and Wigmore Hall, where she was Composer in Residence from 2016-18.
For Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2022, Helen has produced a dazzling programme with her musical fingerprints all over it: deeply embedded in the canon of classical music, but outward-looking to the innovative and surprising.
In each concert, she’ll be sharing some of the wonderful chamber music gems that so many of us love, as well as introducing rarely-played delights that deserve to be heard more often, uncovering a world of treats for your ears to enjoy.
Concerts feature works and arrangements by some of Helen’s favourite composers such as Janáček, Knussen and Ravel.
These sit alongside cornerstones of the repertoire from Brahms’s Serenade No.1 through a selection of Chopin’s Nocturnes, three of Beethoven’s most monumental string quartets and Dvořák’s epic, spirited second piano quartet.
She has brought an openness and sensitivity that enables us to hear familiar works in fresh ways, pairing them with diverse new works. With a deep concern for the visual, there’s also a concert linking chamber music across the ages with visual art – featuring music inspired by the art of Stanley Spencer, Goya and more, and music by Bach and Chopin that has itself inspired some wonderful artists.
There’s so much to enjoy with Music in the Round, Ensemble 360, Helen Grime and guests this May. Browse the full programme on our What’s On pages, or download a brochure. We look forward to welcoming you soon.
“It’s been a huge pleasure and honour to be guest curator of the 2022 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival.
“I’ve had lots of fun, working with Ensemble 360, putting together programmes of music I love, finding connections between old and new music and threading through various themes that are close to my heart.
“Each concert features the music of at least one female composer, including overlooked gems from the last few hundred years as well as more recent pieces and a world premiere. I was also keen to explore the relationship between visual art and music and this features in a concert and roundtable discussion. This Festival also moves beyond the Studio to other venues in the city, taking music out and about to new audiences, which is so important for the future.
“I’m very excited to be welcoming some of the most distinguished musicians working in the country as guest artists, and I hope you’ll enjoy meeting them as well as seeing Ensemble 360 back in their Festival home.”
Helen Grime MBE, Guest Festival Curator, Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2022