SUNSET

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 17 May 2026, 8.00pm

Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

Book Tickets
Home› What's on› SUNSET

WEBER Clarinet Quintet (29’)
MOZART Oboe Quartet, K370 (14’)
KORNGOLD Piano Quintet (32’) 

Join Ensemble 360 for an intimate concert of quartets and quintets as darkness descends on a special musical day in Sheffield General Cemetery. Among the highlights are Mozart’s lilting and languid Oboe Quartet and Korngold’s magical Piano Quintet. Full of wit and wonder, with a lushly romantic, haunting second movement, it features the beautifully apt and expressive theme “Moon, you rise again”. 

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

WEBER Carl Maria von, Clarinet Quintet Op.34

Allegro
Fantasia. Adagio ma non troppo
Menuetto. Capriccio presto
Rondo. Allegro giocoso

Just as Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Concerto had been written with a particular player in mind, so were the concertos and Quintet of Carl Maria von Weber. Heinrich Bärmann and Weber immediately struck up a rapport after their first meeting in Munich, and his virtuosity greatly impressed the composer. This was partly, too, because of Bärmann’s choice of instrument. As John Warrack has explained, ‘two years before their Munich meeting, Bärmann had acquired a ten-key clarinet that allower greater flexibility and smoothness; an in Bärmann’s clarinet Weber found an instrument that with its French incisiveness and its German fullness seemed to express a new world of feeling, and to match both the dark romantic melancholy and the extrovert brilliance of his own temperament.’ As well as concertos for Bärmann, Weber worked sporadically on a Quintet. Having started this in 1811, he finally finished it on 25 August 1815, the day before the first performance. Given the rather haphazard composing process, it’s not surprising that the work is not one of Weber’s most profound, but it is a brilliant and charming vehicle for the soloist – described by John Warrack as ‘a pocket concerto, written purely for delight in virtuoso effect.’

Nigel Simeone © 2010

MOZART Wolfgang Amadeus, Oboe Quartet K370

Allegro
Adagio
Rondeau: Allegro

Mozart’s Oboe Quartet was written in Munich in 1781 with a particular player in mind: the oboist Friedrich Ramm (c.1744–1813). Ramm had been a member of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, where Mozart had first met him in 1777 and wrote very enthusiastically at the time about his playing and his ‘beautiful fine tone.’ Mozart arrived in Munich in late 1780 to prepare his new opera Idomeneo and Ramm was in the orchestra. Their admiration seems to have been mutual, since Ramm said of Idomeneo after an early rehearsal that no music had ever impressed him more deeply. According to at least one early catalogue of Mozart’s works (by Johann André), the Quartet was written during January 1781, while final preparations were being made for the première of Idomeneo on 29 January 1781.

The Oboe Quartet has been described by the oboist and musicologist Bruce Haynes as a ‘sparkling, ethereal work’. In three movements, and score for oboe, violin, viola and cello, it’s especially innovative in its exploitation of the oboe’s upper register – using notes that were only to be found on the latest models of oboe, and something of a Ramm speciality. Haynes has also noted that none of Mozart’s other works for oboe use the instrument’s highest notes in this way. The writing for the oboe is superbly idiomatic – and it’s intriguing to speculate (as Haynes has) that if Mozart had not met the brilliant clarinettist Anton Stadler after his move to Vienna (coincidentally, in the same year he composed the Oboe Quartet) – he might have written late masterpieces for solo oboe rather than for clarinet. The first movement is a breezy Allegro, while the slow movement suggests a slow, lyrical opera aria (making the most of Ramm’s singing tone). The finale is more unusual: a rondo that has passages where oboe and strings are playing in different time signatures (the oboe playing in 6/8 time while the strings are in 4/4) and makes the most of the virtuoso possibilities of the soloist.

NIGEL SIMEONE, 2010

KORNGOLD Erich Wolfgang, Piano Quintet in E major Op.15

Mäßiges Zeitmaß, mit schwungvoll blühendem Ausdruck [Moderate speed, with blossoming expression]
Adagio (Freie Variationen über die Lieder des Abschieds) [free variations on the Songs of Farewell, Op. 14]
3. Finale. Gemessen beinahe pathetisch – Allegro giocoso [Measured but emotional]

Before Korngold reached his twelfth birthday, his cantata Gold was acclaimed by Mahler as the work of a ‘musical genius’ and his ballet The Snowman was performed at the Vienna Opera. Korngold continued to develop thorough his teens, and in his early twenties he enjoyed phenomenal success with the opera Die tote Stadt, given a simultaneous premiere in Hamburg and Cologne in 1920. The Quintet was completed in 1921 and the first performance was in Hamburg on 16 February 1923, with Korngold at the piano. It was published in 1924 with a dedication to Gustinus Ambrosi, a sculptor who had made a bust of the 14-year-old Korngold which was destroyed in the war. There are three substantial movements. The first begins with a heroic idea that gives way to a more reflective cello solo and a delicate new theme, decked with trills (and a hint of Mahler). After extensive development, the movement ends with an impassioned recollection of the opening. The Adagio is a set of variations based on Mond, so gehst du wieder auf (Moon, thus you rise once more’ from Korngold’s Four Songs of Farewell. With its distinctive drooping intervals, the theme is treated with great ingenuity. The finale begins with a dramatic idea in octaves and a short violin cadenza that leads to the main Allegro giocoso in which Korngold is at his most uninhibited.

Nigel Simeone

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

BIRDSONG AT DAWN

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 17 May 2026, 5.00am

Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

Book Tickets
Flautist Juliette Bausor and pianist Tim Horton
Home› What's on› BIRDSONG AT DAWN

MESSIAEN Le Rouge-gorge from ‘Petites esquisses d’oiseaux’ (2’)
COUPERIN Le rossignol en amour (3’)
TELEMANN Fantasia No.2 in A minor (5’)
MESSIAEN L’alouette Calandrelle from ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, 5eme Livre (5’)
RAMEAU La Rappel des Oiseau (3’)
TELEMANN Fantasia No.7 in D (5’)
MESSIAEN Le Merle Noir (6’)
SAINT-SAËNS (arr. Richter) Volière from Le carnaval des animaux (2’)
VIVALDI Cantabile from ‘Il Gardilino’ (3’)
MESSIAEN Le Loriot from ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, 1iere Livre (9’)
MARTINŮ Allegro poco moderato from Flute Sonata No.1 (5’)  

Among the sheltering trees of Sheffield General Cemetery, the dawn chorus continues an ancient wordless cycle of song. Inspired by and performed in the midst of this natural wonder, discover music for flute and piano spanning three centuries, from Baroque evocations of nightingales to Messiaen’s dazzling transcriptions of wild birds.  

Pause, listen and be transported, as we revive a beloved Sheffield Chamber Music Festival tradition with this dawn celebration of the music of the birds. 

Post-concert Bird Walk
BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney – classical music’s favourite birder, and veteran of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival – leads a walk from Samuel Worth Chapel to spot and celebrate the avian musicians of the General Cemetery.
Strictly limited to ticket-holders for the Bird Song concerts. 

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

TELEMANN Georg Philipp, Fantasia No. 2 in A Minor

Telemann and his godson C.P.E. Bach had a lot in common: both studied law before pursuing music, both became key links between late-Baroque and early-Classical styles, and both composed prolifically—Telemann’s output is measured in the thousands. Alongside the reams of sacred music, instrumental suites, operas, and concerti, Telemann also wrote sets of unaccompanied instrumental fantasias, for violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord and flute. 

 

The second Fantasia of this set of twelve has four sections (Grave, Vivace, Adagio, and Allegro), with tempo changes aligning with changes of mood or character. This Fantasia in particular is a fantastic example of Telemann’s mastery of counterpoint, managing to keep multiple lines of melody spinning concurrently through regular changes of register. 

 

Hugh Morris 2024

RAMEAU Jean-Philippe, Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) published his first collection of harpsichord pieces in 1706 and further collections appeared in the 1720s. Though widely admired at the time, these works lapsed into obscurity and it took their rediscovery at the end of the nineteenth century, when a handsome edition, prepared by Camille Saint-Saëns, was published by Durand in 1895. Rameau’s collections mostly comprise dance movements, such as the two Rigaudons and ‘Double’ from the 1724 volume of Pièces de clavecin. This was also the source of one of his most celebrated imitative pieces, Le rappel des oiseaux with its evocations of chirruping birdsong, and of Les tendres plaintes, a more subtle evocation of melancholy.  

 

Nigel Simeone

MESSIAEN Olivier, Le Merle Noir

Le Merle Noir – The Blackbird – was composed in March 1952 as the test piece for the flute class at the Paris Conservatoire. Messiaen took the opportunity to make an important stylistic departure in this work: it was the first of his pieces to attempt a detailed depiction of a specific named bird. The first performances – in June 1952 – were given at the flute concours by the most promising members of Gaston Crunelle’s flute class that year. One of them was the British flautist Alexander Murray, who shared his memories of the piece in with the present writer:

“We saw it for the first time four weeks before the concours and then dissected it four times a week with Gaston Crunelle … Noël Lee, a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, was our accompanist, and was present daily for the last week. He had analysed the last section and demonstrated the rhythmic permutations – which did not make life easier. However, his utter reliability made memorising less of a problem. We all played from memory. … I was awarded a premier prix (I think the first British student to be so lucky). Messiaen was present in class at least once, as I remember, and of course at the concours.”

Nigel Simeone © 2012

MARTINŮ Bohuslav, Sonata for flute, violin and piano H254

Allegretto poco moderato
Adagio
Allegretto  

Martinů composed this sonata in less than two weeks, between 4 and 16 May 1937 while he was living in Paris. The work is dedicated to Blanche Honegger, a violinist who studied with Adolf Busch and who later married the pianist Louis Moyse. With his father, the flautist Marcel Moyse, they gave the first performance  of Martinů’s sonata on French Radio on 1 July 1937. (Blanche Honegger Moyse later moved to the United States and became a much-admired conductor. She died in 2011 at the age of 101). Martinů had moved to Paris in the 1920s and he completed his studies there with Albert Roussel. With his homeland under threat from Nazi invasion, this sonata has musical characteristics that reflect a love of his homeland including stylised polka rhythms and turns of phrase typical of Moravian folk music. When German forces occupied Paris, Martinů fled to the United States where he lived until 1953. Shortly after emigrating, he was asked by the New York Herald Tribune about his most important musical influences and he listed Bohemian and Moravian folk music, the English madrigal and the music of Debussy. Elements of all these can be heard in this three-movement work

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

BIRDSONG AT BREAKFAST

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 17 May 2026, 7.30am

Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

Book Tickets
Flautist Juliette Bausor and pianist Tim Horton
Home› What's on› BIRDSONG AT BREAKFAST

MESSIAEN Le Rouge-gorge from ‘Petites esquisses d’oiseaux’ (2’)
COUPERIN Le rossignol en amour (3’)
TELEMANN Fantasia No.2 in A minor (5’)
MESSIAEN L’alouette Calandrelle from ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, 5eme Livre (5’)
RAMEAU La Rappel des Oiseau (3’)
TELEMANN Fantasia No.7 in D (5’)
MESSIAEN Le Merle Noir (6’)
SAINT-SAËNS (arr. Richter) Volière from Le carnaval des animaux (2’)
VIVALDI Cantabile from ‘Il Gardilino’ (3’)
MESSIAEN Le Loriot from ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, 1iere Livre (9’)
MARTINŮ Allegro poco moderato from Flute Sonata No.1 (5’)  

Among the sheltering trees of Sheffield General Cemetery, the dawn chorus continues an ancient wordless cycle of song. Inspired by and performed in the midst of this natural wonder, discover music for flute and piano spanning three centuries, from Baroque evocations of nightingales to Messiaen’s dazzling transcriptions of wild birds.  

Pause, listen and be transported, as we revive a beloved Sheffield Chamber Music Festival tradition with this dawn celebration of the music of the birds. 

Post-concert Bird Walk
BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney – classical music’s favourite birder, and veteran of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival – leads a walk from Samuel Worth Chapel to spot and celebrate the avian musicians of the General Cemetery.
Strictly limited to ticket-holders for the Bird Song concerts. 

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

TELEMANN Georg Philipp, Fantasia No. 2 in A Minor

Telemann and his godson C.P.E. Bach had a lot in common: both studied law before pursuing music, both became key links between late-Baroque and early-Classical styles, and both composed prolifically—Telemann’s output is measured in the thousands. Alongside the reams of sacred music, instrumental suites, operas, and concerti, Telemann also wrote sets of unaccompanied instrumental fantasias, for violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord and flute. 

 

The second Fantasia of this set of twelve has four sections (Grave, Vivace, Adagio, and Allegro), with tempo changes aligning with changes of mood or character. This Fantasia in particular is a fantastic example of Telemann’s mastery of counterpoint, managing to keep multiple lines of melody spinning concurrently through regular changes of register. 

 

Hugh Morris 2024

RAMEAU Jean-Philippe, Le Rappel des oiseaux, Rigaudons I, II & Double, Les tendres plaintes

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) published his first collection of harpsichord pieces in 1706 and further collections appeared in the 1720s. Though widely admired at the time, these works lapsed into obscurity and it took their rediscovery at the end of the nineteenth century, when a handsome edition, prepared by Camille Saint-Saëns, was published by Durand in 1895. Rameau’s collections mostly comprise dance movements, such as the two Rigaudons and ‘Double’ from the 1724 volume of Pièces de clavecin. This was also the source of one of his most celebrated imitative pieces, Le rappel des oiseaux with its evocations of chirruping birdsong, and of Les tendres plaintes, a more subtle evocation of melancholy.  

 

Nigel Simeone

MESSIAEN Olivier, Le Merle Noir

Le Merle Noir – The Blackbird – was composed in March 1952 as the test piece for the flute class at the Paris Conservatoire. Messiaen took the opportunity to make an important stylistic departure in this work: it was the first of his pieces to attempt a detailed depiction of a specific named bird. The first performances – in June 1952 – were given at the flute concours by the most promising members of Gaston Crunelle’s flute class that year. One of them was the British flautist Alexander Murray, who shared his memories of the piece in with the present writer:

“We saw it for the first time four weeks before the concours and then dissected it four times a week with Gaston Crunelle … Noël Lee, a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, was our accompanist, and was present daily for the last week. He had analysed the last section and demonstrated the rhythmic permutations – which did not make life easier. However, his utter reliability made memorising less of a problem. We all played from memory. … I was awarded a premier prix (I think the first British student to be so lucky). Messiaen was present in class at least once, as I remember, and of course at the concours.”

Nigel Simeone © 2012

MARTINŮ Bohuslav, Sonata for flute, violin and piano H254

Allegretto poco moderato
Adagio
Allegretto  

Martinů composed this sonata in less than two weeks, between 4 and 16 May 1937 while he was living in Paris. The work is dedicated to Blanche Honegger, a violinist who studied with Adolf Busch and who later married the pianist Louis Moyse. With his father, the flautist Marcel Moyse, they gave the first performance  of Martinů’s sonata on French Radio on 1 July 1937. (Blanche Honegger Moyse later moved to the United States and became a much-admired conductor. She died in 2011 at the age of 101). Martinů had moved to Paris in the 1920s and he completed his studies there with Albert Roussel. With his homeland under threat from Nazi invasion, this sonata has musical characteristics that reflect a love of his homeland including stylised polka rhythms and turns of phrase typical of Moravian folk music. When German forces occupied Paris, Martinů fled to the United States where he lived until 1953. Shortly after emigrating, he was asked by the New York Herald Tribune about his most important musical influences and he listed Bohemian and Moravian folk music, the English madrigal and the music of Debussy. Elements of all these can be heard in this three-movement work

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

GOLDBERG: PIANO AT DAWN

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Saturday 24 May 2025, 5.00am

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

Past Event
Pianist Tim Horton
Home› What's on› GOLDBERG: PIANO AT DAWN

BACH Goldberg Variations (70′)  

Tim Horton performs his own spellbinding early morning concert, returning the Goldberg Variations to their original keyboard form. Once again ringing out among the dawn chorus, in the atmospheric hidden gem of Samuel Worth Chapel, the magnificent intricacy of these 32 variations will set the tone for the final day of the Festival. In the hands of Tim Horton, and in the intimacy of this very special venue, this promises to breathe new life into what is rightly one of the best-loved works of the solo piano repertoire. 

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

BACH J.S., Goldberg Variations

The fourth part of Bach’s elaborate Clavierübung, better known as the Goldberg Variations (1741), is, as many of Bach’s larger works, well appreciated by both music lovers and academic music researchers. Bach had the special talent of being able to employ mathematical and structural means for an emotional plea, a skill he shares with very little composers in the history of music. The emotional plea is here however not filled with high-flown drama; rather, it is a game on the human perception of music. The Goldberg Variations form a collection of 32 pieces, founded on a 32-bar bass line which is used in all variations. The different parts vary in character: short and passionate, short and light-footed, long and melancholy etc, but the whole set does radiate a sense of light joy and playfulness. The piece ends in the way it began: with the aria.

The present popularity of the Goldberg Variations can possibly be explained by the fact that this piece does not make use of variations on a theme, which is common, but of variations on a bass line. This can be compared with the variation tradition in pop and jazz music. There is in fact question of a range of pieces based on a chord scheme. Bach himself found the variation form in general (and therefore the theme & variations too) unsatisfactory and unrewarding. For that reason, he never got beyond one variation piece – but a piece that three centuries later still proudly embodies the perfect example of variation technique. What should further be mentioned about the form, is that the middle of the piece is marked by an overture in the French style and that each segment of three variations ends in a canon (with a literal repetition of the melody, as in Brother John), of which the second voice starts one tone higher each time. In the first canon, this voice therefore starts on the same tone as the first voice; in the second canon it starts a tone higher, in the third canon two tones higher, et cetera. Where one expects the final canon (variation 30), Bach places, as if to stress the light-footedness of the whole, the famous Quodlibet, a potpourri of then well-known folksongs (comparable to our Itsy Bitsy Spider and Candle in the Wind), which must surely have curled the lips of the listeners into a smile.

 

There have been a lot of speculations on the lightness of the Goldberg Variations. Bach had (according to his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) written the piece for Count von

Kayserlinck’s personal harpsichordist, a young man named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756). For a short period of time, Bach was the teacher of this Mr Goldberg, who regularly stayed in Bach’s place of residence, Leipzig, together with Von Kayserlinck’s household. The count suffered from several diseases and was an insomniac. He sought relief during the nights by asking Goldberg to play the harpsichord in the adjoining room. The story goes that Von Kayserlinck assigned Bach to compose pain relieving and calming music for these specific, but very frequent occasions. Whether Bach’s Variations actually had the relieving effect on the pains of the grateful count (he later continuously referred to the variations as “my variations”) can only be guessed, but certainly not all of them are calming. On the contrary: the virtuosity of some of the variations is so far beyond the technical achievements of those days, that many have wondered whether a boy of no more than fourteen years of age could, even under the supervision of a mentor such as Bach, have been able to play even part of the variations. It is however possible that the more virtuoso parts still had a calming effect – due to Goldberg’s playing.

 

Raaf Hekkema 2011

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

GOLDBERG: BACH AT BREAKFAST

Ensemble 360

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nigel Simeone © 2010

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

GOLDBERG: BACH AT DAWN

Ensemble 360

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nigel Simeone © 2010

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

SUNRISE

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 19 May 2024, 5.00am

Tickets
£21
£14 UC, DLA or PIP
£5 Under 35s & Students

Past Event
Home› What's on› SUNRISE

**Doors will open for this event at 4.45am**

Programme includes:
BARBER Summer Music (12’)
MESSIAEN Appel interstellaire (6’)
NIELSEN Wind Quintet (mvt 1) (9’)
MILHAUD La Cheminée du roi René (extracts) (6’) 

No interval 

Back by popular demand! The wind players of Ensemble 360 will perform a selection of music to accompany the rising sun, alongside the dawn chorus of singing birds. Featuring the blues-inflected Summer Music by Samuel Barber, the technical fireworks of Messiaen’s interstellar horn-calls (recorded above the Hope Valley by Naomi Atherton for our online festival in 2020), and music for wind inspired by nature, this promises to be an atmospheric morning of music in a unique setting. 

Please note that there are limited spaces and early booking is recommended. 

Part of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024. 

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.

BARBER Samuel, Summer Music

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.’ 

 

© Nigel Simeone 

MESSIAEN Olivier, Appel interstellaire

On 9 March 1971, Messiaen’s former pupil Jean-Pierre Guézec died at the age of thirty-six. At the Royan Festival a few weeks later, a musical ‘Tombeau’ was dedicated to his memory comprising pieces for solo instruments by composers such as Gilbert Amy, Betsy Jolas, Marius Constant and Iannis Xenakis. Messiaen’s piece was for solo horn and it was written within a few days of Guézec’s death (he noted its completion on 20 March). At the Royan concert it was played by Daniel Bourgue under the title found on the earliest manuscript: ‘Piece for horn, in memory of Jean-Pierre Guézec’. Three years later, with the new title Appel interstellaire, it became the sixth movement of Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles, first performed in New York on 20 November 1974. While Messiaen subsequently insisted that he wanted the movement performed only as part of the larger work, its origins were as an independent solo. It makes extreme demands on the performer, requiring the use of extended techniques such as glissandos, strange, swirling oscillations, and howling sounds. The result is an astonishing piece of virtuoso writing, composed as a highly personal response to the tragedy of Guézec’s early death.   

© Nigel Simeone 

NIELSEN Carl, Wind Quintet

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

MILHAUD Darius, La Cheminée du roi René (extracts)

Milhaud grew up in Aix-en-Provence, and was always proud of his Provençal heritage. It was also in Aix that “Le bon Roi René” (René of Anjou, 1409–1480) spent the last years of his life, a he’s celebrated with a handsome statue in the Place Forbin. La Cheminée du Roi René is a suite for wind quintet drawn from the music Milhaud composed for a film score. Each of the short movements is a charming depiction of Good King René’s court as they make their way to favourite spots in Provence. It includes stately dances (the Cortège, and ‘La Maousinglade’, a Sarabande), jugglers, jousting on the River Arc and hunting at Valabre. By the time Milhaud reworked the music he had fled France, occupied by the Nazis from June 1940, and settled at Mills College at Oakland. The first performance of this quintessentially French piece was thus given in California, by the San Francisco Woodwind Quintet, on 5 March 1941.

 

Nigel Simeone ©

“I will always remember it for the well-chosen music, the sun itself and the birdsong outside – magical.”

Audience member, Sunrise concert 2022

“A deeply moving experience.  ”

Audience member, Sunrise concert 2022

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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

 

COME & SING

Robert Webb & Shruthi Rajasekar

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 15 May 2022, 10.00am

£5 plus Eventbrite booking fee

Past Event
Home› What's on› COME & SING

Singers of all ages and abilities come together for music-making and an informal performance.

Sing with us in the peaceful setting of Samuel Worth Chapel as we explore two pieces of beautiful music that meld histories together through time.

We’ll workshop English composer Tippett’s arrangement of Willis’ Steal Away and American composer Shruthi Rajasekar’s Jayjaykar! before an informal performance to friends and family at the end of the event (1pm-1.30pm).

Sheffield Chamber Choir’s Robert Webb will lead us in performing this beautiful music which together references choral traditions from both England and India while providing perspectives from two very different places and points in history. Shruthi Rajasekar will also be zapping in from the US during the day and has recorded insights about her music especially for you. We’ll be sharing this with you during the break. 

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).

Recordings of both pieces can be found here: https://linktr.ee/mitr_participation and if you’d like a chat before signing up, please email ellen@musicintheround.co.uk

by RayMesh Photography

 

About the Artists

Robert Webb

Robert is a Sheffield based free-lance musician: Conductor, accompanist, arranger, composer and teacher. He is Director of Music and Organist at St Marie’s Cathedral, Sheffield, and conducts the Sheffield Chamber Choir, Bel Canto Choir, South Yorkshire, and the Sheffield Sterndale Singers. He is also a visiting tutor at Hill House School, Doncaster, where he teaches piano, singing and musical theory, and also has a private teaching practice based in Sheffield.

Read more…

Shruthi Rajasekar

Shruthi Rajasekar (b. 1996) is an Indian-American composer and vocalist exploring identity, community, and joy. Chosen by The Guardian as a composer “who will enrich your life” in a list spanning centuries, Shruthi creates intersectional music that draws from her unique background in the Carnatic (South Indian classical) and Western classical idioms. 

Read more…

SUNRISE

Ensemble 360

Samuel Worth Chapel, Sheffield
Sunday 15 May 2022, 5.15am

Tickets: £20
£14 Disabled & Unemployed
£8 Students & Under 35s
(includes a hot drink and pastry)

Save £s when you book for 5 or more concerts*

Past Event
Home› What's on› SUNRISE

**Information for ticket-holders**

Parking and Access

At weekends there’s free parking on both Montague Street and Cemetery Road. Vehicle access to the Chapel is reserved for audience members with mobility issues.

Access to the Chapel is from Montague Street. Doors will open and Music in the Round stewards will be available to guide audience members to the Chapel from 5.05am. The path to the Chapel, 2 mins walk on a flat good surface, will be well lit, but staff will also be on hand along the pathway.

**

Alphorn transcriptions
CASALS Song of the Birds (4′)
JS BACH Chaconne from Partita No.2 in D minor BWV1004 (15’)
NISHIMURA Fantasia on Song of the Birds (6’)
HAYDN String Quartet Op.76 No.4 ‘Sunrise’ (22’)
DAVIES Yoik (8′)

Distant horn calls herald the rising sun as musicians from Ensemble 360 salute the dawn in this programme of music inspired by the natural world.

As the darkness gradually recedes and the beautiful Samuel Worth Chapel is flooded with light, the musicians complement the arrival of dawn with performances including the tender ‘Song of the Birds’, a Catalan folksong made famous by the great cellist Pablo Casals. Other treats include Bach’s ‘Chaconne’ for solo violin, a musical force of nature, and Haydn’s inventive ‘Sunrise’ Quartet. Sunday morning will never have sounded so good.

Capacity is limited for this event and early booking is advised. Coffee and pastries included.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival runs 13–21 May 2022

Download the Festival brochure

Download

CASALS Pablo, Song of the Birds (arr. Catalan traditional song)

The Catalan Christmas carol El cant dels ocells tells of birds singing with joy on hearing the news of the birth of Jesus. Pablo Casals made his cello arrangement after leaving Spain in protest at Franco’s dictatorship in 1939. He played it in almost all his concerts thereafter, including a memorable performance for President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1961. The song became a musical emblem of Casals’s Catalan homeland, and his self-imposed exile. The great cellist himself made it clear that his reasons for making this arrangement were both musical and political, expressing the hope that ‘these sounds may be like a gentle echo of the nostalgia we feel for Catalonia. These sentiments must make us all work together, with the hope of a peaceful future, when Catalonia will once again be Catalonia.’  

 

Notes by Nigel Simeone, 2022 

BACH Johann Sebastian, Chaconne from Partita No.2 in D minor BWV1004

‘On one stave, for a small instrument, Bach writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.’ This is how Johannes Brahms described Bach’s gigantic Chaconne to his friend Clara Schumann. It is the last movement of Bach’s D minor Partita, composed in about 1720. Probably the greatest single movement ever written for unaccompanied violin, it is an extended set of variations on a short, four-bar idea announced at the start. Bach uses all his ingenuity to create a structure in which unity (the basic theme) and diversity (the astonishingly imaginative variations) are held in perfect balance over a long (256-bar) span. The outer sections are in D minor, while Bach provides tonal variety by modulating to D major for the central section. As Brahms suggested, the result is quite simply one of the marvels of Baroque music.  

Nigel Simeone, 2022 

NISHIMURA Akira, Fantasia on Song of the Birds

The Song of the Birds, played by Pablo Casals (1876-1973) in 1971, was based on a haunting and melancholy folk tune of his native Catalonia. Casals had experienced the horrors of both world wars, and this piece embodied the cello virtuoso’s prayers for peace. When performing it before the United Nations General Assembly toward the end of his life, he stood up and said, “Birds in Catalonia go singing: Peace, peace, peace.” I remember watching a video recording of this scene.

It might be more appropriate to call the piece this time a fantasia based on The Song of the Birds, rather than its arrangement. I wrote it freely, trying to capture the feelings and emotions of Casals, while imagining its performance by Japanese viola player Nobuko Imai. The original piece was written in A minor, but I chose C minor as its principal key to make the most of the viola’s open strings. Casals was one of the most important artists to Mr. Haruhiko Hagimoto; because I have dedicated this short piece to Mr. Hagimoto, and H.H. are his initials, the piece ends with a prolonged H note.

Akira Nishimura 

HAYDN Joseph, String Quartet Op.76 No.4 ‘Sunrise’

Allegro con spirito
Adagio
Menuetto. Allegro
Finale. Allegro, ma non troppo

This quartet was nicknamed the ‘Sunrise’ on account of its opening idea, an ascending theme on the first violin, heard over sustained chords. It was completed in 1797, and published as the fourth in what was to be Haydn’s last set of six quartets. A strongly contrasting idea in semiquavers is punctuated by short, rhythmic chords. Throughout the movement, Haydn cuts between these two sharply characterized themes, often returning to the ‘sunrise’ idea in ingenious ways. For instance, quite near the start, the theme is heard on the cello, beneath long chords in the upper strings, and this time it heads in a new direction – descending rather than ascending. The variety of texture in this movement is a constant source of delight – a composer at the height of his powers in a genre which he had not only pioneered but also developed to new expressive heights. The slow movement is reflective and unusually free in terms of structure: here the fantasia-like form seems to emerge as a natural consequence of the musical ideas. The Minuet comes as a charming contrast, until the rather austere Trio section where the violins present a serpentine tune, full of chromatic twists, over a drone in the lower strings. The finale is based on a theme that resembles a folk-song, and it has been suggested Haydn may have discovered this tune during his second visit to London in 1795. For the most part, the mood of this movement is jovial apart from a darker central section where the tune is presented in B flat minor. The work ends back in the major, closing with two unusually full double- and triple-stopped chords.

Nigel Simeone © 2015

DAVIES Tansy, Yoik

Tansy and I have been collaborating on nature and the horn for many years. A horn player herself, Tansy really understands the primal connection the sound of the horn stimulates in the deepest layers of our shared human experience.  This aspect of her oeuvre fascinates me and I feel it strongly when playing “Yoik”. The haunting lyricism interspersed with a special playing technique sounding like the resonance found in an icy wind of distant memory is just wonderful. Tansy wrote the following about the piece:

A Yoik is not merely a description; it attempts to capture its subject in its entirety: it’s like a holographic, multi-dimensional living image, a replica, not just a flat photograph or simple visual memory. It is not about something, it is that something. It does not begin and it does not end.

A Yoik is not a song in the sense that it is about something. The melody is closely connected to the referential object in an indissoluble relationship. Linguistically this is expressed through the fact that one does not yoik about somebody or something, there is a direct connection; one yoiks something or someone.

The structure of a Yoik follows the Sami worldview of “No beginning, no end”. Sami see the world as following the circular patterns of nature. Living in a whited-out world of snow, often without horizon; perceptions of space, depth, time and environment are all closely-knit mysteries, to which the culture – and the Yoik – are intrinsically connected.

The name Christine Chapman is transmuted here – into the melody of my Yoik for Horn – so this is a yoik for and of her. The piece was composed by the river Medway in Kent, England. It is also a Yoik for that river, in the early morning.

Christine Chapman

About the Artists

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

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

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