The current (Jan - Mar) issue of Musical Opinion includes a feature on our local composer Ian Venables, celebrating his 60th birthday - his photograph appears on the front cover. You can read part of the article here but you will need to subscribe to read the full piece.
Also mentioned are two forthcoming local performances of Ian's music: "Further to Michael Bywater’s article on Ian Venables in this issue, two important premieres of the composer’s music take place within the coming months. On April 16th, at Worcester Cathedral, the first performance of the cantata Remember This, a work written to commemorate the fallen of World War I, will be given by Clare Prewer, sopano, and Richard Coxon, tenor, with the BPSO under Richard Jenkinson. On June 30th in the concert hall of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, the world premiere of Venables’ ‘Through these pale cold days’ Opus 46, for tenor, viola and piano, will take place, to be performed by Nick Pritchard, tenor, Louise Williams, viola and Benjamin Frith, piano." Thanks to Christine Talbot-Cooper of Gloucester Music Society for drawing my attention to this. Search the Chamber Music Plus website for more performances of music by Ian Venables.
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I headed to Birmingham's Town Hall on Friday, looking forward to hearing Maria João Pires, a pianist I've admired through her Mozart recordings for a long time. She was to share a recital with her duet partner, a young Serbian who she met at a festival in 2007, Miloš Popović.
I bought my ticket (using a special offer from the THSH, thank you to them!) and only then realised that Maria had had to withdraw both from this concert and from her solo recital the previous evening - disappointment! I decided to stay as Miloš was to play solo instead - and I'm very glad I did. I particularly enjoyed his Haydn (Piano Sonata no.59 in E flat Hob XVI:49). Someone to look out for in the future. Once Richard Hawley had introduced the recital, saying that Maria was suffering from shingles and asking the loyal audience to welcome Miloš for his UK debut, my disappointment had turned to sympathy. There was a lovely atmosphere in the hall and I'd encourage anyone who can to go along to these full-length lunchtime concerts. Richard also promised that they'd invite Maria back in a future season - so keep an eye out for that! An excerpt from the programme notes: "One thing we can say about music is that we can do our best to grasp it and teach it, but there will always be one thing missing this way - grace - the unexpected miracle which gives music its true worth...It is grace which attracts music lovers to come to concerts, to be part of a precious and unique event. Maria João Pires' Partitura project is all about creating favourable circumstances...proposing well-known musicians to foster young musicians, to invite them (as the name suggests) to share the concert platform. And it is precisely then that this miracle is accomplished, in the presence of an attentive audience, combining interpretations and in one moment traversing space and time." Miloš: "I was practising a Mozart sonata for four hands when I heard Maria João Pires knock on the door looking for a piano to practise on. Having heard me practising alone, she asked if I would like to play that sonata with her! What a way to discover her tireless generosity and her desire to share her knowledge with someone she hadn't even met before! To be part of the Partitura project is an immense privilege for me". Michael Brewer has sent me details of some forthcoming concerts featuring some of the artists he manages:
Bromsgrove Concerts The ‘cello and piano partnership of Worcester resident Richard Jenkinson and Benjamin Frith are giving a concert including works by Saint Saëns, Britten, Worcester composer Ian Venables and Beethoven on Friday 4 March at 8.00pm English Music Festival The Jenkinson Frith Duo is included again this year in the English Music Festival with a programme of music by Ian Venables, Ivor Gurney, Frederick Delius, Ledbury composer John Frith, no relation of Benjamin Frith, William Alwyn and William Hurlstone on Sunday 29 May, 2.15 pm at The Silk Hall, Radley College Worcester Concert Club Odysseus Piano Trio are engaged to play a programme of trios by Mozart, Fauré and Dvořák’s ever popular Dumki Trio at 3.00 pm on Sunday 6 November in the Huntingdon Hall Worcester. This is a return to the club by pianist Clare Hammond who was acclaimed for her solo recital there in a recent season and has been featured in the film “The Lady in the Van” playing the younger version of the character played by Dame Maggie Smith. 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare - just two years ago we celebrated the 450th anniversary of his birth, but this year there are many more events. I've already been to the first of the CBSO's concerts in his honour - music by Verdi and Strauss (Macbeth), the CBSO Chorus on fine form singing Vaughan Williams' Shakespeare Songs, and Walton's music for the film Henry V interspersed by the play's greatest speeches with actor Samuel West. Bruce O'Neil, Head of Music at the Royal Shakespeare Company, gave a fascinating pre-concert talk.
Our featured concert this week is a recital on the Shakespeare theme by the young baritone Ashley Riches, with pianist Emma Abbate, at the Stratford-upon-Avon Chamber Music Society, on Sunday 24 January at 3pm. Highly recommended! Jennie McGregor-Smith has sent me details of her 2016 series of song recitals at Tardebigge, near Bromsgrove:
26 June Benjamin Appl (baritone) and Simon Lepper (piano) Ben Appl is becoming very popular, quite rightly, and no doubt some of you heard his Proms debut. His programme not only includes Haydn, Finzi and Barber but also a group of songs by Gurney, interleaved with songs by Ian Venables, which relate to wartime, settings of poems by Gurney's friend Harvey and Gurney himself. Seasons at Tardebigge don't seem quite right without Simon Lepper at the piano, and we are delighted to welcome him back for the eighth time. 17 July Kitty Whately (mezzo), Louise Williams (viola) and Iain Burnside (piano) Iain Burnside's fifth visit brings an opportunity to hear Frank Bridge's works for voice and viola and Ian Venables' Acton Burnell, much appreciated by The Gramophone's reviewer. Iain has planned a group of Finzi songs, and a good looking second half devoted to Shakespeare settings, including Joseph Horovitz's dramatic Lady Macbeth - A Scena, and Korngold's music for Desdemona's willow song. Those who heard Dr Alan Watson at Three Choirs last year will know that his special interest at Cardiff University is in the nature and treatment of performance related injury in singers - so his talk on The Science of the Singing Voice should be fascinating. 28 August Roderick Williams (baritone) and Susie Allan (piano) Also old friends, Roddy and Susie have chosen a programme which is full of musical favourites, starting the concert with Butterworth's Six songs from A Shropshire Lad and ending with Finzi's Shakespeare group Let us Garlands Bring. Vaughan Williams' Silent Noon will be a highlight for me, and an opportunity to revel in Gurney's Captain Stratton's Fancy and hear Ian Venables' The Kiss and Flying Crooked. More details on the website: www.celebratingenglishsong.co.uk Many congratulations to Catherine Arlidge, who was awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours for her work inspiring and engaging young people in a love of live classical music. Read more here
Slipped Disc reports that Igor Levit gave a concert last Saturday night in his home town Hannover for 150 Syrian refugees, invited from a nearby camp. Levit, 28, came to Germany as a child from the former Soviet Union.
‘We came to Germany in 1995 as a Jewish family on the refugee quota, but by plane and with a permanent residence permit,’ says Igor. ‘We did not go thousands of kilometers on foot, or take a boat across the Mediterranean.’ The Syrians, he adds, ‘have been forced through no fault of their own to give up their freedom, their lives, their homes, their belongings.’ The concert included Saint-Saens Carnaval des Animaux, for kids from the camp. Igor is in Birmingham for a recital on 10 May. Read an article (if your German is up to it!) in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung The Atea Wind Quintet has won 3rd prize in the Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition in Copenhagen, and a special prize for performance of a work specially written for the competition. You can watch a video clip of their performance here
The Atea Wind Quintet will be playing at Cheltenham Music Society on 8 March. Ex Cathedra release their latest, fourth CD of baroque music from South America on 30 October, Brazilian Adventures, on the Hyperion label - Presto International interviewed Jeffrey Skidmore about this little-known music which he has championed for the past decade or so. Read more here
Sinfini Music's Reviews Round-up for November 2015 says "Birmingham's top-notch choir continue their voyages into South American Baroque music with this latest adventure through Brazil's soundworlds. Here's what our critic had to say: ‘It makes a refreshing change to hear an anthology of choral compositions untroubled by worldly cares, especially so when performed with such conviction and love.’ Francesco Piemontesi was in Birmingham last week playing a Mozart Piano Concerto with the CBSO in their Brahms Requiem programme, heard twice - and audiences were treated to an additional solo encore (a fantastically light and virtuosic Mendelssohn Etude). Read more about Francesco in his interview with The Guardian here and look out for his recital at Birmingham's Town Hall on 16 March
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