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Meet the Dulcinea Quartet

October 25, 2017

Saturday 11 November is the date when The Dulcinea String Quartet come to Bath for a fabulous evening of Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Barber. Let’s meet the musicians…

Minn Majoe

Minn studied with Maurice Hasson and Clio Gould at the RAM. Highlights of her solo career include performing Bruchâ€™s Scottish Fantasy with the Arch Sinfonia and leading the 2014 Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra. She has also worked with many UK orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and English National Opera.

Haru Ushigusa

Hara studied in her native Japan and at the RAM with Tomotada Soh and Jyunko Isono. During her studies at RAM she was awarded the James Wright Award and Foundation Award 2011. Haru was selected for the semi-final of the Sendai International Music Competition 2013 performing Bartok and Mozart 2nd Violin Concerto with Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra. She is also a prize winner of Ibaraki Shinjin Prize 2014.

Martin Wray

Martin studied at the Guildhall School of Music with Mark Knight and at the RAM with Martin Outram. He also studied with quartets including the Belcea, Endellion and Chilingirian, and with Tatjiana Masurenko and Maxim Vengerov. An experienced orchestral player, Martin has performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Rambert Ballet, the Royal Philharmonic concert Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Martin was a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Foyle Future Firsts scheme.

Kirsten Jenson

Kirsten studied at the Guildhall School of Music with Louise Hopkins and Leonid Gorokhov. Johannes Goritzki’s invitation to join his class led her to transfer to the Royal Scottish Academy. During her time in Glasgow she performed the Schumann Cello Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. After winning numerous international prizes and awards Kirsten has been cellist with the Fontanelli Quartet, has played with the Orchestra della Valle d’Itria, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and has released two albums as cellist of the Ragazze Quartet in Holland.

DULCINEA STRING QUARTET
Saturday 11 November, 7.30pm
Old Theatre Royal, Bath

Programme

Josef Haydn String Quartet op.74 no.3 ‘Rider’
Samuel Barber String Quartet
Franz Schubert Quartettsatz D 703
Felix Mendelssohn String Quartet no.2 in A minor op.13

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A world without tomatoes…

October 15, 2017

“A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet with violins.” So said American novelist and food writer Laurie Colwin in relation to what must be the epitome of classical chamber music – the String Quartet.

On November 11 Bath Recitals brings one of the UK’s finest young quartets to the city with The Dulcinea String Quartet.

So what is it about the String Quartet which makes it such a wonderful combination of instruments which has captured the imagination of composers since the mid 18th century onwards?

And how has the string quartet become the most perfectly satisfying chamber music form for both performers and audiences alike?
Well it all happened rather by accident…

Haydn playing quartets

In the middle of the 18th century a certain Baron Fürnberg invited his friends plus the 18-year-old composer Haydn to play some music together. As there was no music available for the unusual combination of two violins, a viola and a cello Fürnberg asked Haydn to compose something. The resulting piece was so successful that Haydn was encouraged to continue to write for this combination.

And so, remarkably, the string quartet was born!

Haydn was to write a total of 68 quartets during his lifetime. The teenage Mozart quickly saw the potential and wrote a further 23 string quartets. String quartet composition flourished from this moment forward with composers such as the ones featured in this concert – Schubert, Mendelssohn and Barber – developing and refining the quartet to suit the times in which they lived.

“As the development of Haydn’s quartets reaches its goal, …further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next.”
– Donald Tovey

We hope there won’t be any tomatoes at the concert with the Dulconea String Quartet on 11 November in what promises to be a dazzling programme of some of the very best repertoire written for this timeless instrumental combination.

DULCINEA STRING QUARTET
Saturday 11 November 2017 7.30pm
Old Theatre Royal, Bath

Programme

Josef Haydn String Quartet op.74 no.3 â€˜Riderâ€™
Samuel Barber String Quartet
Franz Schubert Quartettsatz D 703
Felix Mendelssohn String Quartet no.2 in A minor op.13

With kind support from The Richard Carne Trust

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Flute and guitar, a match made in heaven

September 17, 2017

Classical Chamber Music has been pretty much dominated by the string quartet – and the piano – and various combinations of the two such as violin sonatas, piano trios and piano quintets. But there was something else! Find out more…

Towards the end of the 18th century a different instrumental combination started to capture the imagination and attention of audiences and composers alike with the somewhat unlikely pairing of the flute and guitar.

Yet in many ways they are a match made in heaven – each having a very different and distinct tonal colour. Additionally, the flute is a single line melody instrument, the guitar is both melodic and harmonic so it can easily support an accompaniment underneath a flute melody whilst also maintaining one of its own (rather like two hands on a piano).

American musicologist Kristi Benedick undertook a piece of research in 2010 which, for the first time, traced the history of this duo cataloguing over 100 pages of duet repertoire for flute and guitar.

The popularity of the flute and guitar duo can be traced back to Maro Giuliani (1781-1829), who contributed considerably to the repertoire. Prior to Giuliani there was little written for the ensemble other than duos for recorder and guitar or lute.

Maro Guiliani

Born in South Eastern Italy, Guiliani had moved to Vienna by 1806 where he had established himself as a composer and guitarist writing many works displaying the guitar’s virtuosity and lyrical capacities. Much of Giuliani’s work focused on writing specifically for flute and guitar which demonstrated the vast possibilities of the duo and inspiring other famous composers to begin exploring this combination. By the twentieth century a considerable amount of music was written – and continues to be written today for this duo.

On 30 September, guitar and flute duo Andrey Lebedev and Bronte Hudnott explore this vast repertoire from the perspective of a world tour in Music Around the World when our musical journey will take us to countries as diverse as Spain, Australia, Brazil and Japan.

MUSIC AROUND THE WORLD
30 September 2017 7.30pm
Old Theatre Royal, Bath

Also don’t forget you SAVE £10 if you book for the next three concerts from Bath Recitals. Coming up we also have the Dulcinea String Quartet on 11 November and Chistmas Baroque on 16 December.

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Also, remember you can join our popular Front Row members scheme for just £20 – and get 16 months for the price of 12 if you book this September.

FRONT ROW
• Priority seats
• Free programmes
• Special ‘in conversation’ events
• Annual member’s reception
• Supporting young musicians

Still Life with Musical Instruments, 1623 by Pieter Claesz

Instruments of the Baroque

August 12, 2017

The line up for Musica Poetica’s Baroque Tales on 26 August will consist of a soprano and bass singer accompanied by a trio of violin, viola da gamba and keyboards. We take a closer look at these instruments from the early baroque…

Although the wooden shape of the instrument might look the same, the baroque violin is quite different in many ways from our modern day violin. The size and broad design of the violin didn’t really become consistent until around 1660. From then on there was a gradual evolution to produce an instrument which kept up with the changing demands of the day. This resulted in a louder instrument which could project more easily, sustain even legato phrases and perform better in the higher registers.

So the violin of today has a different size and angle of the neck, a longer fingerboard, higher bridge, strengthening inside, metal strings, a chin rest and a shoulder rest. The bow too is shaped differently. Look out for these differences in the baroque violin played by Music Poetica’s Naomi Burrell.

Naomi Burrell

The viola da gamba may be less familiar to us today but families of different sizes of viols were some of the most popular instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Its ancestors include Arabic and medieval instruments and whilst it may superficially resemble a cello it has several differences in shape and sound.

One of the most noticable things to notice when gambist Musica Poetica’s Kate Conway is playing is that it has frets – rather like a guitar. It is also held between the knees – rather than resting on a spike as with a modern cello.

Kate Conway

Co-Founder and Director of Music Poetica, Oliver John Ruthven will be playing two keyboard instruments in Baroque Tales. One is the chamber organ. Unlike itâ€™s grander cousins found in churches and cathedrals, this one often has just one keyboard and is usually portable. So it is ideal for more intimate surrounding or accompanying a small group of string instruments. The advantage it has over the harpsichord is that it can produce a sustained tone.

Oliver John Ruthven

The other is the harpsichord which was the mainstays of baroque keyboard music. When the keys of the harpsichord are pressed it triggers a mechanism which plucks the strings with a small quill.

With the rise of the piano which had a much greater dynamic range from the late 18th century, the harpsichord gradually disappeared from the musical scene.

Musica Poetica will give a truly authentic sense of the period with these instruments presenting a fascinating insight into the sound world of the Baroque age.

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Versailles

August 4, 2017

We are sure some of our readers will have become hooked on the sumptuous BBC period drama focusing on King Louis XIV and the building of his great palace at Versailles. Two of the composers featured in our next concert worked during the decadent and turbulent reign of the Sun King.

In the French court of King Louis XIV, music and the arts were used to portray the king as a brilliant god-like figure of absolute importance to the state. Throughout the course of his life, Louis XIV developed into an accomplished performer and a generous patron of the arts. With the help of his ministers and court composers, he used art as a tool for political gain.

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 -1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François Couperin.

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Coming from a musical family, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676 – 1749) was best known as a composer and under Louis XIV became organist at the church of the Grands-Augustins. Subsequently, he took charge of the music at the church of Saint-Sulpice and the royal house of Saint-Cyr. It was in this post that he developed the genre of the “French cantata” of which he was the uncontested master.

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault

The Water Terraces at Versailles

Hear the music from the France of the Sun King along with composers from England, Germany and Italy in Baroque Tales. Your ticket includes a complimentary Baroque-themed cocktail with canapés to ensure our summer musical party goes off with a swing.

Musica Poetica

Performing on period instruments, Musica Poetica is an early music ensemble dedicated to bringing early music to new audiences in extraordinary venues. With a reputation for energetic and engaging performances of repertoire from Monteverdi to Mozart., they have been praised for their “constantly upbeat brilliance and dynamism”. The five core members of Musica Poetica present a line up of violin, cello/viola da gamba, keyboards, soprano and bass-baritone vocals.

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Join us for Baroque Tales and cocktails!

August 4, 2017

Musica Poetica are bringing their unique take on music from the flamboyant Baroque era to Bath on 26 August. Find out what they will be playing in Baroque Tales.

Musica Poetica are bringing a fantastic programme of familiar and less familiar music from 17th and 18th century Europe: From France with the music of Rameau and Clérambault; to Italy with Cavalli, to Germany with Tunder and to England with the music of Purcell and Handel.

PROGRAMME

Saturday 26 August 2017 
Old Theatre Royal, Orchard Street, Bath

Franz Tunder:
Salve coelestis pater & An Wasserflüssen Babylon

Heinrich Biber:
Sonata Representiva

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault:
La Mort d’Hercule

Jean-Philippe Rameau:
3-ième Concert, Pièces de Clavecin en Concerts

George Frederic Handel:
Rejoice Greatly (from Messiah) & The Harmonious Blacksmith

Henry Purcell:
Fairest Isle, King Arthur

Richard Leveridge:
3 Comic Songs

Francesco Cavalli:
La Calisto, Scenes 1 & 2

What is more, Musica Poetica will perform on period instruments – fascinating to look at and beautiful to listen to. Including violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord, these instruments will support the solo soprano and bass-baritone vocals.

“An early-instrument ensemble of exceptional quality.”
Opera Britannica

Musica Poeticahave a growing reputation for energetic and engaging performances of repertoire from Monteverdi to Mozart., they have been praised for their “constantly upbeat brilliance and dynamism”.   Throughout 2017 they have been based at the historic location of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in Holborn for a series of nine concerts entitled Tunder’s World.

The focus of the concerts has been to explore the magical world of this 17th century German composer who lived and thrived through a period of great musical change – and he even has an asteroid named after him!

Hear some of Tunder’s music as part of Baroque Tales on 26 August!

Remember – your ticket includes a complimentary Baroque-themed cocktail with canapés to ensure our summer musical party goes off with a swing.

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The Baroque Age

July 15, 2017

The next Bath Recitals event is Baroque Tales – our summer musical party with Baroque-themed cocktails and canapés. Today we delve a little deeper into The Baroque Age.

On 26 August Musica Poetica take us on a 17th and 18th century whirlwind tour of Europe with Baroque Tales and Music with a TWIST!

Fontana di Trevi, Rome

But what exactly is – or was – the Baroque Age? The word Baroque actually comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning Misshapen Pearl. In architecture we associate the word with ornate and heavily ornamented design such in the Fontana di Trevi in Rome above or at the in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles just outside Paris (pictured above).

In music it defines the historical period from approximately 1600 to 1750. During that time many great changes were witnessed in musical composition and performance.

Classic FM has produced a really helpful series of ‘Fast And Friendly Guides’ to musical periods. This short video tells us the key points of the Baroque era which saw an explosion of new musical ideas from composers such as Bach and Handel, the birth of opera with Monteverdi and Purcell, and Vivaldi’s 500 dazzling concertos:

Your ticket includes a complimentary Baroque-themed cocktail with canapés to ensure our summer musical party goes off with a swing.

“An early-instrument ensemble of exceptional quality.”
Opera Britannica

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With kind support from the Odin Trust

Schubert’s Great Piano Trios

June 16, 2017

Alongside the string quartet, the Piano Trio must rank as one of the most popular and successful chamber music forms from the classical period onwards.

It was Mozart who is credited with transforming the piano plus solo instrument sonata into the balanced trio with piano, violin and cello. Haydn also made his mark on the genre. In addition, home music-making made the piano trio an ideal solution for arrangements of larger works. Beethoven, for example transcribed his first two symphonies for piano trio and also wrote two original sets piano trios.

Schubert first dabbled with the idea of the piano trio form when he just 15 but it was not until the last year of his life in 1827 that he finally finished his first piano trio – the Trio No. 1 in B-flat major D.898.

But it was his epic Trio No. 2 in E-flat major D.929 at almost 50 minutes in length, and one of the last compositions he was to complete, which really shows the genius of Schubert in this genre.

Fame was to come to the main theme of the second movement when it was used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon. It has also been use in several other films including The Hunger, Crimson Tide, The Piano Teacher, John Adams and The Mechanic.

It was composed to celebrate the engagement of Schubert’s school-friend Josef von Spaun and was among the few of his late compositions Schubert heard performed in his lifetime. Its first private performance was given by Carl Maria von Bocklet on the piano, violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and cellist Josef Linke.

And this is the work performed in Bath Grand Pump Room on 18 June by the Linos Trio. Following the tradition of the piano trio as a medium for performing arrangements of the great classics the concert also includes the Linos’s own arrangement of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas and Sally Beamish’s fabulous arrangement of Debussy’s atmospheric La Mer.

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Meet the Linos Piano Trio

June 4, 2017

Just a few weeks to go until we welcome the Linos Piano Trio. to Bath with German/Brazillian violinist Konrad Elias-Trostman, Russian/French cellist Vladimir Waltham and Thai/British pianist Prach Boondiskulchok. Let’s find out a bit more about these international musicians…

First Prize and Audience Prize winner of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition 2015, the Linos Piano Trio has achieved recognition as an extremely dynamic and creative young chamber ensemble.

“a slow-burning, gripping performance, the playing rich and passionate.” – The Strad

Prach Boondiskulchok (piano)

Thai-British pianist Prach Boondiskulchok studied piano and composition at the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a Scholar of Princess Galyani Vadhana. A Park Lane Group Young Musician in three consecutive years, Prach has performed at many prestigious venues and festivals around the world including the Royal Festival Hall, St Johns Smith Square, Schoenberg Centre (Vienna), Thailand Cultural Centre (Bangkok), Viana Festival (Portugal) and the Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival (USA).

Konrad Elias-Trostmann (violin)

Born of German and Brazilian parents, Konrad grew up in London and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music completing his Masters at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln in 2016. He was recently accepted on the Postgraduate course to work with Rainer Schmidt at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. A devoted chamber musician, recitalist and orchestral musician, Konrad has worked with some of the world’s greatest conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis and Antonio Pappano.

Vladimir Waltham (cello)

Berlin-based cellist Vladimir Waltham was born into a family of musicians in the South of France and now divides his time between solo, chamber, orchestral and teaching on both modern and baroque cello, as well as various other early instruments. Notable successes include receiving the Audience Prize at the 2013 York Early Music Competition and his Hieronymus String Quartet winning the Cavatina Intercollegiate String Quartet Prize and Audience Prize.

Join us at Bath’s spectacular Pump Room on Sunday 18 June for a concert of music as you will never have heard it before with some fantastic new arrangements of La Mer and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice pitted against Schubert’s phenomenal Second Piano Trio.

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A fresh look at Debussy’s La Mer

May 20, 2017

One of the more exciting pieces in the programme by the Linos Piano Trio on 18 June will be a rather exceptional performance of Debussy’s ‘La Mer’. Those of you who know Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece will be only too aware that this is a piece for huge orchestral forces. So what is this all about? Nicholas Keyworth has been investigating…

British composer Sally Beamish has written much successful chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. She has also worked in the field of music theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.

In 2012, Trio Apaches were performing Sally’s The Seafarer at the Lincoln International Chamber Music Festival. They asked her to consider creating an arrangement of Debussy’s La Mer for piano trio, as a companion piece to The Seafarer.

Sally Beamish

Her initial reaction was an unequivocal NO. Sally had already arranged some early Debussy pieces for cello and orchestra, for Steven Isserlis a few years earlier describing it as:

‘one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – and it took me twice as long as it would have done to write an original concerto!’

However, after a good deal of pursuasion, she agreed despite being a daunting prospect. Watch this fascinating discussion about creating this arrangement with Sally Beamish and Trio Apaches pianist, Ashley Wass:

And it wasn’t a simple case of giving all the tunes to the violin, the base line to the cello and the accompaniment to the piano. Very often, Beamish had to give Debussy’s string lines to the piano, so that the violin and cello could sustain the wind melodies. At other times she used the cello to sustain a bass resonance, and gave a cello solo to the violin.

‘It reminded me of a particularly tricky game of Sudoku – you changed one instrumentation, and another no longer worked.

It turned out to be an illuminating and stimulating journey, and made her think about instrumentation in a new and more creative way.

I’m profoundly glad I said ‘yes’ in the end!’

“a magical rethink that unashamedly shrinks Debussy’s grand evocations down to a more intimate scale, but loses nothing of La Mer’s power and detail” – The Scotsman

Linos Piano Trio

“Sally Beamish has produced a colossal, creative masterpiece” – The Herald

Sally Beamish’s arrangement of La Mer was first performed in 2013 and recorded in 2014. You can hear it alongside Schubert’s mighty Piano trio in Eb and the Sorceror’s Apprentice by Dukas on Sunday 18 June at the glorious Pump Room.

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