Pic: Kegelstadt Excerpt

This Spring the Bath Recitals 2019 chamber music series offer two opportunities to hear a rather unusual but particularly beautiful chamber music grouping with the Ducasse Trio on 2 March and the Jacquin Trio on 6 July…

We can thank Mozart for writing the first clarinet Trio in 1787 which he dedicated to his student Franziska von Jacquin. The clarinet was a relatively new instrument at the time and no composer before Mozart had written for this combination of instruments with a clarinet, a bowed string instrument and a piano. The string instrument is usually the violin or viola – but it can be a cello. Mozart’s success was followed by his Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet Concerto which all helped to increase the instrument’s popularity.

However the repertoire specifically composed for such a combination was quite limited. In fact, of the mainstream composers up until 1900 this is about it:

Notable works for clarinet trio

• Mozart Clarinet Trio in E-flat major, K. 498 ‘Kegelstatt-Trio’
• Beethoven Clarinet Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11 ‘Gassenhauer-Trio’
• Schumann Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132
• Carl Reinecke Trio for piano, clarinet and viola, Op. 246
• Brahms Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114

So where does the rest of the music come from? Fortunately, there is plenty of classical repertoire out there for the piano trio (violin – cello – piano) and it is a relatively simple process to ‘convert’ these to music for the clarinet trio which can really illuminate the music in a fresh way.

In addition, by the time we get into the early 20th century composers were discovering – or re-discovering – this unique combination of instruments with fabulous and evocative timbral contrasts between the sonorous woodwind of the clarinet, the warm bowed string of the strings and the resonance of the piano.

The first concert with the Ducasse Trio on 2 March takes most of its programme from the early 20th century with fabulous music by Khachaturian, Debussy, Shostakovich, Ives and Stravinsky.

‘Utterly spellbinding Stravinsky’

Alasdair Tait: YCAT 2016 finals

And in July, A terrific programme of music for this vibrant instrumental combination from the Jaquin Trio who explores some of the earlier repertoire by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Glinka and an exciting new piece by Helen Grime.

‘Impressive skill and character’

The Times

So join us on this fascinating journey with the Clarinet Trio in 2019. All concerts are at 7.30pm in the comfortable and central location of St Michael’s Church, Broad Street, Bath. 

The association of music with conflict is legendary, and the First World War is no exception. Never Such Innocence on 3 November looks back at some of the extraordinary writings and music that emerged from this period….

Prior to 1914 the Music Hall was the centre of popular cultural life with ever larger theatres of up to 2000 seats staging live musical acts alongside animal imitators, acrobats, human freaks and conjurors. This was before the days of the affordable gramophone and so cheap seats at a show provided access to a new repertoire of populist songs.

The stars of the day ranged from the jauntily comic to the bawdy performer such as the likes of George Formby (pictured) and Harry Lauder.

During the war years alone the Music Hall was the perfect platform for several thousand new music hall songs. A real hit could sell over a million copies.

At the outbreak of war, many songs encouraged young men to join up with tiles such as We Don’t Want to Lose You, but We Think You Ought to Go and It’s A Long, Long Way to Tipperary.

But after a few months of war with rising numbers of casualties these recruitment songs all but disappeared.

Increasingly these music hall songs focused on dreams about the end of the war such as Ivor Novello’s When the Boys Come Home and Keep the Home Fires Burning. 

Songs often portrayed soldiers as brave and noble, while the fragile and loyal women waited patiently at home for their loved ones.

In the world of British classical music the war coincided with a time of transition. The older generation of composers such as Parry, Stanford and Elgar would normally have been overshadowed by a younger generation of composers. Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss and Herbert Howells were all students in 1914, but as many of these were of enlistment age they were sent to the front and of course many of them never returned. Of those composers who went to fight, George Butterworth, F S Kelly, William Denis Browne, Ernest Farrar, Willie Manson and Cecil Coles tragically did not survive.

‘A very special, moving and immensely absorbing production’

Although difficult for composers to write whilst on active service, the pieces they did write are a barometer for the times. Ivor Gurney, returning after 15 months at the front, having been shot and gassed, brought with him five of his most enduring songs. One mud-spattered manuscript, a setting of By a Bierside, was written by the light of a stump of candle in a trench mortar emplacement.

There were demands such as in The Musical Times for the composers of the day to write music which commemorated, celebrated and raised the spirits of the Nation. Elgar’s The Spirit of England, for example,was initially popular but but as the mood of the nation turned peoples’ emotional needs changed to a desire for music which expressed people’s grief, and served as a memorial to those who had been lost.

After the noise of war fell silent at 11am on 11 November 1918 it was left to the older generation to reflect on the conflict and to pay homage to its memory. For example, Vaughan Williams after serving with the Medical Corps in France, wrote his achingly beautiful Pastoral Symphony in 1922 as a monument to loss, with bugle calls echoing across the French landscape.

Never Such Innocence captures the spirit of the age in a moving narrative recital of words and music from the First World War delivered by professional actor Christopher Kent and pianist Gamal Khamis.

THE RECITAL SERIES

Never Such Innocence

Saturday 3 November 7.30pm
St Michael’s Church, Broad Street, Bath BA1 

Tickets are just £16 (or £15 in advance with a discovery card)

‘Beautifully nuanced show – tender, moving, angry”

With generous support from