Friends Newsletter April

Issue No.66

Friends’ Newsletter April 2015

may festival highlights

Contents...

page one Ma y Festival highlights page two Mee t the artis t: Louise Ald er pages three O four Meet th Elizabeth e artist: Ogonek pages four O five Music in the Communit y page six Why leave a leg acy | Join the b oard page seven T im Horton | Classical Sheffield page eight E nsemble 3 60 dates

Members of Ensemble 360 share what they’re most looking forward to in this year’s festival...

Tim: “I’m looking forward

to lots of different pieces!

Especially the Bartók Piano Quintet which will be great fun. The last movement is strongly reminiscent of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies; fast and furious.

From a performer’s point of view, there’s a lot to get your teeth into – it’s both difficult and hugely rewarding. I’m also looking forward to playing Notations for Piano – one of my favourite Boulez pieces. As to listening, Sir Thomas Allen’s concert and the concert with Mendelssohn and Beethoven’s String Quartets in A minor will be amazing.”

young romantic 18-year-old and Beethoven, at the end of his life amidst great suffering.”

Naomi: “I’m particularly looking

forward to playing the UK premier of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Stormwatch, Stormfall Adrian: “One of the highlights for violin, piano and horn. It’s going to be an interesting and in the festival for me is challenging rehearsal process, the Bach walk which I am hearing how the atmosphere looking forward to taking of the storm emerges from the part in! It’s a wonderful notes on the page.” opportunity to experience some glorious countryside Ben: “The subject of Youth and music in the same day! is especially relevant for Ensemble 360 and Music in the I’m also looking forward to Round, not only because of our hearing the beautiful last two works from both Poulenc work in schools and with young people but also because playing and Debussy side by side.

Debussy’s next work, had he to children, and enticing them survived, was to be for oboe, to concerts, is something which is hugely important to horn and harpsichord - we can, sadly, only imagine…how us all. I’m really pleased to be including short compositions frustrating!

Claudia: “A definite highlight

by GCSE students in each of our I’m excited about Elizabeth for me will be playing weekday lunchtime concerts.

Mendelssohn’s Op.13 quartet Ogonek’s new composition These have been selected from for the Ensemble. I think it is and Beethoven’s Op.132 one of our most inspiring music a great idea to perform/listen quartet in the same concert. education projects, Powerplus, Both composers are searching to it twice in the same concert led by Robin McEwan, where giving us the chance to hear for the truth - Mendelssohn we spend a day every so often it with fresh and attuned from the point of view of a playing compositions written ears!” by young people, giving them feedback and recording their pieces for them.”

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LOUISE ALDER

MEET THE ARTIST

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MUSICAL MEMORY? I don’t really remember my first musical memory but I do have a favorite memory from around the time that I was 5 or 6. My mom took me to see a semi-staged production of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The seating for this particular performance was configured in such a way that some members of the audience were actually seated behind the performers on the stage. My mom and I were in the front row of these seats. Every time the chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ or ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’ would return, I sang along as loudly as I could. I annoyed everyone in the audience and even some of the performers! My mom was so embarrassed!

DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO COMPOSE? IF NOT, WHEN DID THAT DESIRE COME TO LIFE? I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a composer. At age 5 I began studying piano in the Preparatory Division at Manhattan School of Music. At first it was a sort of hobby and a way for my mother, who, at the time, was a graduate student at Columbia, to keep me busy and engaged. As I got older, I realized that I was, in fact, interested in pursuing a career as a concert pianist and so I decided to apply to Walnut Hill, an arts boarding high school just outside of Boston. Unfortunately, as soon as I started attending school there, I stopped practicing! I truly hated it! I suddenly found myself aware of the fact that my plan to be a performer was in jeopardy.

My theory teacher was the one person who hadn’t lost hope! From the very beginning of my freshman year he insisted that I try

MEET THE ARTIST

from music college. It pairs young singers and pianists with experienced professional artists (singers, pianists, coaches and technical teachers) with whom we are lucky to spend an intense but hugely rewarding week in the Lake District. I was lucky to have Angelika Kirchschlager, Helmut Deutsch and my fabulous teacher Patricia MacMahon on my week.

Working with such a high calibre of musicians was mind-blowing and I still use many things I learnt that week every day when I sing. Samling COULD YOU TELL US WHEN YOU FIRST has a Wigmore Hall showcase every year and I STARTED TO SING AND WHEN YOU was chosen to sing for them there in November FIRST DECIDED THAT YOU’D LIKE TO 2013. I was delighted to share the stage with MAKE SINGING YOUR CAREER? other young artists and to sing the ‘Count and I always knew music would be a huge Susanna’ duet with the wonderful Sir Tom Allen, part of my life. I grew up in a family full of the memory of which will stay with me forever. music (my parents are both professional I very much look forward to singing with him musicians) and therefore have been again. David Butt Philip is one of the most surrounded by classical music since I was exciting tenors I have heard of my generation. born. Initially I thought I would play the His musicality and emotional intelligence on violin but at university as well as playing stage is astounding, coupled with a great sense in the orchestras, I was lucky to be cast in of humour and terribly pleasing looks, he’s plays, musicals and operas. I also started an operatic dream. James Baillieu and I have studying with a wonderful teacher - Patricia known each other for a while but never actually MacMahon, who guided my new-found, worked together, and I can’t tell you how excited vastly ambitious and slightly rocket-fuelled I am to get the opportunity to! love for the footlights more level-headedly towards the beginnings of a real career HAS THERE BEEN A PARTICULAR MUSICAL on stage. At the Royal College of Music I HIGHLIGHT IN YOUR CAREER SO FAR? started to have lessons with Dinah Harris, Singing to my friends and family at the Proms who helped me further work out kinks in with Glyndebourne in such a luminous role (Der my technique and sing increasingly more Rosenkavalier), was a dream come true. Another exciting rep in the right way, always with personal favourite was sharing the platform a smile and very relaxed but supportive with both my parents, singing a concert version attitude under which I thrived. Both these of Rameau’s Zaïs at the QEH in April last year. incredible women have built me as a singer, held me up and believed in me and I WHEN YOU ARE NOT SINGING, WHAT DO YOU DO FOR RELAXATION AND ENJOYMENT? couldn’t be more thankful.

I don’t understand the question. When am I not THIS CONCERT IS A PARTNERSHIP singing? I joke... But actually this year has been WITH SAMLING. COULD YOU TELL US the most amount of singing I’ve ever done in my ABOUT THE FOUNDATION AND YOUR life. Time off is a luxury I have had in bite-sized EXPERIENCE OF BEING A SAMLING chunks, through which I have mostly slept. But SCHOLAR? furnishing my Frankfurt apartment, visiting Samling is a platform and masterclass my boyfriend, family and friends in London and series for young artists at the end of their exploring the surrounding German countryside training or who have newly graduated have been prominent pastimes.

Ahead of her new work being premiered by Ensemble 360 at the May Festival, we caught up with young American composer Elizabeth Ogonek, in the midst of her whirlwind schedule, having just been announced

by Riccardo Muti as composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Elizabeth Ogonek

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Louise Alder kindly took time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions in advance of her appearance at the May Festival.

composing. He thought that I had the most unusual ways of realizing figured bass progressions and that if I applied those problem-solving skills to my own music, it could turn out to be something quite special. It took me three years to take him up on his advice, but as soon as I wrote my first piece, I knew instantly that I would spend the rest of my life composing.

COULD YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR STUDIES FOCUS ON AT THE GUILDHALL? The work that I am doing for my doctorate centers around the different effects that text can have on compositional decisions. I’m really interested in the transference of linguistic properties, particularly the sonic and semantic aspects of language, to a musical setting and how that affects the meaning of a piece. My portfolio of compositions explores issues of meaning and narrative based on the proximity of a text to the musical surface – or simply, whether or not the listener hears the text or if the text serves a purely conceptual purpose. Poetry has always played a big part in the way that I think about my own music so this topic is a natural outcome of much of my pre-doctoral work.

continued overleaf...

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TELL US WHY YOU CHOSE RIMBAUD AS YOUR STARTING POINT FOR THIS RPS COMMISSION, AND HOW THIS PIECE REFLECTS THE FESTIVAL’S THEME OF YOUTH & EXPERIENCE? I chose Rimbaud because most of my doctoral work incorporates texts by contemporary poets who work mostly in English. Though I’m not actually setting Rimbaud’s text in this piece, I wanted an opportunity to work with a poem that poses translational and therefore, interpretive challenges. The

piece deals with Youth & Experience by looking backwards at childhood memories and realizing that they are often not as rose-colored as nostalgia might tempt us to believe. Yes, I know, quite pessimistic!

Mendelssohn’s second Sinfonia, which he wrote at the precocious age of just 13 – a nice opportunity to see top-class young locals in action.

HOW DID YOU SETTLE ON THE INSTRUMENTATION (FLUTE, OBOE, CLARINET, VIOLIN AND CELLO) YOU HAVE CHOSEN? I’ve never written for this type of ensemble before and this particular combination of instruments seemed interesting to me!

Music students the chance to have their compositions workshopped and professionally recorded by Ensemble 360. It’s a unique and wonderfully valuable scheme. In a celebration of some of the extraordinary music that Powerplus has produced over the last ten years, the Ensemble will play five specially chosen pieces alongside works

by Beethoven, Brahms, and the rest; and during the Festival you’ll have the chance to find out more about the composers and their work.

music in the community DEAR FRIENDS,

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the May Festival is only weeks away!

You’ll have seen that we have prepared a bursting programme of Community events throughout the Festival, with countless opportunities for people of all ages to make music. We really hope that you’ll consider this an open invitation to make the very most of these events: as well as using them yourselves as a beautiful counterpoint to the concerts in the Studio (why not have a singing taster session after Friday’s lunchtime concert?), also seize the chance to involve your friends and family in as many different aspects of our Festival

as you can think of! So whether it’s bringing an infant grandchild to Classical Babies, telling a young string player about The Boy Made of Bread, or rounding up a party to join voices with John Rutter, we look forward to our Friends and their friends being at the heart of the proceedings throughout!

A particular highlight of the Festival, and one which many of you will experience at first hand, is the inclusion of pieces by young Sheffield composers in the five lunchtime Studio concerts.

Powerplus, which we run in partnership with Sheffield Music Hub, gives GCSE

We continue our fruitful partnership with Sheffield Music Academy. Its director Martin Cropper runs a brilliant workshop project for string players, based on The Boy Made of Bread by Daniel Saleeb.

While the piece itself is especially suitable for young players (age 7+, grade 1 and upwards), it’s also a nice opportunity for more senior players to make a family outing of it. So do recruit your young people and consider joining in yourself. The Academy string players give a Studio concert early on the Monday evening featuring

I can’t resist the opportunity to mention our family concert of Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants on the first Saturday. You might remember it from a few years ago; as with all of Paul Rissmann’s pieces, it’s full of opportunities for young and old to join in with songs, actions, and dressing up. It balances nicely with Peter and the Wolf on the second Saturday, which for many will have been their first introduction to classical music. Where, when, and how did you first hear it? We look forward to hearing your answers, and to inviting the whole community to immerse itself in music, during what promises to be a fabulous May Festival.

Polly Ives and Fraser Wilson

Why leave a legacy to Music in the Round? a personal response Music in the Round grew out of a passionate belief that chamber music is for everyone, and the generosity of our Friends and Patrons over the years has contributed enormously to our success in reaching audiences young and old. We’ve recently been more direct in asking our supporters to consider leaving a legacy to Music in the Round, and have had a positive response, with people beginning to let us know that they have done so. Vivien Whitaker and David Megginson responded in a particularly personal way, which we’d like to share with you.

“We have left a legacy to Music in the Round because of all the joy they have given us, specifically:

Marvellous music unique ‘in the round’ experience sensitively played intimate environment chatting (in the intervals!) with friends (in the) reaching new audiences in the region outreach – music Around the Country understanding through introductions and talks nearness to the players daring to be different & introduce new music Music in the Round has enriched our lives for so many years and we wanted to say ‘thank you’ David Megginson & Vivien Whitaker Lifelong Patrons

If you would like to find out more about making a direct and lasting contribution to Music in the Round, please get in touch with Deborah, deborah@musicintheround.co.uk, 0114 281 4660, or visit the ‘Support Us’ section of our website where you’ll find information sheets for your guidance.

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Join the Board!

We are seeking to diversify our Board of Trustees and are currently looking for two new members to help redress the male to female balance since the departure of Dr Stephanie Pitts and Dr Jane Chapman last year.

Stephanie provided expertise on music education, and Jane informally represented the Friends. Since music education is such an important part of what we do, we would love to hear from someone who has experience in this area. We would also greatly value the voice and input of another Friend. However, if you feel you have other knowledge that would benefit Music in the Round, we’d be interested to hear from you. Areas that aren’t currently represented on the board include legal knowledge and fundraising.

Becoming a trustee provides the opportunity to support Music in the Round in its widest endeavours. Trustees attend between 4 and 7 meetings a year and offer the company advice and guidance on a range of matters.

We also look to Trustees to provide regular hands-on support in their areas of interest.

If you’d like to find out more, please contact John Cowling, Chair of the Trustees, or Deborah, via deborah@musicintheround.co.uk to arrange a confidential chat.

Tim Horton reflects on the challenges and rewards of playing Beethoven’s piano sonatas WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF THE BEETHOVEN COMPLETE PIANO SONATA CYCLE, AND WHY? Apart from simply learning them all, the biggest challenge has been to have the confidence to walk into the Crucible and play them. The feeling is always different from Sonata to Sonata. Some I have been happy with, sometimes I am furious with how badly I’ve played. The main point though is that the concerts are part of an ongoing process, so I am trying not to be too hard on myself if a particular Sonata doesn’t go quite to plan.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU KNOW ABOUT BEETHOVEN NOW, THAT YOU DID NOT KNOW BEFORE YOU EMBARKED ON THE CYCLE? That’s not easy. I think it is more that things have been confirmed: his deep humanity, his ability to transcend the prosaic (this is true of all great composers of course). His compositional

sophistication has come into sharp relief given how immersed I’ve been; it is no wonder that he has been so influential when you see how intricate each piece is.

He can build so much from so little, usually two or three short motifs that proliferate, sometimes, in the Hammerklavier Sonata for example, over huge structures.

ARE THERE ANY COMPARABLE OR GREATER CHALLENGES IN THE PIANO REPERTOIRE THAN THE COMPLETE BEETHOVEN SONATAS? The 48 Preludes and Fugues of Bach would certainly be as challenging. Hans von Bülow’s Old and New Testament analogy is apt I think about these two cycles.

The Chopin, Debussy and Ligeti Etudes are also cycles that challenge every aspect of one’s ability.

1 April, 7.15pm - Exploring the Beethoven piano sonatas 8 April, 7.30pm – Tim’s final concert in his Beethoven sonata series

Celebrate Classical Sheffield, 23-25 October

Two days of classical music presented by choirs, orchestras and ensembles from across the city including concerts by Ensemble 360 and the Hallé Orchestra. With free pop-up events in the Winter Garden and short concerts in city centre venues throughout the weekend, this is a festival to celebrate the wealth of music in Sheffield. Try something new and introduce a non-classical friend too!

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Ensemble 360

dates for your diary 10 April, 7.30pm & 11 April, 7pm Emmanuel Methodist Church, Barnsley & Cast, Doncaster Ensemble 360 performs works by Britten, Elgar and Beethoven

8 July (repeated in Doncaster 11 July) New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme Ensemble 360 plays works by Mozart, Kodály, Roussel and Beethoven.

Plus post-concert Q&A

Britten wrote his Phantasy Quartet for oboe and strings while still a student; its concise design and spiky character combine youthful brilliance with striking individuality.

Framed by one of Mozart’s charming flute quartets and one of Beethoven’s first published works, the remarkable Duo by Kodály was written in 1914. The influence of Hungarian traditional music is apparent throughout, but it’s hard not to hear hints of the catastrophe of the First World War in the first movement. Roussel’s cool, neo-Classical Trio is by turns athletic and unhurried.

01782 717962 tickets@newvictheatre.org.uk www.newvictheatre.org.uk

The concert ends with a masterpiece from the end of Beethoven’s career; a work of breathtaking innovation that has at its heart the vast slow movement, entitled ‘Heilige Dankgesang’, written during the composer’s recovery from a near-fatal illness.

01226 327000 www.barnsleycivic.co.uk 01302 303 959 www.castindoncaster.com 2 June, 7.30pm Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough Ensemble 360 performs music by Dvořák, Mozart, Beethoven. Plus post-concert Q&A A glorious programme of chamber music from the 11 members of Ensemble 360.

From the seductive opening melody of Dvořák’s 2nd Piano Quintet, to Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo in C and the irrepressible ‘joie de vivre’ of Spohr’s Nonet, this is a concert full of beauty, ‘wild dancing’ and happiness.

01723 370 541 www.sjt.uk.com

11 July, 3pm Cast, Doncaster Ensemble 360 & Polly Ives Crazy Creatures returns to South Yorkshire for another family concert full of audience participation and image projections from the two children’s stories: The Duck With No Luck and A Cat Called Scratch by Jonathan Long and Korky Paul, published

by OUP. 01226 327000 www.barnsleycivic.co.uk 4th Floor | Sheffield Central Library | Surrey Street | Sheffield S1 1XZ Registered Charity number: 326811 Company number 1880734 VAT number 391 1875 33