Issue No.73
FRIENDS’ NEWSLETTER
September 2017
PAUL ALLEN INTERVIEWS ANGUS SMITH
CONTENTS PAGE ONE World of Strings
PAGE TWO Patrick Brennan PAGE THREE Children’s Commission PAGE FOUR Schubert Cycle PAGE FIVE Marmen Quartet PAGE SIX New Bridge Scheme PAGE SEVEN News from MitR PAGE EIGHT Dates for your diary
ABOUT OUR NEW PROGRAMMING STRAND ‘WORLD OF STRINGS’ Music “guaranteed to bring a smile to the face” is how Angus Smith describes Strad in Rio, the concert in November that begins Music in the Round’s three-year musical adventure, the World of Strings project. The Strad belongs to Viktoria Mullova, the Russian violinist best known for playing the great classical sonatas and concertos from Bach to Bartôk. Wanting to explore beyond perceived boundaries of the classical tradition led her to devise this programme. Hence the Rio part of the title. Composers featured will include Antonio Carlos Jobim whose most popular piece must be The Girl from Ipanema. Guitarist João Luis Nogueiro Pinto joins Mullova, her cellist husband Matthew Barley and percussionist Paul Clarvis for the concert. The music will dance. Angus’ intention is that World of Strings will have the western classical tradition at its core. The great sonatas, trios and quartets will be heard in this highly ambitious cycle. But it is also about connections. He says: “I was working with an Indian sitar player who pointed out to me that an instrument invented in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago was called the sitar when it went east and the guitar when it went west. It seems to me that each country or culture developed its own instruments, the tools of the trade, and then the ways of using them.
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“We’ll explore the wealth of the classics, but the project is also a melting pot of different instruments, practices, styles and ideas.” So, the day after Strad in Rio, a kora and an oud feature in the Rafiki Jazz concert. In May 2018 Welsh harpist Catrin Finch joins Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita who has been profoundly influenced by hearing Bach and will play some. Catrin will also be playing Ravel and Debussy in February with our marvellous resident musicians, Ensemble 360. And folk fiddler Sam Sweeney will express his interest in Purcell and a time when “folk” and “classical” were often interchangeable.
Greek myth says that the god Hermes invented the lyre by taking the shell of a tortoise and stretching cow’s intestines across it. Leaving aside the question of what would have happened to music generally if animal rights had been higher on the agenda, this seems a useful metaphor for the way most cultures developed instruments, trying out materials to hand, seeing what sounded good. Strings are near-universal (indigenous Australians are an exception) and some years ago David Blunkett while still an MP asked if Music in the Round had any spare violins we could let the Roma people in his constituency borrow. We didn’t, to my regret, but I understood why they wanted them: their strings expressed their lives.
Viktoria Mullova brings Strad in Rio to the Crucible Studio on Friday 17 November while Rafiki Jazz perform on Saturday 18 November. Tickets are still available. In spring 2018, we’ll be hosting concerts with Sam Sweeney and the Chiaroscuro Quartet as part of the programme too.
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