FROM MY LIFE
March 14, 2024
Bohemian National Hall
Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin
Nicholas Canellakis, cello
Wu Qian, piano
Antonín Dvořák - Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 100, B. 183
Ludwig van Beethoven - Violin Sonata No. 7, Op. 30, No. 2
Bedřich Smetana - Piano Trio in G Minor, Op.15
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
How does one express one’s innermost self? Music has a way of subverting our conscious intentions and getting straight to the truth; it conveys complex emotions without revealing a composer’s personal narrative. And yet, once a particular autobiographical aspect of a work is revealed, it affects the way we listen. Dvořák’s Sonatina for violin and piano, Op. 100 was written during his three-year stay in New York as the director of that city’s National Conservatory. This period, while productive and successful, was tainted by nostalgia for his beloved Bohemia. Dvořák was anxious to go home, and that feeling is transparent in his sunny, innocent Sonatina. Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30 No. 2 was written in 1802, by which time the composer’s hearing was beginning to seriously deteriorate. In October of that year, he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he confessed his despair over his condition and his suicidal thoughts. This sonata, written in Beethoven’s ‘tragic key’ of C minor, seems to be directly related to this crisis. Smetana’s G minor Piano Trio movingly tells a story of tragedy and loss: within one year he lost two of his daughters. The trio is considered his first great achievement as a composer, but above all it is a deeply personal narrative. Each of the works presented in this program tells a story from a life; each, moreover, is a manifestation of a personal crisis.
LOVE’S SICKNESS
February 8, 2024
Blue Gallery
Nola Richardson soprano
Kevin Payne lute
Music by Purcell, Hume, Lanier, Corkine, Jenkins, Corbetta, Marais, D'Urfey, Blow, Eccles, Lawes
Illustrated talk by Parker Ramsay
Baroque English love songs explore a myriad of emotions. Beyond happiness and light; they can also resound with despair and even sickness. Soprano Nola Richardson graces the stage alongside period-instrument ensemble A Golden Wire to weave a tapestry of seventeenth-century English songs that captures the many colors of love’s emotional spectrum. From poignant yearning for the affection of Classically inspired figures such as Selina and Celia, to the haunting laments that echoed within the walls of Bedlam, or the fearful soliloquies of a bereaved mother, composers from William Lawes to Henry Purcell harnessed music’s full expressive potential. Through their artistry, they unveiled the profound depths of human sentiment, which mere words could never hope to convey.
2023
FLOWERS IN CONCRETE
December 6, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano
Philippe Quint, violin
Sergey Antonov, cello
Prokofiev – Sarcasms, Op. 17 (solo piano)
Prokofiev – Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 94bis
Shostakovich – Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67
Illustrated talk by Irina Knaster
Early twentieth-century Russia saw individual and artistic freedoms trampled by the chaos of the Russian Revolution, the devastation of two world wars, and the oppressive rigidity of Stalin’s regime. Yet exquisite artistic flowers continued to bloom in Soviet Russia.
Prokofiev’s Sarcasms for piano is a dazzling display of the kind of black, sardonic, mordant humor that helped keep him and many of his fellow Russians sane during the horrors of the Soviet dictatorship. His Second Violin Sonata was composed in the safety of the Ural Mountains, just as the tide of war was beginning to turn in Russia’s favor. Elegant, lyrical, and witty, it holds out hope for what might lie on the distant borders of possibility. Shostakovich’s magnificent Second Piano Trio, however, looks the worst squarely in the face. War, tyranny, terrible suffering – it’s all here, yet this work offers hope of another kind: the hope that music can help the tears of grief to flow, and perhaps even provide resolution.
The works in this program are eloquent tributes to an artistic greatness that successfully eluded the stifling clutches of authoritarianism, and a wonderful demonstration of the human capacity for survival.
‘OH, MANKIND!’
November 16, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Ariel Quartet
Beethoven – curated selections from Op. 18/1–5
Beethoven – String Quartet No. 6 in B flat major, Op. 18 No. 6
Illustrated talk by Jan Swafford
This program, led by the eminent Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford, focuses on the composer’s early maturity, as seen in his first six string quartets, Op. 18. To a certain extent, these were written in the shadow of his friend and mentor Joseph Haydn, who virtually invented the modern conception of the string quartet. At the same time, they are mature and masterful pieces, in many ways prophetic of the works Beethoven would go on to produce. This event is a narrative recital featuring excerpts from the first five quartets and a full performance of No. 6.
ORIGINS OF INSPIRATION
October 26, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Zemlinsky Quartet
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Janáček – String Quartet No. 1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Weber – Clarinet Quintet in B flat major, Op. 34
Schumann – String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
What inspires an artist? ‘Divine madness’ or ‘possession by the muses’? Greek antiquity attributed prowess in music to Euterpe, the muse whose role it was to assist composers in their work. Yet surely there must be a more tangible explanation? Love, friendship, nature, and literature are all potential sources of profound inspiration. Who was it that so impressed Carl Maria von Weber that he produced a flood of pieces for him? Why is Robert Schumann’s String Quartet in A minor dedicated to the phenomenally gifted Felix Mendelssohn? What moved Leoš Janáček to write one of the most dramatic and ferociously impassioned creations in the entire chamber repertoire? We invite you on a fascinating journey to discover what led each of these three composers to write the works featured in this program.
GENIUS IN THE MAKING
October 6, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Quatuor Danel
Franz Schubert – String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, D87
Franz Schubert – Quartettsatz in C minor, D703
Claude Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (L91)
Illustrated talk by Misha Donat
As an immensely talented teenager, Schubert composed around a dozen string quartets which show his melodic style at its warmest and most generous, including No. 10 in E flat major. Some years later he began writing a more dramatic and intense quartet, but only managed to compose its first movement – the so-called ‘Quartettsatz’ in C minor – and part of a slow movement before setting the project aside. Debussy’s only string quartet belongs among his earliest important compositions. It reveals his acute ear for color, a gift which allied him with some of the foremost artists of the period: Monet would soon be at work on his famous series of water-lily paintings, while Cézanne was about to embark on his late landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire.
LOVE’S AWAKENING
June 19, 2023
Leighton House, London
John Pumphrey, tenor
Francisco Cabrita, piano
Music by Schumann, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Wolf, Fauré, Schubert
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Spring - the word instantly conjures up images of returning warmth, light and colour, so welcome after the gloom of winter. But for the poet T.S. Eliot, April was 'the cruellest month'. It is a time for falling in love, but love can bring heartache as well as joy. Love's Awakening reveals both sides of Spring: the quickening pulse, the embrace of sunlight and fresh growth, alongside the pain of tantalising hope, of disappointment and betrayal. One thing is clear enough: Spring has inspired some of the world's loveliest music, as these great Austrian, French, German, and Russian tone-poets demonstrate exquisitely. Love's Awakening isn't just a collection of beautiful songs and piano pieces; it's a story in itself. Will there be a happy ending? That remains to be seen, or rather, heard.
DEAR FATHER…
May 18, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Stella Chen violin
Brannon Cho cello
Matthew Lipman viola
Illustrated talk by Irina Knaster
Niccolò Paganini - Caprice No. 24 in A minor
Ludwig van Beethoven - String Trio in G major, Op.9 No.1
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Divertimento for String Trio
An encouraging, musical father – perfect for a young composer, surely? But, as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Nicolò Paganini’s father was delighted when he saw the sparks of future genius in his son, but a mixture of greed and frustrated ambition turned him into a tyrant whose treatment of the young virtuoso left deep scars. Mozart’s father Leopold was at first more genuinely encouraging, but his son’s vitality and sheer genius proved too much for him, and in the end only an act of outright rebellion set Wolfgang truly free. Beethoven’s father was a court musician, but he was also a drunken bully, who thought nothing of dragging young Ludwig out of bed in the middle of the night to play for his horrible cronies. In each case, however, it was, above all, a love of music that saved these composer-performers and set them on the path to glory. Somehow, they were able to become not what their fathers wanted, but what they were truly meant to be. We hear all three in full flower: Paganini in his ardent and dazzlingly difficult Fourth Caprice, Beethoven in his ambitious, almost symphonic String Trio, Op. 9 No. 1, and Mozart in his (deceptively) modestly titled Divertimento for string trio, in which just three instruments open up vistas on enchanting new worlds.
SEVEN LAST WORDS
April 27, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Brentano Quartet
Poetry by Ruth Padel
Joseph Haydn - ‘Seven Last Words’, Op. 51
On Good Friday 1787, in the great Baroque cathedral of Cádiz, music by Joseph Haydn was performed during ten-minute intervals between the bishop’s meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. These Last Words refer to seven short utterances made by the dying Christ, taken from the Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, and Haydn wrote his music as a personal response to each of them.
In this concert, we present interspersed between Haydn’s movements not sermons, but poems, written and read by Ruth Padel in tribute to the interrelations, and tensions, created by the composer between word and music.
Each poem ends with the Word to which the ensuing music then responds. This first New York performance of Padel’s haunting poems offers a uniquely tangible and contemporary vision of a historic scene, as a world-renowned string quartet and a multi-award-winning poet take us on an emotional journey which begins by attending to the needs of others – Forgiveness, Comfort and Relationship – and progresses through Abandonment and Distress to culminate in Fulfilment and Reunion.
AGAINST THE TIDE
April 13, 2023
Bohemian National Hall
Leonard Elschenbroich cello
Alexei Grynyuk piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19
Cesar Franck - Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano
We like to portray great artists as ahead of their time, boldly pushing into new, uncharted regions, shocking their contemporaries, and only being vindicated by posterity. But sometimes it happens the other way round. In his own time, Sergey Rachmaninov was dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned, a shameless nostalgist, a composer of ‘film music’ (not good). But today his star is higher than ever, while many of his up-to-date detractors are forgotten. Why? Because his music is so authentic and deeply felt – and who ever wrote better, more ripely expressive melodies? Nearly a century earlier, César Franck was an outsider in French music. Born in Belgium (also not good), he had the temerity to compose in abstract, ‘German’ forms such as symphony and sonata, not opera, the French form par excellence. Yet as time passed, the sheer, impassioned beauty of what he wrote won over his critics, and the next generation of young French masters all acknowledged him as a father figure. Celebrate with us a beauty that defies time and trend as we hear Rachmaninov’s darkly soulful Cello Sonata, and Franck’s gorgeous Violin Sonata in a very persuasive arrangement for cello and piano.
SPANISH IMPRESSIONS
March 16, 2023
Bohemian Hall
Misha Keylin, violin
Sergey Antonov, cello
Ilya Kazantsev, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Buck
Joaquín Turina - Piano Trio No. 2 in B minor, Op. 76
Enrique Fernández Arbos - Three Spanish Dances, Op. 1
Mariano Perelló - Tres impresiones (1922)
Gaspar Cassadó - Piano Trio (1926)
From El Greco to Gaudí, Spain has often produced cultural figures whose work seems extreme and eccentric. Its national identity was forged in the bitter struggle between Christian and Islamic forces in the later Middle Ages. In 1492 Christianity triumphed, in an extreme and radical form, but traces of Islamic and Jewish heritage remained in the DNA of Spanish cultural heritage, particularly as far as music was concerned. And from the Inquisition to the Civil War, Spain has seen more than its fair share of man’s inhumanity to man. Yet the work of artists such as Velázquez, Goya and Picasso, and writers such as Cervantes and Lorca, is notable for its humanity. After a long period of decline, culminating in 1898 in humiliating defeat at the hands of the United States and the loss of her colonial empire, Spain enjoyed a brilliant cultural renaissance that lasted until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936. This programme will showcase some of the varied and brilliant music composed during that period.
FOR THE LOVE OF CLARA: SCHUMANN & BRAHMS
February 9, 2023
Bohemian Hall
Grace Park, violin
Brook Speltz, cello
Adam Golka, piano
Illustrated talk by Jan Swafford
Clara Schumann - Romanze (arrangement of the slow movement from the Piano Concerto)
Robert Schumann - Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
Robert Schumann - Violin Sonata No. 3 in A minor
Johannes Brahms - Piano Trio No. 1 in B major
This program explores the singular personal and musical interweavings of three of the greatest musicians and composers of the nineteenth century. Pianist and composer Clara Schumann was married to Robert Schumann, who in turn discovered Brahms when the latter was just twenty and announced his genius to the world. Clara championed both her husband’s music and Brahms’s (she was one of the greatest performers of the century, alongside Thalberg, Chopin, Rubinstein, and Liszt); Robert (before his tragic collapse) became mentor to Brahms; and Brahms fell hopelessly in love with Clara. Each of the three composers had his or her own distinctive voice. Join us to discover what symbolic motifs and musical ideals the three shared in their work.
2022
CROSSING PARALLELS: TCHAIKOVSKY & DVOŘÁK
December 7, 2022
Bohemian Hall
Philippe Quint, violin
Stephanie Zyzak, violin
Maurycy Banaszek, viola
Paul Laraia, viola
Zlatomir Fung, cello
Adrian Daurov, cello
Illustrated talk by Irina Knaster
Antonín Dvořák - String Sextet in A major, Op. 48
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - String Sextet in D minor "Souvenir de Florence", Op. 70
In their own homelands, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák are national heroes, treasured for giving musical voice to their native cultures with special warmth and authority. But there was nothing narrow or exclusive about their ‘nationalism’. Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous Sextet ‘Souvenir de Florence’ could be subtitled ‘A Russian in Italy’. It radiates love for the sunlit Mediterranean lands, echoes street dances and serenades, and evokes the eerie magic of summer lightning. But all this sits comfortably alongside Russian folk-like tunes – a sense of national selfhood can be enriched by contact with other peoples and their cultures. Dvořák wrote his Sextet around the same time as his sensationally successful first set of Slavonic Dances, and like them it speaks eloquently of his attachment to Czech song and dance, and to the luscious rolling landscapes of his native Bohemia. But it also shows him at home with the cosmopolitan style of Western European music, embodied by his new friend, the German Meister Johannes Brahms. Both works are proof that you can be both national and international, sing of home while flinging wide your embrace to take in all humanity.
LOVE AND LOSS: BRAHMS & MENDELSSOHN
November 3, 2022
Bohemian Hall
ESCHER STRING QUARTET
Adam Barnett-Hart, violin
Brendan Speltz, violin
Pierre Lapointe, viola
Brook Speltz, cello
Illustrated talk by Per Tengstrand
Johannes Brahms - String Quartet in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1
Felix Mendelssohn - String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
Brahms and Mendelssohn both wrote impressive works for the grand concert hall, but their chamber works take us into their secret hearts. When Brahms began work on his C minor Quartet, he was still struggling with the impact of his mentor Robert Schumann’s final descent into madness, and with his intense but complicated feelings for Schumann’s widow Clara. By turns stormy, achingly tender, and haunted, this work sounds very like the lonely cry of a wounded soul. Mendelssohn’s F minor Quartet was composed in stunned grief after the shockingly premature death of his beloved sister Fanny. If at times it seems close to breaking point, that may be a simple statement of fact: Mendelssohn himself died just two months after finishing it. But at its heart is a song of pure love, perhaps the tenderest he ever composed.
MUSIC IN THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV
October 6, 2022
Bohemian Hall
Nola Richardson, soprano
Parker Ramsay, harp
Kevin Payne, lute
Arnie Tanimoto, viola da gamba
Illustrated talk by John Brewer
Music by Francesco Corbetta, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Couperin, Marin Marais, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault
‘Elegance’, wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, ‘is a means of showing one’s power’. There is no more impressive demonstration of that than the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV’s stupendously conceived ‘total work of art’, in which architecture, painting, sculpture, music, theatre, ballet, even garden design, were intended to proclaim the supremacy of Catholic Christianity and the majesty of Louis himself as its divinely-appointed ruler. The music of Versailles was a treasure house in itself, by no means all of it hymning Louis’s own magnificence. There are stunning love-songs, sublime religious music, opera in which song and dance were fused as never before, expressions of wonder at the riches of remote cultures, even music of profound lamentation. Hero or monster, Louis knew talent where he saw it, and at his magnificent court it was assembled and celebrated as never before in western culture - and perhaps never since.
ALMA MAHLER: MUSE OR MONSTER
May 18, 2022
Italian Academy
Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano
Bryan Wagorn, piano
Brook Speltz, cello
Adam Barnett-Hart, violin
Adam Golka, piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Songs by Alma and Gustav Mahler
Alexander von Zemlinsky - Three Pieces for cello and piano
Erich Korngold - Piano Trio, Op. 1
It was the litany of lovers and husbands in what he described as ‘the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that it has ever been my pleasure to read,’ that inspired Tom Lehrer’s famous song about Alma Mahler, whose lyrics include the lines ‘Her lovers were many and varied, from the day she began her beguine. There were three famous ones whom she married, and God knows how many between.’ Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel was not one of those celebrated beauties who retained her allure into old age. Color film footage of her from the 1950s presents a raddled and formidable matron. In photographs taken of her in her prime, we can admire her flawless profile and magnificent bosom. Were these features enough to fascinate a small army of gifted men? In an evening of chamber music and songs, including some by the lady herself, we shall explore the enigma of Alma Mahler and the impact she had on the culture and music of her time.
MUSIC OF THE PLEASURE GARDENS
April 28, 2022
Bohemian National Hall
The Four Nations Ensemble:
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Thomas Cooley, tenor
Charles Brink, flute
Olivier Brault & Chloe Fedor, violins
Kristen Linfante, viola
Loretta O’Sullivan, cello
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
Illustrated talk by John Brewer
George Frideric Handel – Sonata for violin and continuo in D major
‘Sweet bird’ (L’Allegro)
‘Waft her, Angels” (Jeptha)
Thomas Chilcot – Orpheus with his Lute
J.C. Bach – Quartet in C major for flute, violin, viola and cello, Op. 8 No. 1
Joseph Haydn – Three Scot Songs
Symphony No. 104 in D major for flute, strings and keyboard, Hob. 1:104 (transcr. Salomon)
Eighteenth-century London’s pleasure gardens were public, commercial venues that hosted an array of musical entertainments, including organ recitals, vocal programs, and instrumental works such as Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, premiered at Vauxhall in 1749. Impresarios drew on the music of the court, opera house, and concert hall for their open-air spectacles. By also offering art exhibitions, food and drink, and private spaces, they created an atmosphere of Arcadian escape. Composers’ views of the gardens varied: Handel was dubious, but saw his works regularly performed, whereas for court composer Haydn, London’s commercial music scene represented unprecedented freedom. And for pleasure garden audiences, performances were always more than just a concert.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S SMILE
April 20, 2022
Bohemian National Hall
Philippe Quint, violin
Jun Cho, piano
Presentation by Philippe Quint
Music by Chaplin, Brahms, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Gershwin
Did you know that Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest silent movie actors and most iconic figures of the early film industry, was also a talented composer?
To celebrate Chaplin’s 133rd birthday (he was born on April 16, 1889), we present Philippe Quint’s critically-acclaimed multimedia program. Inspired by the violinist’s successful 2019 album Chaplin’s Smile (Warner Classics), the program returns to New York City for its premiere in an all-new format. Quint’s unique arrangements of songs from Chaplin’s most celebrated films (Modern Times, City Lights, Monsieur Verdoux, The Kid, Limelight, and A King in New York) are interspersed with rare footage of the actor, along with still images and video clips from his films. The program also features music by composers who influenced Chaplin’s musical style – Brahms, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Gershwin.
BOHEMIAN NOSTALGIA
April 6, 2022
Bohemian National Hall
Grace Park, violin
Zlatomir Fung, cello
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Bedřich Smetana – Piano Trio, Op. 15
Antonín Dvořák – Piano Trio, No.3 Op. 65
The ancient kingdom of Bohemia has a history of cultural riches and turbulent politics. The nineteenth century brought relative stability – but at a cost. Bohemia was now subsumed into the complex but firmly-administered entity of Habsburg Austria, with German as its official language. As a member of the Bohemian bourgeoisie, Bedřich Smetana had to learn the Czech language and folk traditions and, like many of his class, he yearned to be reconnected with what he came to see as his true native culture. Dreams of an independent future were rooted in treasured images of the country’s great past, so nostalgia paradoxically became a tool for politically progressive thinking. Intense melancholy and lively folk-coloured dance music alternate in Smetana’s impassioned Piano Trio, in a manner which sometimes recalls the national dance known as the dumka, in which exhilaration and reflective sadness are often starkly juxtaposed. By contrast, Antonín Dvořák was born with both the Czech language and Bohemian music in his blood, as is warmly reflected in the generous lyricism and rhythmic energy of his Third Piano Trio. Yet there are moments in this work too which seem to look back longingly to some kind of vanished Eden: Bohemia’s golden age? Youthful love lost? It’s hard to tell, yet there remains something mysteriously, touchingly ‘national’ about this very particular brand of Slavic melancholy.
BEETHOVEN VARIATIONS
March 31, 2022
Bohemian National Hall
Quatuor Danel
Ruth Padel - Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life
Poetry reading by the author
Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
This unique concert featured Ruth Padel’s biographical poetry about Beethoven alongside performances of two of the composer’s string quartets. The first of these – the impetuous, impassioned and brilliant Op. 18 No. 1 – was written in around 1800 when Beethoven was thirty, while the second – the sublime Op. 132 – was finished in 1825, only two years before he died. How did this lonely, haunted man distill his extraordinary life journey into the quartet form, one full of conversation, human togetherness, social harmony, and integration? How did he move from the Classical balance of the six Op. 18 works to the dark, haunting beauty of Op. 132, with its contemplative central Molto adagio? Ruth Padel, an award-winning British poet and scholar, has created a lyrical journey through Beethoven’s life, family, feelings and music. She reada selection of poems that illuminated the life and thought behind the two quartets performed by the extraordinary Quatuor Danel.
INTIMATE PORTRAITS: RAVEL & SCHUBERT
February 3, 2022
Bohemian National Hall
Illustrated Talk by Nicholas Chong
Franz Schubert - Piano Trio in B flat major, D898
Maurice Ravel - Piano Trio in A minor
When it comes to love, both Maurice Ravel and Franz Schubert are enigmas. Their music can be so tender, so delicately sensuous, so touchingly intimate, and yet nobody knows if either had relationships in the modern sense of the word. Was there an element of yearning for an impossible ideal in both men? Did they privately enjoy the sweet sorrow of unfulfilled longing, or were there darker, more painful secrets? Both of the exquisite piano trios in this concert can be enjoyed simply as glorious outpourings of song and dance, but there are complexities beneath their seductive surfaces, the kind of shadowy riddles and ambiguities which can haunt the mind long after the performance is over. Heard together, it’s possible that both trios may reveal more than these guarded composers apparently intended.
2021
WINTERREISE. WINTER JOURNEY
December 13, 2021
Bohemian National Hall
Tyler Duncan, baritone
Erika Switzer, piano
Illustrated talk by Christopher Gibbs
Franz Schubert – Winterreise
‘I like these songs better than all the others, and you will come to like them too.’ Such was Schubert’s response when some friends criticized the gloomy character of Winterreise (‘Winter Journey’). Nearly 200 years later many people view Schubert’s setting of twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller as the supreme Romantic song cycle. Winterreise traces the stark psychological journey of a solitary protagonist, someone isolated and alienated from society. The anonymous wanderer, we learn in the opening song, arrived in town a stranger and now departs one as well. The inexorable journey through the winter landscape, ending with the despairing ‘Der Leiermann’ (‘The Organ Grinder’), reflects far more than the dismayed musings of a jilted lover – these devastating songs register life at the limits.
SONGS OF SOLACE
November 18, 2021
Bohemian National Hall
Ariel Quartet
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Illustrated Talk by Stephen Johnson
Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet No. 4
Stephen Johnson – Angel’s Arc, for clarinet and string quartet
Johannes Brahms – Clarinet Quintet
The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich loved Jewish folk music, delighting in what he called its ‘laughter through tears,’ and he turned to it during one of the worst crises in his roller-coaster career. His Fourth String Quartet is full of anguish and heartache, but in the klezmer dance-like finale it reveals how Shostakovich found the strength to keep going and, as a friend put it, ‘keep bearing witness.’ A work-weary Johannes Brahms announced his official retirement from composition at the age of 57, but the following year the playing of clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld charmed him back, and a string of beautiful, profoundly personal masterpieces followed. In the glorious Clarinet Quintet Brahms expresses his regrets, his melancholy, but also his intense love of life in new confidential terms – it’s as though the music were speaking to a small group of close, loving friends. Alongside these two gems of the chamber repertoire, we are delighted to present the US premiere of Stephen Johnson’s clarinet quintet Angel’s Arc. The work was inspired by the hills of Northern England where, as a troubled, isolated teenager, the composer found a place of refuge and strength. Angel’s Arc is a hymn of gratitude to the mysterious but very real sustaining power of nature and of music.
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA CENTENNIAL: BETWEEN ANGELS & DEMONS
October 28, 2021
Bohemian National Hall
Philippe Quint, violin
Rodolfo Zanetti, bandoneón
Pedro Giraudo, bass
Ahmed Alom, piano
Federico Díaz, guitar
Sofía Tosello, vocalist
Narration by Philippe Quint
Astor Piazzolla
Michelangelo ’70
Milonga del Angel
Muerte del Angel
‘Yo soy María’ from María de Buenos Aires
Siempre se vuelve a Buenos Aires
Estaciones porteñas: Verano, Otoño, Invierno, Primavera
(Poems by Lila Zemborain)
Concierto para quinteto
2021 marks the centennial of Argentine composer and virtuoso bandoneón player Astor Piazzolla. The single most important figure in the history of tango, Piazzolla created a whole new musical genre based on Argentina’s national dance. Breaking boundaries and revolutionizing traditional tango, he introduced the world to tango nuevo: a fusion of tango, jazz, klezmer, and classical music. The Piazzolla style is bold, unique, immediately recognizable, and utterly irresistible.
A child prodigy, Piazzolla wrote his first tango at the age of 11. However, in his early 20s, he decided to give up tango and traveled to Paris to study classical music with the famous French pianist and composer Nadia Boulanger. It was she who told him not to give up on tango.
Join us as multi-Grammy-nominated violinist Philippe Quint and his Quint Quintet perform some of Piazzolla’s most iconic works as part of a narrative tracing the musical and personal journey of an extraordinary musician who achieved international acclaim but – before becoming a national treasure – was dubbed ‘tango-killer’ in his native Argentina. Come and discover the man whose life story was, in his own words, ‘one of both angels and demons’.
INSPIRED BY FRIENDSHIP
October 7, 2021
Bohemian National Hall
Kristóf Baráti, violin
Roman Rabinovich, piano
Illustrated talk by Michael Parloff
Johannes Brahms – Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100 ‘Thun’
Béla Bartók – Violin Rhapsody No. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven – Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 ‘Kreutzer’
Great music has often flowered from friendships between like-minded artists. In 1803, Beethoven’s short-lived friendship with the charismatic Afro-European violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower inspired his tempestuous Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 47. Sadly, the two artists quarreled soon after the successful Viennese premiere – Bridgetower called it ‘a silly argument over a girl’ – and the mercurial composer summarily withdrew his dedication to his erstwhile friend and rededicated the sonata to the celebrated French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. Béla Bartók maintained a more durable friendship with his esteemed violinist colleague Joseph Szigeti. Their fruitful partnership yielded many remarkable works, including Bartók’s First Violin Rhapsody, dedicated to his friend and compatriot Szigeti. In the summer of 1886, the 53-year-old Brahms fell under the spell of the young contralto Hermine Spies. Inspired by her artistry and beauty, he composed songs for them to perform together at the idyllic Swiss resort of Thun. Later that summer, he wove themes from ‘her’ songs into the fabric of his radiant Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100.
2020
MUSIC, TALES & MAGIC
March 11, 2020
Bohemian National Hall
Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello
Noreen Polera, piano
Illustrated talk by John Brewer
Ludwig van Beethoven — Seven Variations on a theme from Mozart’s The Magic Flute
Edvard Grieg— Solveig’s Song
Frédéric Chopin — Polonaise brillante in C major, Op.3
Gabriel Fauré — Apres un rêve
David Popper — Dance of the Elves
Edvard Grieg— Cello Sonata
While magic, myth and fairy tales have proved rich sources of inspiration for many composers over the centuries – allowing for musical allegory, drama, mischief, exoticism and escapism – there is also something magical about the arts of composition and performance themselves: notes on the page, conjured from a composer’s imagination, are brought to life by a performer’s marvelous talent, often to spellbinding effect.
Mozart’s The Magic Flute – an opera steeped in magic and mythology, but using everyday language, and full of folksy tunes – was a gift to later generations. Beethoven dwelled lovingly on its homely melodic qualities in his Variations, based on Pamina and Papageno’s delightful, teasing duet in Act One.
The love of folk-inflected song and delight in magic and mystery of The Magic Flute find direct echo in the exquisite intimate melody of ‘Solveig’s Song’ from Grieg’s incidental music for Peer Gynt, and in his wonderfully rich and varied Cello Sonata. And for a touch of Nordic-Germanic myth, we have Popper’s Dance of the Elves – a kind of magic show for cello and piano, and pure fun from first to last.
Chopin’s dazzling Polonaise brillante, which requires wondrous virtuosity from its players, employs a Polish dance form to embody the defiant soul of his then occupied and repressed homeland. Fauré’s famous Après un rêve, meanwhile, may seem a piece of pure romantic dreaminess, yet was written whilst France was still smarting from defeat in the Franco-Prussian War – in both cases, we can see why escaping into very different but equally fabulous other worlds might seem preferable to reality.
FRENCH IMPRESSIONS
February 27, 2020
Bohemian National Hall
Grace Park, violin
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
The Calidore String Quartet
Illustrated talk by Samuel Adams
Claude Debussy — Violin Sonata in G minor
Ernest Chausson — Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, Op.21
In 1874, Claude Monet unveiled an en plein air painting depicting the port of Le Havre. It was this painting, Impression, Sunrise, that gave birth to Impressionism, both the movement and the name. Though Claude Debussy’s music is often compared with the works of Monet – that other great French Claude – Impressionism in music and painting have little in common, other than the perceived dissolution of form attributed to both art forms.
Both Debussy and Chausson were passionate about the visual arts – between giving up his legal profession and devoting himself to music Chausson even considered becoming an artist. Yet the two men reacted quite differently to the Impressionist movement. While Debussy drew upon a vast range of visual sources for his orchestral and other instrumental works (from Watteau via Turner to Gustave Moreau), Chausson appears not to have relied upon either literary or visual inspiration for his music. He was a rather conservative composer who, in the age of Ravel and Stravinsky, seemed more drawn to the Romantic tradition of César Franck.
2019
RUSSIAN ELEGY
December 4, 2019
Bohemian National Hall
Misha Keylin, violin
Zlatomir Fung, cello
Pavel Nersessian, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Anatoly Lyadov - Three Pieces, Op. 57
Mikhail Glinka - Trio Pathétique
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50
‘I have known love only through the unhappiness it causes’, wrote the 28-year-old Glinka on the title page of his Trio pathétique. Later he found fulfillment in the music, culture and spiritual life of the Russian people. In so doing, he turned his back on chamber music, but this remarkably fresh and expressive work proved influential for his younger compatriots, including Tchaikovsky. Prone to extreme mood swings, Tchaikovsky wrote in 1880 that he could not bear the combination of piano with violin or cello. Only a year later, when his friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein died, he created a magnificent work for – piano trio! It ranges from profound grief in the first movement to joyous recollection in the finale, plunging back into desolation at the end. Piano miniatures by Lyadov act as worthy scene-setters for these two titanic trios.
IBERIAN RENAISSANCE
November 26, 2019
Leighton House Museum, London
Regina Freire, soprano
Tomás Matos, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Music by
Cláudio Carneyro
Claude Debussy
Federico Longas
Enrique Granados
Xavier Montsalvatge
The historic decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires hit a low point in 1898 when war between Spain and the United States over Cuba ended in humiliation for Spain and the loss of its last colonial possessions. Some blamed the US intervention on home-grown press sensationalism: according to legend, newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst cabled the illustrator Frederic Remington (whom he had sent to Cuba) saying, ‘You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.’ That same year, Britain (‘Perfidious Albion’) betrayed its oldest and most faithful ally by entering into talks with the German Reich about loaning money to Portugal, and dividing its remaining colonies between them if the loan could not be repaid.
In Spain, however, the shock of the 1898 defeat is credited with inspiring a cultural rebirth, though the glorious Catalan renaissance familiar to the world through the architecture of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the art of Ramon Casas, Santiago Rusiñol and the young Pablo Picasso, and the music of composers such as Albéniz, Granados and Montsalvatge had longstanding roots in Catalan separatism.
It has sometimes been claimed that the greatest Spanish music was written by Frenchmen (Bizet, Lalo, Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel). This may be true, but there was certainly a rich interchange of ideas between French and Spanish musicians in this period, with Debussy and the Catalan pianist Ricardo Viñes playing key roles in that process.
Portuguese culture is best known to the world for the melancholy genre of fado and for its brightly coloured azulejos (ceramic tiles). Its classical music is little known beyond its borders, and our concert will be an opportunity to discover some of its treasures.
HAUNTED MINDS
November 13, 2019
Italian Academy
Ariel Quartet
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Béla Bartók — String Quartet No. 1
Dmitri Shostakovich — String Quartet No. 8
Bartók’s First Quartet and Shostakovich’s Eighth show how both composers not only survived traumatic experiences but transformed them into music of inspirational nature. Profoundly hurt when rejected by violinist Stefi Geyer, Bartók turned inwards, weaving music from a ‘Stefi’ motif that passes from grief to energetic folk-inspired resolution. Half a century later, guilt-ridden at having been pressurized into joining the Communist Party, Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Quartet as a kind of epitaph for himself, filling it with quotations from his own works. Yet this is music that says ‘we’ as much as ‘I’, and its sense of urgent communication has made it one of the most popular of all twentieth-century chamber works. Both quartets reveal much about how confrontation with darkness can ultimately lead back to the light.
FLOWERS IN THE CONCRETE
October 29, 2019
Leighton House Museum
Philippe Quint, violin
Leonard Elschenbroich, cello
José Gallardo, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Alfred Schnittke — Suite in Old Style for violin and piano
Sergey Prokofiev — Sonata No.2 in D major, Op.94a
Dmitri Shostakovich — Trio No.2 in E Minor
Despite the devastation of World War Two and the oppressive rigidity of Stalin’s Communism, exquisite artistic flowers continued to bloom in Soviet Russia. Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata emerged just as the tide of war began to turn in Russia’s favour, but it breathes air from another, far happier world. Elegant, lyrical, witty, and serene, it holds out hope of what might lie on the distant borders of possibility. Thirty years later Alfred Schnittke reworked music from his film scores into his Suite in the Old Style, a touching evocation of eighteenth-century Classicism, beautiful, but as Schnittke deftly reveals, ultimately impossible. Shostakovich’s magnificent Second Piano Trio, however, looks the worst squarely in the face. War, tyranny, terrible suffering – it’s all here, yet this work offers another kind of hope: that music can help the tears of grief to flow, and perhaps even provide resolution.
SCHUBERT QUINTET
October 23, 2019
Italian Academy
Formosa Quartet
Peter Wiley, cello
Illustrated talk by Misha Donat
Franz Schubert — String Quintet in C major, D956
Schubert’s String Quintet belongs to the miraculous outpouring of music he composed in the year in which he died, at the tragically early age of thirty-one. By adding a second cello to the normal string quartet, Schubert was able to exploit dark and mellow sounds, and to have passionate melodies played by the first violin and first cello in parallel. The result is surely the most poignant of all his chamber works – one in which light and shade, drama and serenity are presented in constant alternation.
Like so much of Schubert’s output, the Quintet lay forgotten and unpublished for more than twenty years after his death. Schubert was by no means an unsuccessful composer – his songs and dances, in particular, were much in demand – but to us it seems incomprehensible that his contemporaries took so little interest in his large-scale works. Today, the String Quintet is rightly cherished as one of the peaks of the chamber repertoire as a whole.
MUSIC OF THE 18TH CENTURY GRAND TOUR
MAY 30, 2019
Bohemian National Hall
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
The Four Nations Ensemble
Illustrated talk by John Brewer
Music by
Jean-Baptiste Quentin
Johann Adolf Hasse
Antonio Vivaldi
Arcangelo Corelli
Battista Pergolesi
In the eighteenth century, it was customary for wealthy young men in Northern Europe to study Classical languages, history and culture. They would then take to the road to bring that education to life. After a taste of sophistication in Paris, they would cross the Alps to Italy, buying real and counterfeit Roman statues in Naples, Renaissance artworks in Rome and Florence, and fine glassware in Venice, and attending operas and concerts wherever they went. There were forbidden pleasures to enjoy as well: Venice was home to Carnival, casinos, masked women, and moonlit gondola rides. Historian John Brewer, author of The Pleasures of the Imagination, will lead us into the world of the Grand Tour and explain its historical and artistic importance. Meanwhile, inspired by the diaries of travelers such as Horace Walpole, Sir William Hamilton and Casanova, The Four Nations Ensemble has chosen a selection of works by Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Quentin, Hasse, and Corelli. Rich in sensual music, the program will provide all kinds of delights – except those offered by masked Venetians!
ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH: BEETHOVEN’S PUPIL AND PATRON
APRIL 17, 2019
Bohemian National Hall
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano
Korbinian Altenberger, violin
Na-Young Baek, cello
Illustrated talk by Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Beethoven — Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 96
Beethoven — Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 ‘Archduke’
The most significant of Beethoven’s noble patrons during his years in Vienna was Archduke Rudolph of Austria, youngest brother of the Emperor Franz. Beethoven began teaching Rudolph piano in around 1803–04, and the archduke later became his sole composition student. He was also the only one of his patrons whose financial support continued uninterrupted until the composer’s death. Beethoven generally scorned aristocrats, but it appears his relationship with Rudolph was different. In the composer’s own words, the archduke treated him ‘like a friend, not a servant’. Beethoven dedicated fifteen of his most important works to Rudolph (more than to any other individual), including the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos and, following the archduke’s appointment as a cardinal and then as Archbishop of Olmütz in 1819, the Missa solemnis. In this programme we present two of the chamber works dedicated to him – the Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 96 and the ‘Archduke’ Piano Trio, Op. 97. Join us as we explore Rudolph’s life and his unusual friendship with the great composer.
LOVE, FAITH & FATE
MARCH 19, 2019
Leighton House Museum
John Pumphrey, tenor
William Fu, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Music by Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Franck, Wagner and Verdi
An ambitious title, but one that encapsulates themes returned to again and again. The tone is set by the painting The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil (1855) by Ary Scheffer, where we’re introduced to dark, tempestuous themes with a strong but not always unambiguous erotic and religious light. Rachmaninoff’s brooding thoughts on death offer an opportunity for hope and redemption in the end, heard throughout the pieces Christ is Risen, Prelude in B flat minor, Op.32, No.2, Nye poi, krasavitsa, Prelude Op.32, No.8 in A minor, Prelude in B minor, Op.32, No.10, and Zdes' khorosho. On to Strauss, a devotee of Nietzsche, who preached a kind of determinism - fate in modern clothes - and a saccharine portrayal of delusions of religious consolation. In his earlier work, we also see portrayals of erotic love. For his music, we go to Liebe Hymnus, Fünf Klavierstücke, Op.3, No.1, and Cäcilie. Belgian born César Franck sought to use his music as a way out of an emotional quagmire with his music, and also as a consolation of faith. We hear that in Prelude Chorale and Fugue Op.21. And finally Richard Wagner, a man who hymned chastity and religious devotion in some of the most sensual music ever created. We end with his opera aria In Fernem Land from Lohengrin.
WHEN TCHAIKOVSKY MET BRAHMS…
MARCH 6, 2019
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin
Wu Qian, piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Tchaikovsky — Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42
Brahms — Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100
Grieg — Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45
Although Tchaikovsky and Brahms both wrote some of the most glorious, heart-warming melodies in the Romantic musical literature, they disliked each other’s music. Their first meeting might have gone badly had Grieg not also been present – somehow he managed to smooth things over and, with the added help of several bottles of wine, the two antagonists ended up getting on famously. So what might have happened if they’d managed to drop their guard and simply listen to each other’s music for what it was? Apart from bringing together three exquisite pieces, this concert could also be seen as an attempt at posthumous reconciliation. Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher begins with his original attempt at the slow movement of his Violin Concerto. How could the Brahms who wrote the Second Violin Sonata fail to be moved by it? And how could Tchaikovsky miss the soulfulness in Brahms’s long-breathed melodic writing? And between them – perhaps as in that first meeting – sits Grieg, his melodic talent as ardent and sweet-toned as Tchaikovsky’s, as finely formed as Brahms’s.
CLASSICAL VIENNA
JANUARY 23, 2019
Bohemian National Hall
Orion String Quartet
Alexander Bedenko clarinet
Illustrated talk by Elliott Forrest
Haydn — String Quartet in C major, Op. 50 No. 2
Mozart — Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581
Today, Haydn and Mozart are labeled ‘Classical’, but for a younger contemporary of theirs, the writer, composer, and critic E.T.A. Hoffmann, they were ‘Romantics’. What we now call the Classical Era was an age of ferment and transition. Vienna was a bastion of political and cultural reaction, but also an international city to which people flocked from far and wide, bringing with them contrasting attitudes and beliefs. This was the Age of Enlightenment, too, and intellectuals were challenging the authority of the throne or the pulpit, arguing that truth could only really be found by independent inquiry. The first stirrings of Romanticism, revolutionary thinking, and delight in disputation can all be heard in the chamber and instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart. But the ‘Classical’ label is not simply wrong. This was a period in which new musical forms were being perfected, in which Sturm und Drang was countered by an instinct for balance and elegance of proportion. The paradox of Vienna is also the paradox of its music.
2018
Mozart, Schumann & the Tales of Hoffmann
DECEMBER 5, 2018
Bohemian National Hall
Philippe Quint, violin
Grace Park, violin
Matthew Lipman, viola
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Zlatomir Fung, cello
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Damian Fowler
Mozart — String Quintet No. 4 in G minor, K516
Schumann — Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44
‘One hardly dares breathe when reading Hoffmann,’ said Schumann of the great writer in whose work the borderlines between dream and reality, art and life, the natural and the supernatural so often become blurred. From Hoffmann, Schumann borrowed the titles of some of his best-known piano pieces – Kreisleriana, Fantasiestücke, Nachtstücke – while the young Brahms signed some of his early compositions ‘Kreisler Junior’, in homage to the fictional musician created by the author. Hoffmann’s tales inspired ballets by Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker) and Delibes (Coppélia), as well as operas by Offenbach, Busoni (Die Brautwahl) and Hindemith (Cardillac). Hoffmann himself was also a composer, and his proto-Romantic opera Undine was praised by Weber. His influence as a writer, meanwhile, was felt as far afield as France, Russia and America, those who fell under his spell included Baudelaire (for whom he was simply ‘the divine Hoffmann’), Balzac and Maupassant, as well as Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Gogol, and Edgar Allan Poe.
BEETHOVEN. INTIMATE LETTERS
NOVEMBER 1, 2018
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Ariel Quartet
Illustrated talk by the Ariel Quartet
Beethoven — String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 1
Beethoven — String Quartet, Op. 131
Tonight we hear one of Beethoven’s earliest string quartets and one of his last. The six quartets of Opus 18 were published in 1801, and No. 6 is a high-spirited and warm-hearted piece. The first theme of the first movement starts with a conversation between the first violin and cello, and though the last movement contains a brief passage labelled La malinconia (‘to be played,’ he wrote, ‘with the utmost delicacy’) which looks forward to his later style, it also evokes a merry ballroom or country dance.
Twenty-five years later, ill, deaf, and desperately worried about his beloved nephew Karl, Beethoven finished Opus 131: seven movements to be played without a break. ‘A new manner of part-writing,’ he wrote to a friend.
Contemporary audiences were not ready for such music, which continues to inspire composers even today. Schumann recognised its genius. Opus 131, he said, stood ‘on the extreme boundary of all that [had] hitherto been attained by human art and imagination’. Schubert, too, understood its place in history. ‘After this, what is left for us to write?’ he asked. But most people, even other musicians, were bewildered. ‘We know there is something there,’ said one, ‘but we do not know what it is.’ Louis Spohr described the late quartets as ‘indecipherable, uncorrected horrors’.
Of all them, Opus 131 was Beethoven’s own favourite. He thought it his most perfect single work and dedicated it to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim in gratitude for his taking Karl into the army after the latter’s suicide attempt.
What was going on in the composer’s life when he wrote it? How did this lonely, haunted man perfect his extraordinary journey into the quartet form: a form full of conversation, human togetherness, social harmony and integration, which sums up the inter-relationship of different voices? How did he move from the Classical balance of Opus 18 to the grandeur, avant-garde daring and unspeakable sorrow of Opus 131? Join us as we explore the possible answers to these questions and more.
© Ruth Padel
ZEMLINSKY, JANACEK, DVORAK and their muses
OCTOBER 16, 2018
Bohemian National Hall
Zemlinsky Quartet
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Zemlinsky — Quartet No. 1
Janáček — String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters”
Dvořák — Love Songs
Love, requited or otherwise, can spark the creation of great music. In 1865, Antonín Dvořák’s feelings for Josefína Čermáková inspired the song-cycle Cypresses. His love was unrequited, but years later he arranged some of the songs for string quartet, creating a set of exquisite miniatures. Leoš Janáček was sixty-three when he fell for the much younger Kamila Stösslová; the String Quartet No. 2, ‘Intimate Letters’, is the last work he completed, but sounds like the music of a young man, overflowing with life and yearning. Alexander Zemlinsky’s later music explores his grief at losing Alma Schindler, but his First String Quartet – written shortly before they met – shows him in happier mood, unaware of the heartbreak to come.
FETE GALANTE: THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
MAY 17, 2018
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Four Nations Ensemble:
Kathie Stewart, flute
Olivier Brault, violin
Jaap Terlinden, viola da gamba and cello
Adam Cockerham, lute
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
Illustrated talk by Tav Holmes
Leclair — Second Musical Recreation
Clérambault — L'Isle de Délos
Devienne — Trio for flute, violin and cello in G minor
Telemann — Paris Quartet No.5 in A major
Out of the dark final years of the reign of Louis XIV came a new style of art characterized by freshness, elegance and sensuality. While Versailles was draped in the heavy fabrics of guilt and failure, penance and penitence, Antoine Watteau was breaking with tradition, creating the new genre of the fête galante. His delicate brushstrokes and mastery of color and nuance are echoed in the music of his contemporary François Couperin. As art historian Tav Holmes guides us through the unique, idealized world of Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, the Four Nations Ensemble and soprano Sherezade Panthaki will perform works of equally evocative beauty by Leclair, Clérambault, Devienne, and Telemann.
J.S. BACH. THE ART OF FUGUE
APRIL 12, 2018
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Fretwork
Illustrated talk by Richard Boothby
J.S. Bach — Art of Fugue
Counterpoint was a constant preoccupation throughout J.S. Bach's life and The Art of Fugue, one of his last works, was the culmination of this lifelong obsession. It has long been supposed that the composer's death interrupted its completion, yet recently other possibilities and theories have been suggested. Richard Boothby presents an illustrated performance with his group Fretwork, whose celebrated recording of this remarkable work is their best-selling album, and discusses some of the music's most intriguing features. The evening will conclude with an analysis of the final fugue and a performance of a possible reconstruction of its missing final bars.
WEIMAR: THE CRADLE OF MUSICAL TALENT
APRIL 19, 2018
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Sergey Antonov, cello
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Bach — Cello Suite No.1 in G major
Mendelssohn — Cello Sonata No.2 in D. major
Liszt — Piano Sonata in B minor
Whatever Weimar may have come to symbolize in the twentieth century, it was once a beacon of culture. In 1816, Grand Duke Carl August (1775—1828) defied the Congress of Viennas conservative absolutism and founded a liberal constitution in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The twelve-year-old Mendelssohn visited Weimar five years later, making a huge impression on the eminent writer Goethe, one of Carl August’s privy counselors. In 1842, Liszt was appointed court composer. Long before all this, Bach had served as court organist at Weimar. Alongside performances of some of these three composer’s finest instrumental works, this concert examines the Golden Age of a city that became a place of refuge in troubled times.
The Serpent in Paradise: Love and Rivalry, MADNESS AND Music
MARCH 14, 2018
Leighton House, London
Nina del Ser piano
Nela Šarić soprano
Pre-concert talk by Patrick Bade
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Schumann — Bunte Blätter (excerpts); Humoreske
Selection of songs by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Wolf and Brahms
Clara Wieck, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf all loved Robert Schumann, and all paid a price for their love. Clara married him, despite her father’s bitter opposition, then had to watch him slip repeatedly into mental torment. Brahms found himself welcomed as a son and hailed as a genius, but also witnessed Schumann’s final descent into madness. Wolf revered and imitated Schumann’s songs, but suffered a bruising encounter with Brahms that marked him for life. In a chilling echo of the fate of his and Brahms’s musical hero, he later tried to drown himself, then died in an asylum. Meanwhile Brahms and the widowed Clara developed an intense but enigmatic relationship of their own, one which held Brahms emotionally captive for the rest of his life. Yet from this turmoil came exquisite music. Schumann’s piano music, his songs and Clara’s, and those of Brahms and Wolf reveal the Romantic sensibility at its most tender, brilliant and finely tuned – a moving demonstration of how creativity can transform and transcend suffering.
TANEYEV AND ARENSKY: IN TCHAIKOVSKY'S SHADOW
FEBRUARY 7, 2018
Bohemian National Hall
Philippe Quint, violin
Ji In Yang, violin
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola
Brook Speltz, cello
Zlatomir Fung, cello
Alexander Kobrin, piano
Illustrated talk by Damian Fowler
Arensky — String Quartet No. 2 in A minor
Taneyev — Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30
Blazing stars such as Tchaikovsky risk eclipsing less sensational talents, but these more modest figures can have their moments of greatness too. Anton Arensky's Quartet, composed in memory of Tchaikovsky, is for an ensemble of single violin, viola and two cellos, giving the sound a haunting dark richness. Quotations from Orthodox chants and from Tchaikovsky's song 'Legend' suggest a prayer for the composer’s soul, but the outcome is joyous and celebratory. Tchaikovsky's pupil Sergei Taneyev is sometimes called 'the Russian Brahms'. He cherished Classicism and intricate counterpoint and set his face against populist emotionalism. His Piano Quintet is powerful and purposeful, however, and its sense of heroic determination is ultimately very moving.
2017
SCHUBERT: OCTET
DECEMBER 14, 2017
Bohemian National Hall
Ying Quartet
Joseph Anderer, horn
William Short, bassoon
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Brendan Kane, double bass
Illustrated talk by Misha Donat
Schubert — Octet
No piece by Schubert pays clearer homage to his greatest contemporary, Beethoven, than his Octet, one of his most irresistibly exuberant chamber works. It was commissioned by Count Ferdinand Troyer, amateur clarinetist and chief steward to Beethoven’s pupil and patron Archduke Rudolph of Austria. Troyer wanted a piece modeled on Beethoven’s Septet, Op. 20, and Schubert duly scored his music for an almost identical ensemble. He also mirrored Beethoven’s six-movement scheme, even prefacing each of the outer movements with a slow introduction. And as in the Beethoven, the work’s centerpiece is a set of variations. This being Schubert, the variation theme comes from one of his vocal compositions: a duet in a Singspiel he had composed at the age of eighteen.
TOLSTOY AND MUSIC: KREUTZER SONATA
NOVEMBER 16, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Mark Steinberg, violin
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano
Ariel Quartet
Illustrated talk by Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Beethoven — Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 Kreutzer Sonata
Tchaikovsky — String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11
Janácek — String Quartet No. 1 Kreutzer Sonata
Beethoven's ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ for violin and piano (dedicated to Rodolphe Kreutzer, a French violinist who never performed it) is the centerpiece of Tolstoy's disturbing and controversial novel ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’. The novel in turn inspired the Czech composer, Leos Janácek, to write his eponymous, intense and feverish first string quartet.
Tolstoy, deeply responsive to music, had a particular passion for folk music (the second movement of Tchaikovsky's First Quartet, based on a folk song from Tolstoy's childhood, brought tears to his eyes). However, he was highly selective about the works of Western composers. While Tolstoy admired Beethoven and was captivated by his music, he was also of the view that the composer had brought about the decline of musical art.
The musical narrative of Janácek's String Quartet No. 1, "Kreutzer Sonata", seems to mirror the unfolding marital tragedy of Tolstoy's novel, while the third movement of the quartet is modelled on the second theme of Beethoven's ‘Kreutzer Sonata’.
Join us as we explore the unique connections between music and literature, and witness music become, in Tolstoy's words, ‘a shorthand of feelings’.
HAYDN, BEETHOVEN, SCHUBERT: KINDRED SPIRITS
OCTOBER 26, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
The Endellion String Quartet
Illustrated talk by David Waterman
Haydn — String Quartet in G major, Op. 54 No. 1
Beethoven — String Quartet No. 12 in E flat major, Op. 127
Schubert — Quartettsatz in C minor, D703
This concert, featuring three exceptional works for string quartet, will explore the extent to which Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, whose lives overlapped in Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century, were kindred spirits. Schubert’s Quartettsatz, the first movement of an unfinished quartet, contains an achingly beautiful melody set off by an underlying sense of fear and tragedy. By contrast, Haydn’s G major Quartet, Op. 54 No. 1 reveals its composer at his most good-natured and genial, while also embracing a a slow movement of searching profundity. Beethoven’s Op. 127 is a work of radiance and lyricism whose second-movement variations encompass everything from playfulness to prayer.
WINDS OF CHANGE: VIENNA, ST. PETERSBURG, PARIS
MAY 17, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Benjamin Hochman, piano
Joseph Anderer, horn
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
William Short, bassoon
Anna Urrey, flute
Katherine Needleman, oboe
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Mozart — Quintet in E flat major for piano and winds, K452
Rimsky-Korsakov — Quintet in B flat major
Poulenc — Sextet for piano and wind quintet, Op. 100
Three masterpieces of the chamber wind repertoire by three epoch-making composers. Mozarts sublime Quintet, K452, in his own opinion the best work I ever composed, combines the essence of Viennese Classicism with the composer’s distinctive operatic magnificence. Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the five composers who made up St Petersburg’s Mighty Handful, brought his experience as an Inspector of Russias naval bands to bear on his writing for winds and brass. His exuberant and brilliantly colourful Quintet in B flat is all too rarely heard. The concert ends with Poulenc, leading member of Les Six, the unconventional group of composers active in 1920s Paris. All his flamboyant wit and wistful poetry is captured in the Sextet, Op. 100.
CLARA SCHUMANN: ARTIST AND MUSE
APRIL 19, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Stephanie Chase, violin
Sophie Shao, cello
Todd Crow, piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Robert Schumann — Five Pieces in Folk Style for cello and piano, Op. 102
Johannes Brahms — Sonata in G major for violin and piano, Op. 78
Clara Schumann — Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17
Virtuoso pianist and composer Clara Schumann (née Wieck) played many roles during the course of her life. As well as being one of the greatest performers of the 19th century, she was her husband Robert’s muse and creative partner. She also inspired and guided Brahms, who fell hopelessly in love with her as a young man, and maintained a professional relationship of the highest mutual respect with Mendelssohn. This programme presents works by Clara, and by two of the men to whom she gave her love, friendship and inspiration. Join us for an insight into the life of this remarkable woman.
VIRTUOSI: baroque to romanticism
MARCH 15, 2017
Leighton House, London
Theodora Raftis, soprano
Andrew Yiangou, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Arias from
Handel’s Almira and Rinaldo
Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro
Verdi’s Rigoletto
Liszt and Alabiev Selected vocal works
Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor
Composers throughout the ages have thrilled and delighted audiences with writing of virtuosic display, both vocal and instrumental. This programme takes in a range of dazzling works, from the ease and grace of arias from Handel’s Baroque operas Almira and Rinaldo and the Classical wit and charm of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, via the coloratura brilliance of Alabiev’s The Nightingale and Verdi’s ‘Caro nome’, to the ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ Romantic virtuosity of composer-pianist Liszt, whose breathtaking performances resulted in ladies fainting in the aisles and, on occasion, the composer himself collapsing at the piano. Join us at Leighton House for what promises to be a stunning recital from two rising stars on today’s music scene.
PRAGUE: CZECH ROMANTICS
FEBRUARY 23, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Arnaud Sussmann, violin
Michael Brown, piano
Illustrated talk by Nicholas Chong
Smetana — From My Homeland, Op. 128
Suk — 4 Pieces for violin and piano, Op.17
Janácek — Violin Sonata
Dvořák — Romantic Pieces, Op. 75
Smetana gave voice to the desire for independence of his fellow Czechs, so long yoked under the Habsburg Empire. Away from his triumphantly nationalist operas and tone poems, however, his quartets reveal the fevered imagination of an artist fighting for his sanity. His example inspired Dvořák to bring Bohemian and Moravian elements into his own warmly vivacious chamber music, creating an outpouring of dance and song. In this programme we look at the emergence of a new nationalist identity in the rising city of Prague as it cast off its Germanic traits, and explore the light and dark sides of two great Romantic composers.
ROMANTIC VIENNA
JANUARY 26, 2017
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Arnaud Sussmann, violin
Emily Daggett Smith, violin
Paul Neubauer, viola
Rafael Figueroa, cello
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Schubert — Arpeggione Sonata, D821
Brahms — Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34
From the time of Gluck in the mid-18th century to that of Mahler and Schoenberg in the early 20th, Vienna was the capital of musical capitals. Amongst the composers of genius drawn there were Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Lehár, not to mention such native sons as Schubert and Johann Strauss. Our programme presents works by Schubert and Brahms, both of whom composed in the traditional forms established by the Classical Viennese trinity of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but with very different results in terms of content. While Schubert’s music heralds the dawn of Romanticism, that of Brahms brings on its dusk.
2016
BACH AND MOZART: A LASTING LEGACY
OCTOBER 5, 2016
Italian Academy of Columbia University
Dmitry Sitkovetsky, violin
Dov Scheindlin, viola
Sergey Antonov, cello
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano
Illustrated talk by Paul Berry
Mozart — Prelude and Fugue in D minor for string trio, K404a No. 1
J.S. Bach — Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787-801 (arr. D. Sitkovetsky)
Mozart — Piano Quartet in E flat major, K493
When, in 1781, Mozart broke with his hated patron the Archbishop of Salzburg and settled in Vienna, he began to look to the future, but it turned out to be an encounter with the past that would particularly fire his creativity. At the home of Baron Gottfried van Swieten he heard and was deeply impressed by the music of his great predecessors Bach and Handel. This concert gives an insight into what Mozart learned from Bach in particular, and shows how, through the alchemy of genius, he transformed those lessons into something utterly personal and profoundly far-reaching. It is a chance to enter the unique mind of Mozart, and to hear some wonderful music by both master and disciple.
2015
BRITTEN AND SHOSTAKOVICH: A REMARKABLE FRIENDSHIP
JUNE 11, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
Aleksei Kiseliov, cello
Itamar Golan, piano
Illustrated talk by Iain Burnside
Britten — Cello Sonata, Op. 65
Shostakovich — Cello Sonata, Op. 40
The catalyst was ‘Slava’, the charismatic cellist Mstislav Rostropovich: at the height of the Cold War he introduced Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten to each other at the UK premiere of the former’s first Cello Concerto. Both were shy, but recognised a fellow artist, spiritually in sympathy. Britten’s immediate response was to pen his bold Sonata in C, in some ways a portrait of Slava, his courage, humour and suffering. Shostakovich’s own Sonata dates from the creative crucible of his pre-war years when he was learning to subvert conventional forms in emotionally powerful ways. Britten said of Shostakovich, ‘no one composing today has equal influence on me’. Shostakovich responded by dedicating his Symphony No. 14 to Britten.
SCHUBERT: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BEETHOVEN
JUNE 10, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
Ferenc Rados, piano
Illustrated talk by Misha Donat
Beethoven — Piano Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26
Schubert — Piano Sonata in D major, D850
Schubert composed his piano sonatas at a time when the genre was in decline, and public taste favoured much less demanding fare. Only the awe-inspiring figure of Beethoven was exempt from the appetite for what Schubert once dismissed as ‘miserable Mode-Waare’ (wretched fashionable stuff). As a composer of Lieder, dances and shorter piano pieces, Schubert had seen his fame spread far beyond the confines of Vienna, but when it came to compositions on a larger scale his ambitions were constantly thwarted. The extent of his artistic legacy was so little known to his contemporaries that the epitaph for his tombstone, written by Austria’s leading dramatist, Franz Grillparzer, lamented: ‘The art of music here buried a rich possession, but far fairer hopes.’ Beethoven’s funeral, some eighteen months before, had been a much more public affair, and Grillparzer had written an oration very different in tone: ‘The man who inherited and increased the immortal fame of Bach and Handel, of Haydn and Mozart, is no longer; and we stand weeping over the broken strings of an instrument now stilled.’
BAROQUE LONDON. MUSIC FOR COURT AND SALON
MAY 13, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
Rachel Podger director/violin
Brecon Baroque
Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore
Handel — Trio Sonata in D major, Op. 5 No. 2, HWV 397
Handel — Trio Sonata in G minor, Op. 2 No. 8, HWV 393
Handel — Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 1 No. 3, HWV 361
Geminiani — Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 4 No. 8
Purcell — 10 Sonatas in 4 parts: No. 6 in G minor, Z807; 12 Sonatas of 3 parts: No. 6 in C major, Z795; No. 3 in D minor, Z792
Boyce — Sonata No. 1 in A minor Avison - Sonata for harpsichord, 2 violins and cello in D major, Op. 8 No. 3
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries London was the most vibrant and cosmopolitan musical centre in Europe. Alongside music for theatre and chapel, a rich tradition of chamber music developed, whether for performance at court or in private salons. Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque, together with speaker Richard Wigmore, celebrate Baroque London’s musical pre-eminence in a programme of string sonatas ranging from Purcell’s intricate, inward-looking sonatas in 3 and 4 parts to the breezy tunefulness of William Boyce and Thomas Arne. En route they take in a flamboyant sonata by the expatriate Italian virtuoso Francesco Geminiani, and two captivating trio sonatas by Handel, the German émigré who inherited Purcell’s mantle as ‘England’s own Orpheus’.
WANDERERS: BYRON, LISZT AND BERLIOZ
APRIL 25, 2015
Leighton House Museum, London
Iakov Zats, viola
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Liszt — Années de pèlerinage. Première année: Suisse
Berlioz, arr. Liszt — Harold en Italie
The Romantic Age was a good time to be a sensitive, lonely misfit. After the success of Goethe and Byron’s writings, young men – and occasionally young women – dreamed of cutting their ties with cosy bourgeois security and wandering freely, searching for some kind of spiritual truth that might give purpose to their being. Not all of them found it: for some, the truth lying in wait was only painful disillusionment. Others, however, realised that, as Marianne Moore put it, ‘the cure for loneliness is solitude’. Franz Liszt’s first set of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) records what he found on his travels in Switzerland, the ‘images’ that ‘stirred deep emotions in my soul’. Berlioz’s symphony Harold in Italy (arranged by Liszt) shows Berlioz following in Harold’s footsteps, to the point where he could say, with Byron, ‘I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me’.
WINDS OF CHANGE: VIENNA, ST PETERSBURG, PARIS
MARCH 26, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Jasmine Choi, flute
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Timothy Rundle, oboe
Laura Vincent, bassoon
Geremia Iezzi, horn
Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore
Mozart — Quintet in E flat major for piano and winds, K452
Rimsky-Korsakov — Quintet in B flat major
Poulenc — Sextet for piano and wind quintet, Op. 100
Three masterpieces of the chamber wind repertoire by three epoch-making composers. Mozart’s sublime Quintet, K452, in his own opinion ‘… the best work I ever composed’, combines the essence of Viennese Classicism with the composer’s distinctive operatic magnificence. Rimsky-Korsakov, ‘chief architect’ of St Petersburg’s ‘Mighty Handful’, brought his experience as an Inspector of Russia’s naval bands to bear on his writing for winds and brass. His exuberant and brilliantly colourful Quintet in B flat is all too rarely heard. The concert ends with Poulenc, leading member of ‘Les Six’, the unconventional group of composers active in 1920s Paris. All his flamboyant wit and wistful poetry is captured in the Sextet, Op. 100.
BELLINI AND CHOPIN: WEEPING IN SONG
MARCH 2, 2015
Leighton House Museum, London
Gyula Rab, tenor
Aldemir Tokov, piano
Thomas Harris, piano
Yekaterina Lebedeva, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Chopin — Polish Songs: Op. 74 Nos. 1, 2 & 3
Chopin — Scherzo No. 3; Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2; Ballade No. 1
Liszt — Tre sonetti di Petrarca
Liszt — Sonetto di Petrarca No. 104; Paraphrase on Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’
Bellini — I puritani: ‘A te, o cara’
Verdi — Rigoletto: ‘Ella mi fu rapita! … Parmi veder le lagrime’
It was inevitable that the Sicilian Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), whose musical ideal was ‘weeping in song’, and the Polish-born Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49), who understood better than any other composer how to make the piano weep and sing, should sincerely admire one another. Both men died at an early age, but their quintessentially Romantic music, characterised above all by extended and expressive melodic lines, continued to exert an influence throughout the nineteenth century– one that can be heard in the work of such disparate composers as Verdi, Liszt and Wagner, and even in the later, verista operas of Giordano, Cilea and Orefice. This concert, in the sympathetic surroundings of Leighton House, will explore both the relationship between Chopin and Bellini and the far-reaching impact of their music.
BEETHOVEN. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF QUARTET MAKING
FEBRUARY 25, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
The Endellion String Quartet
Poetry by Ruth Padel
Beethoven — String Quartets, Op. 18 No. 6 & Op. 131
This concert features one of Beethoven’s earliest string quartets and one of his last. His Opus 18 was published in 1801, and No. 6 is a high-spirited and warm-hearted piece. Twenty-five years later, the composer completed his Opus 131: seven movements to be played without a break. Although the quartet received a mixed response from his contemporaries, Beethoven himself thought it his most perfect single work. What was going on in his life when he wrote it? How did this lonely, haunted man perfect his extraordinary journey into the quartet form, one full of conversation, human togetherness, social harmony and integration? How did he move from the Classical balance of Op. 18 to the grandeur, avant-garde daring and unspeakable sorrow of Op. 131? The Endellions perform the two quartets, framing readings by poet Ruth Padel of new works that meditate on the time and circumstances of their creation.
INFERNAL POWERS
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
Leighton House Museum, London
Danilo Mascetti, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Liszt — Grandes Études de Paganini, S141; 12 Lieder von Franz Schubert, S558 (selection)
Pabst — Illustrations of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Queen of Spades’ Stravinsky - The Firebird (excerpts)
Stellar composer-virtuosos Liszt and Paganini were both accused of being in league with the Devil. Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird includes a vivid portrayal of infernal powers, while Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades tells chillingly of a pact made between the living and the dead. Join us as Danilo Mascetti brings his own brand of magic to these scintillating scores.
BERLIN: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
JANUARY 24, 2015
20th Century Theatre, London
Rachel Brown, flute
Madeleine Easton, violin
Richard Boothby, viola da gamba
Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord
Illustrated talk by Norman Lebrecht
C.P.E. Bach — Sonata in D major for viola da gamba and harpsichord, Wq. 88
Benda — Sonata XI in D major for violin and basso continuo
Quantz — Trio Sonata in A minor, QV 2:Anh. 34
Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia — Sonata in C major for flute and basso continuo, SpiF 40
J.S. Bach — Trio Sonata in C minor from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
What makes Berlin a musical city? Is it the fact that it boasts ‘the world’s finest orchestra’, or the greatest number of world-class opera houses in one city, or the most diverse alternative music scene? Is it the combination of all three? Or maybe none of the above? In the opening concert of ASPECT’s spring season, Norman Lebrecht will discuss what it takes to be a musical capital and examine how Berlin went from garrison town to cultural hub. The history is more complicated than it seems. Award-winning harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani explores Berlin’s musical origins from the roots up: from Frederick the Great’s musical consolations, the musicians and great minds he gathered around him, and those he drove away. Where was J.S. Bach when Germany really needed him?
2014
SCHUMANN AND FRAURE: KINDRED SPIRITS
DECEMBER 4, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Philippe Graffin, violin
David Adams, viola
David Waterman, cello
Alasdair Beatson, piano
Illustrated talk by the performers
Schumann — Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63
Fauré — Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45
Gabriel Fauré came of age in a France fighting for its cultural identity. His own admired teacher Saint-Saëns led the charge in trying to create a non-Germanic music tradition, aided by Chabrier, D’Indy, then Debussy and Ravel. But it was also Saint-Saëns who introduced the young Fauré to the piano music of Schumann. A century later, Schumann’s music, alone among the German Romantics, sits naturally alongside French music, and finds a special resonance in Fauré’s own art, sharing its fluidity, inwardness and subtlety. Here, distinguished musicians Philippe Graffin, David Waterman and Alasdair Beatson illustrate the musical links between these two elusive artists, performing Schumann’s intense D minor Trio, and Fauré’s Second Piano Quartet, a work of rare, ecstatic expression.
PRAGUE: CZECH ROMANTICS
NOVEMBER 5, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Zemlinsky Quartet
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Iain Burnside
Pre-concert talk by Patrick Bade
Dvořák — Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81
Smetana — String Quartet No. 2 in D minor
Smetana gave voice to the desire for independence of his fellow Czechs, so long yoked under the Habsburg Empire. His quartets, however, are a world away from his triumphantly nationalist operas and tone poems: in them we encounter the fevered imagination of an artist fighting for his sanity. Smetana’s example inspired his compatriot Dvořák to bring Bohemian and Moravian elements into his own warmly vivacious chamber music, creating an outpouring of dance and song. In this concert, broadcaster and pianist Iain Burnside looks at the emergence of a new nationalist identity in the rising city of Prague as it cast off its Germanic traits and, together with the Zemlinsky Quartet, explores the light and dark sides of these two great Romantic composers.
PARIS: AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
OCTOBER 14, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord
Kati Debretzeni, violin
Richard Boothby, viola da gamba
Illustrated talk by Philipp Blom
Marais — La Sonnerie de Ste Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris (The Bells of St Genevieve)
Leclair — Sonata in C minor, Op. 5, No. 6 'Le Tombeau'
Rameau — Concerts Nos. 3 & 5 from the Pièces de clavecin en concerts
A. Forqueray — La Forqueray, La Leclair, La Rameau
from the Pièces de viole avec la basse continue
C.P.E. Bach — Keyboard Sonata in F sharp minor, Wq 52/4
Paris circa 1770: home to the brilliant philosopher, writer and chief editor of the Encyclopédie Denis Diderot ¬– one of the most courageous advocates of a radical, godless Enlightenment. He and other like-minded intellectuals would meet at the salon of Baron d’Holbach to discuss how best to lead lives of passion and empathy, to indulge in fervent debates about opera, and to listen to chamber music – Diderot himself saw music as a direct route into people’s hearts and minds.
In this concert, historian Philipp Blom, in company with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and friends, will investigate Diderot’s close relationship with music, interspersing period-instrument performances of chamber works by Marais, Rebel, Rameau, Forqueray and C.P.E. Bach – compositions that resonated through his life – with readings from his letters, essays and novels.
ALMA MAHLER: MUSE OR MONSTER?
OCTOBER 1, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Olivia Ray, mezzo-soprano
Ania Safonova, violin
Oleg Kogan, cello
Ronan O'Hora, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Alma Mahler — ‘Laue Sommernacht’ from 5 Lieder; ‘Der Erkennende’ and ‘Lobgesang’ from 5 Gesänge
Zemlinsky — ‘Irmelin Rose’ from Irmelin Rose und andere Gesänge, Op. 7
Gustav Mahler — ‘Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht’ and ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’ from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Zemlinsky — Three Pieces for cello and piano (1891)
Korngold — Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 1
It was the litany of lovers and husbands in what he described as ‘the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that it has ever been my pleasure to read,’ that inspired Tom Lehrer’s famous song about Alma Mahler, whose lyrics include the lines “Her lovers were many and varied, from the day she began her beguine. There were three famous ones whom she married, and God knows how many between.” Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel was not one of those celebrated beauties who retained her allure into old age. Colour film footage of her from the 1950s presents a raddled and formidable matron. In photographs taken of her in her prime, we can admire her flawless profile and magnificent bosom. Were these features enough to fascinate a small army of gifted men? In an evening of chamber music and songs, including some by the lady herself, we shall explore the enigma of Alma Mahler and the impact she had on the culture and music of her time.
SCHUMANN'S PIANO CYCLES AND THE NOVELS OF JEAN PAUL
JUNE 25, 2014
Leighton House Museum, London
Susan Tomes, piano
Illustrated talk by Robert Philip
Schumann — Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6; Papillons, Op. 2
The son of a bookseller and publisher, Robert Schumann was inspired as much by literature as by music. Of all the authors he esteemed, his favourite was Jean Paul Richter. He once wrote to a friend that, from Jean Paul ‘I learned more about counterpoint than from my music teacher’. What was it about this (now unfashionable) writer that so appealed to the young Schumann? And what was the nature of this ‘counterpoint’ that he learned from him? The music presented in this programme is intimately connected with Jean Paul, and in particular with his novel Die Flegeljahre (The Awkward Age). Between the two works, we will explore how Schumann brought the fantasy of Jean Paul together with his own emotional experience (particularly his forbidden relationship with Clara Wieck) to develop a unique character as musician and writer.
BARON VAN SWIETEN: PATRON AND MUSE OF THE CLASSICS
JUNE 3, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Alexey Lundin, violin
Alexei Kiseliov, cello
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
J.S. Bach — Cello Suite in G major, BWV 1007 (Prelude)
Handel — Violin Sonata in D major, HWV 371
C.P.E. Bach — Sonata No. 3 from Sonaten, Wq 57
Mozart — Violin Sonata No. 35 in A major, K526
Haydn — Trio No. 44 in E major, Hob. XV:28
In most music history books he’s a shadowy figure - if he’s mentioned at all. But without the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, key works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven would have sounded quite different. Which means that the influence of those three giants on the later development of western classical music would have been very different too.
Who was this mysterious but clearly crucial figure? By all accounts, Baron van Swieten was a mass of contradictions. Stiff in bearing, pompous and patronizing in his dealings with mere musicians, acutely, even comically aware of his own minor aristocratic status, he could also be generous, insightful and loyal. He not only paid for Mozart’s funeral, but provided much-needed financial help for the composer’s widow and children. He may have looked down his nose at Haydn and Mozart, but for their work he had nothing but respect, magisterially silencing anyone who had the temerity to talk during one of their performances.
Although his own efforts at composing were unimpressive, van Swieten’s recognition of the talents of others was unusually insightful. Apart from the three Viennese Titans, he also singled out Gluck and C.P.E. Bach. More importantly, he developed a very untypical passion for J.S.Bach and Handel, whose music was largely forgotten by the late Eighteenth Century. Van Swieten arranged and paid for performances of works by the baroque masters, and encouraged Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to play them, study them and imitate their contrapuntal skills. The results can be heard in the thrilling fugal ending of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, the colossal Grosse Fuge of Beethoven and the muscular polyphonic choruses of Haydn’s Creation - for which van Swieten also compiled the libretto. However there was more to all this than technique: what van Swieten felt he was offering these great composers was ‘food for the spirit and for the heart. And as those three above-mentioned masterpieces show, he was right.
SCHUMANN AND THE TALES OF E.T.A. HOFFMANN
MAY 21, 2014
Leighton House Museum, London
Todd Crow, piano
Illustrated talk by Misha Donat
Hoffmann — Sonata in F minor, AV 27
Schumann — Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Brahms — Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9
Busoni — Elegy No. 6: Erscheinung (Notturno)
Tchaikovsky — Concert Suite from the ballet 'The Nutcracker' (transcr. Pletnev)
‘One hardly dares breathe when reading Hoffmann,’ said Schumann of the great writer in whose work the borderlines between dream and reality, art and life, the natural and the supernatural so often become blurred. From Hoffmann, Schumann borrowed the titles of some of his best-known piano pieces – Kreisleriana, Fantasiestücke, Nachtstücke – while the young Brahms signed some of his early compositions ‘Kreisler Junior’, in homage to the fictional musician created by the author. Hoffmann’s tales inspired ballets by Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker) and Delibes (Coppélia), as well as operas by Offenbach, Busoni (Die Brautwahl) and Hindemith (Cardillac). Hoffmann himself was also a composer, and his proto-Romantic opera Undine was praised by Weber. His influence as a writer, meanwhile, was felt as far afield as France, Russia and America, those who fell under his spell including Baudelaire (for whom he was simply ‘the divine Hoffmann’), Balzac and Maupassant, as well as Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Gogol, and Edgar Allan Poe.
CLASSICAL VIENNA
MAY 1, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Maxim Rysanov, viola
Kristina Blaumane, cello
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Jacob Katsnelson, piano
Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson
Haydn — Piano Sonata No. 33 in C minor, Hob. XVI:20
Mozart — Clarinet Trio in E flat major, K498 ‘Kegelstatt Trio’ (for clarinet, viola and piano)
Beethoven — Duet for viola and cello in E flat major, WoO 32 ‘Eyeglass’
Beethoven — Clarinet Trio in B flat major, Op. 11 (arr. for viola, cello and piano)
Today, Haydn and Mozart are routinely labelled ‘Classical’. But for a brilliant younger contemporary of theirs, the writer, composer and critic E.T.A. Hoffmann, they were ‘Romantics’, and Beethoven was their natural successor. What we now call the Classical Era was an age of ferment and transition. When Beethoven was born in 1770, composers were liveried servants; by the time of his death in 1827, the composer had become an artistic hero, the true heir of the democratic, revolutionary Napoleon. Vienna registered this epochal change in its own paradoxical way. The capital of the centuries-old Holy Roman Empire was a bastion of political and cultural reaction. Yet it was also an international city, to which people flocked from far and wide, bringing with them contrasting cultural attitudes and beliefs. The shock waves of the French Revolution were registered in a variety of ways: secretly in Masonic lodges, and publicly in the subversive comedy of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. This was also the so-called Age of Enlightenment, in which intellectuals of many disciplines were challenging the authority of the throne or the pulpit, and arguing that truth could only really be found by independent enquiry, and tested by discussion with similarly independent minds.
The first stirrings of Romanticism, revolutionary thinking, the spirit of courageous enquiry and delight in disputation – all of this can be heard, long before Beethoven’s incendiary ‘Eroica’ Symphony, in the chamber and instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven himself. But the ‘Classical’ label is not simply wrong. This was an age in which new musical forms were being perfected, in which Sturm und Drang was countered by an instinct for balance and elegance of proportion. The paradox of Vienna is also the paradox of its music.
ENDELLION QUARTET. SEVEN LAST WORDS
MARCH 26, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
The Endellion String Quartet
Haydn — ‘Seven Last Words’, Op. 51
London Première of Poems by Ruth Padel
‘Seven Words and an Earthquake’
On Good Friday 1787, in the great Baroque cathedral of Cádiz, music by Joseph Haydn was performed during ten-minute intervals between the bishop’s meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. These Last Words refer to seven short utterances made by the dying Christ, taken from the Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, and Haydn wrote his music as a personal response to each of them.
In this concert, we present interspersed between Haydn’s movements not sermons, but poems, written and read by Ruth Padel in tribute to the interrelations, and tensions, created by the composer between word and music.
Each poem ends with the Word to which the ensuing music then responds. This first London performance of Padel’s haunting poems offers a uniquely tangible and contemporary vision of a historic scene, as a world-renowned string quartet and a multi-award-winning poet take us on an emotional journey which begins by attending to the needs of others – Forgiveness, Comfort and Relationship – and progresses through Abandonment and Distress to culminate in Fulfilment and Reunion.
TOLSTOY AND MUSIC: KREUTZER SONATA
FEBRUARY 6, 2014
20th Century Theatre, London
Dmitry Sitkovetsky, violin
Iain Burnside, piano
Zemlinsky Quartet
Illustrated talk by Iain Burnside
Beethoven — Violin Sonata No. 9, Op. 47 “Kreutzer Sonata”
Tchaikovsky — String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11 (2nd movement)
Janáček — String Quartet No. 1 "Kreutzer Sonata"
Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ for violin and piano (dedicated to Rodolphe Kreutzer, a French violinist who never performed it) is the centerpiece of Tolstoy’s disturbing and controversial novel, ‘The Kreutzer Sonata.’ The novel in turn inspired the Czech composer, Leoš Janáček, to write his eponymous, intense and feverish first string quartet.
Tolstoy, deeply responsive to music, had a particular passion for folk music (the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s first quartet, based on a folk song from Tolstoy’s childhood, brought tears to his eyes). However, he was highly selective about the works of Western composers. While Tolstoy admired Beethoven and was captivated by his music, he was also of the view that the composer had brought about the decline of musical art.
In ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, Tolstoy expresses his complex and controversial views on marriage and sexuality, focusing on the conflict between the main character, Pozdnyshev, and his unnamed wife, who plays Beethoven’s sonata with a spirited violinist. While she becomes impassioned by the music, Pozdnyshev, believing himself deceived, is overcome by a jealous rage and murders his wife.
The musical narrative of Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, seems to mirror the unfolding marital tragedy of Tolstoy's novel, while the third movement of the quartet is modelled on the second theme of Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’
Join us as we explore the unique connections between music and literature, and witness music become, in Tolstoy’s words, ‘…a shorthand of feelings.’
2013
ROMANTIC VIENNA. FROM DAWN TO DUSK
NOVEMBER 18, 2013
20th Century Theatre, London
Borodin Quartet
Alexander Bedenko, clarinet
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Schubert — String Quartet No. 14 in D minor "Death and the Maiden"
Brahms — Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115
From the time of Gluck in the mid-eighteenth century to that of Mahler and Schoenberg in the early twentieth, Vienna was the capital of capitals as far as music was concerned. If a composer could make it there, he truly could make it anywhere. Amongst the composers of genius attracted to the city were Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Lehar, not to mention such native sons as Schubert and Johann Strauss. In no other city was music quite so central to its life, or musical intrigues quite so poisonous! In our Romantic Vienna programme (the first of the three concerts devoted to Vienna) we shall be exploring the music and art of the Romantic period. We will present the music of Schubert and Brahms, the Romantic classics. Both Schubert and Brahms composed in the traditional forms established by the great classical Viennese trinity: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but the content of their music is highly Romantic. While Schubert's music (like that of the later Beethoven) heralds the dawn of Romanticism, that of Brahms brings on the dusk.
PROUST AND MUSIC: REAL AND IMAGINED
NOVEMBER 13, 2013
20th Century Theatre, London
Ebène Quartet
Ekaterina Derzhavina, piano
Anton Martynov, violin
Shani Diluka, piano
Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore
Beethoven — Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110
Saint-Saëns — Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75
Fauré — Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45 (1st movement)
Debussy — String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
Marcel Proust was one of the most musically responsive of writers. Hypersensitive and hyper-fastidious, he once wrote to his friend Gabriel Fauré that he was ‘intoxicated by his music’. Fauré in turn became one of the models for the composer Vinteuil in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Yet as Proust revealed, the inspiration for the ‘petite phrase’ associated with Swann’s love for Odette in the novel was not Fauré’s, but the ‘motto’ theme that pervades Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata in D minor.
Join us as we explore music associated with Proust in a programme that ranges from late Beethoven (one of the writer’s dearest loves) via the charming, rarely heard Saint-Saëns violin sonata, to the first movement of Fauré’s Piano Quartet in G minor inspired by the composer’s childhood memories (Proust would have approved), and finally, to Debussy’s revolutionary String Quartet of 1893, Proust’s favourite work by his favourite living composer.
MISIA: THE MUSE OF BELLE EPOQUE
SEPTEMBER 21, 2013
20th Century Theatre, London
Aleksei Kiseliov, cello
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Gabriel Fauré — Romance, Op. 69; Élégie, Op. 24; Papillon, Op. 77
Claude Debussy — Nocturne et Scherzo for Cello and Piano; Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor
Maurice Ravel — Le Cygne (arranged for Cello); Pièce en Forme de Habanera
Francis Poulenc — Cavatine from Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 143
Igor Stravinsky — Suite Italienne (after Pulcinella) for Cello and Piano
Misia Sert, née Godebska (1872-1950), was a muse and a patron to some of the most famous musicians, artists and writers from the Belle Époque 1890s through the 1930. According to Paul Morand, “She excited genius... through nothing but the vibration of her being.”
A talented musician in her own right, she studied piano under the composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). An enthusiastic performer of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, she was passionate about Debussy and Ravel. (Ravel dedicated his Le Cygne (The Swann) to her in 1906, and the symphonic poem La Valse (The Waltz) in 1920.) In the twentieth century, Misia’s musical tastes turned towards a new aesthetic represented by Satie, Stravinsky, Auric and Poulenc.
One of the most prolifically painted women of her time, Misia was portrayed by Vuillard, Bonnard, Vallotton, Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec and many others.
Join us to as we present the music of Belle Époque and beyond; become a part of our encounter with Misia, a woman, who by virtue of her magnetic presence alongside artists of her time, became a muse and an arbiter of taste for several decades.
GOETHE, HAFIZ AND THE LURE OF THE ORIENT IN SONG
MAY 22, 2013
Kings Place, London
Special appearance by François Le Roux, baritone
Benjamin Appl, baritone
Madeleine Pierard, soprano
Sanaz Sotoudeh, piano
Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore
Illustrated presentation by Ben Street
Schubert — 'Versunken', 'Geheimes', 'Du bist die Ruh'
Strauss — 'Gesänge des Orients', Op.77 (excerpts)
Schubert — 'Suleika I'
Mendelssohn — 'Suleika', Op.34 no.4
Wolf — 'Was in der Schenke waren heute', 'Trunken müssen wir alle sein!', Phänomen'
Ravel — 'Shéhérazade' (excerpts)
Saint-Saëns — 'Mélodies Persanes', Op.26 (excerpts)
Fauré — 'Les roses d’Ispahan', Op.39 no.4
The great Goethe, when in his sixties, fell under the spell of Hafiz, the 14th century Persian poet. Hafiz’s poetry inspired Goethe to create the ‘West-Östlicher Divan’ – a collection of love poems, epigrams and drinking songs. Goethe’s verses in turn inspired composers such as Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn, while poems of Hafiz were set to music by Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss. Join us as we explore Europe’s century-long love affair with the Orient through poetry, painting and song.
CLARA SCHUMANN: ARTIST AND MUSE
MARCH 6, 2013
20th Century Theatre, London
Sergej Krylov, violin
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Richard Wigmore
R. Schumann — Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 105
C. Schumann — Scherzo No. 1 in D minor, Op. 10
C. Schumann — Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22
Mendelssohn — Songs Without Words, Book 5, Op. 62
Brahms — Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78
Clara Schumann (Clara Wieck) - virtuoso pianist and composer, wife of Robert Schumann, mother, teacher, friend and inspiration to many of her contemporaries - played many roles during the course of her life. She became one of the greatest performers of the century alongside Thalberg, Chopin, Rubinstein and Liszt, the latter dedicating both his 1838 and 1851 editions to her as one of the finest contemporary pianists. Clara was Schumann's muse and musical voice, creative partner and interpreter of his work. As a celebrated performer, she was able to promote her husband’s works. Clara was the inspiration and guide for much of the music of Brahms, who fell hopelessly in love with her as a young man. As with Schumann, she shared in the genius of Brahms, who in his own words described his relationship with her as “… the most beautiful experience of my life, its greatest wealth and its noblest content.” Clara maintained an inspiring friendship with Mendelssohn, who had the highest regard for her as a musician, and dedicated some of his music to her. Clara, in turn, included at least one of Mendelssohn’s works in almost every recital she gave during her long career as a concert pianist. Along with Clara’s own music, this programme presents music composed by the men for whom she was friend, love, and inspiration. Join us to get a glimpse of the woman behind the Muse.
2012
AN UNATTAINABLE IDEAL: THE DILEMMA OF ROMANTICISM
May 1, 2012
Kings Place, London
Iakov Zats, viola
Vsevolod Dvorkin, piano
Illustrated talk by Ben Street
Works by Brahms, Schumann and Franck
Join us as we explore the Romantic dilemma of an Unattainable Ideal. In his pre-performance visual presentation, Dr. Markus Ophälders will examine the philosophical and cultural aspects of the Romantic era, its mentality, and its search for reason, form and liberty. And then you will be able to immerse in the true spirit of Romanticism through the music of Brahms, Schuman and Frank.
2011
LIGHTNESS OF BEING VS. INTENSITY OF PASSION
DECEMBER 6 and 7, 2011
Kings Place, London
New Russian Quartet
Leon Livshin, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Works by Mozart and Brahms
Mozart, the epitome of Classicism, and Brahms, the height of Romanticism... Join us as we go back in time, back to the original context in which the music was written, as we journey through each epoch represented respectively by Mozart and Brahms. Our discussion will focus on the philosophy, the spirit and the social context of their times, accompanied by images of the painting, decorative arts and architecture of each period.This thought-provoking event will inspire you, enhance your perception of music, and possibly even enLighten or imPassion your approach to life.
REFLECTIONS ON -ISMS IN MUSIC
JUNE 25 and 26, 2011
Southbank Center, London
Leon Livshin, piano
Illustrated talk by Patrick Bade
Works by Chopin, Schumann, Haydn, Ravel and Stravinsky
Classicism and Romanticism, Neoclassicism and Expressionism...
Exploration of Styles through Impressions in Music and Art.