2024 Programme
13 – 15 September 2024
EVENT 1
Friday 13 September 2024 1.00pm – 2:00pm
Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate
Tickets £15 (18 and under free)
'Cello Recital
Tim Lowe ('cello)
Andrew Brownell (piano)
Nadia Boulanger
Trois Pièces for 'Cello and Piano (1914)
Claude Debussy
Sonata for 'Cello and Piano (1915)
Gabriel Fauré
'Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 117 (1921)
The festival opens with a French themed 'cello recital. Nadia Boulanger’s Trois Pièces (1911) range from dreamy lyricism to the simplicity of a folk song and finishing with an upbeat flourish.
As the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe in 1914 Debussy was seriously ill with cancer but feeling it was his patriotic duty to compose. The sonata is infused with progressive, twentieth century harmonic language which often ventures into exotic modes and the dreamy, time-altering magic of the pentatonic and whole tone scales. Yet under the surface lies a nostalgic classicism.
Fauré like Debussy was physically frail. He was totally deaf when he wrote his last major works. He was 76 but what grips us immediately about this cello sonata is its youthfulness and exuberance. For anyone less spiritually centred than Fauré these final years would have been a time of frustration but from his silent world he shares with us moments of transcendence.
EVENT 2
Friday 13 September 7.30pm
National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate
Tickets £20 (18 and under free)
Concert by Festival Artists
Ben Hancox,
Magnus Johnston (violins)
Gary Pomeroy,
Simone van der Giessen (violas)
Marie Bitlloch,
Tim Lowe ('cellos)
Haydn
String Quartet in C Major Op. 33 No. 3 (‘The Bird’)
Tchaikovsky
String Quartet No 1 in D Major Op. 11
Dvořák
String Quintet in E flat major, Op. 97
Three composers with a genius for great tunes and a wonderful sense of the open air…
After a break of ten years Haydn returned with renewed enthusiasm to writing string quartets. The six new Op. 33 quartets toy with convention, surprise and delight us. He uses the title "Scherzo" - Italian word meaning ‘joke’- and there is indeed a lot of humour in these quartets. Op. 33 No. 3 Is known as ‘The Bird’ for good reasons!!
In 1871 Tchaikovsky decided to supplement his modest income from teaching and journalism by staging a concert of his own works in Moscow including this new String Quartet. No.1 in D major. It was an unqualified success showing the composers gift for melodic invention.
While in America, Dvořák took his family on summer vacations into the countryside in Iowa. It was here, at Spillville, that he wrote masterpieces, among his finest works, embodying his intense love of chamber music, his mastery of the intricacies of the classical form and above all his revolutionary commitment to folk melody which gives his music such a passionate emotional impact; joy unbounded.
EVENT 3
Saturday 14 September 2024 1.00pm – 2:00pm
Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate
Tickets £15 (18 and under free)
Flute, 'Cello and Piano Trio Recital
Sam Coles (flute)
Tim Lowe ('cello)
Andrew Brownell (piano)
“From Classical to Romantic”
Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826) (arr. Hummel)
Overture to Euryanthe
The genius composer Hummel was a contemporary of Beethoven and Mozart. Apart from his own brilliant music he enjoyed arranging large works for small groups to meet the market for amateur players. Here he arranges the Overture to Weber’s opera Euryanthe. Weber’s original brilliant orchestration is served surprisingly well by this arrangement; full of operatic character and tuneful.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Adagio, Variations and Rondo on a Russian Theme, Op 78
Writing variations based on a well-known tune has always been a familiar form of composition and Hummel’s facility for improvisation plays to this. Here he uses a folk song and creates a series of wonderfully tuneful composition highlighting each instrument’s singing qualities.
Carl Maria von Weber
Trio in G minor, Op 63
The operatic master completed this masterly trio in 1819. In it we sense the Romantic era in the air. There is here a preference for composing display pieces for soloists, like operatic divas singing their hearts out in this wonderfully varied, joyful and above all tuneful piece!
EVENT 4
Saturday 14 September 2024 7.30pm
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York
Tickets £20 (18 and under free)
Concert by Festival Artists
Ben Hancox,
Magnus Johnston (violins)
Gary Pomeroy,
Simone van der Giessen (violas)
Marie Bitlloch,
Tim Lowe ('cellos)
Andrew Brownell (piano)
Claude Debussy (arr. Lenehan)
Prélude to the Cantata La Damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel)
Debussy read Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem The Blessed Damozel (1850) and had an idea to compose a short cantata.. The synopsis is simple. “From the heights of paradise, leaning on a golden barrier, a young girl laments the absence of her lover. On Earth, the latter believes he feels her presence.”
Debussy shows us his wonderful gift for fleeting moments of sensuality. The Prélude to the cantata is brilliant realized in this arrangement for piano and strings by John Lenehan.
Gabriel Fauré
String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121
Sensing the end of his life – he was ill and by the time he wrote his Op 121 Fauré was deaf – sharing the same fate as Beethoven and like him this ethereal almost other-worldly string quartet wells up from within the depth of his silent world. Fauré shares with us his serenity as he faces the end of life. He speaks to us in the freedom of this knowledge, liberated from all pretence. A gift to us all.
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25
The Piano Quartet in G Minor is one of the first works of Brahms’s unique flowering, freed from the shadow of Beethoven. It is a work of huge proportions and despite its quite congenial surface has an inner story with everything constructed on thematic material that is without precedent in chamber music. Schoenberg describes this method of composition as preparing the way for atonality. Brahms’s epic Piano Quintet covers a musical canvass with a clarity and newness that had not been heard before.
EVENT 5
Sunday 15 September 2024 3:00pm
St Olave’s Church, Marygate Lane
Tickets £15 (18 and under free)
Concert by Festival Artists
Ben Hancox,
Magnus Johnston (violins)
Gary Pomeroy,
Simone van der Giessen (violas)
Marie Bitlloch,
Tim Lowe ('cellos)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
String Quintet in C minor, K 406
Mozart in the final years of his short life struggled with money. The String Quintet in C minor, K 406 is the composer's own arrangement of a Wind Serenade, K. 388, for two oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoon designed to be advertised alongside two original quintets with the aim of repaying some of his debts. Such is Mozart’s finesse with the transcription that without knowing the back story it would not be apparent that the quintet was not in its original form. It is a somewhat moody piece. But its inner complexity comes to a joyful open air ending.
Johannes Brahms
String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18
The dominance of Beethoven in virtually every genre was so complete that no composer could escape comparison to the departed master. The young Johannes Brahms felt this very acutely; he destroyed three quarters (75) of his chamber music until he found this own voice which he knew lay within. One solution was to use instrumental groups Beethoven didn’t touch. When Clara Schumann heard it she remarked, “It was even more beautiful than I had anticipated, and my expectations were already high.” Spared the burden of Beethoven’s ghost, the new sextet – and its young creator –scored a success. It is one of his most glorious works; tuneful, colourful and inventive. Above all using the six voices with creativeness and melding them into a wonderful ochre acoustic - a wash of sunset sound.
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