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.
