2026 Programme
11–13 September
EVENT 1
Friday 11 September 1:00 – 2:00pm
Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate
Tickets £15 (Under 18’s and Students FREE)
Cello Recital
Tim Lowe (cello)
Katya Apekisheva (piano)
We welcome back Tim and Katya to open the 2026 festival with three pieces that are core to the cello repertoire; all of them tuneful and none more so than Chopin’s most important chamber music work, containing some of his most beautiful melodies.
Mendelssohn’s Variations Concertantes date from January 1829 shortly before his 20th birthday. The serene happiness of the theme recalls the halcyon days of his youth on the family’s large estate on the outskirts of Berlin.
The Variations were played during Felix’s first triumphant visit to London in the Spring of 1829. He was staying in the house of Moscheles, the great pianist, who sacrificed his dinner to help copy out the parts which were not ready. He could see that his prodigiously talented young German guest had written a little gem! There is the beautiful theme followed by eight variations and a coda.
Chopin’s Cello Sonata is by far the most important of his chamber works and the last piece to be published during his short lifetime. Chopin struggled to finish the piece, especially the first movement but the sonata was substantially completed in February 1847.The first public performance was given at the Salle Pleyel in Paris by Chopin and cellist Franchomme; but not of the whole piece because they missed out the first movement. The back story is that Chopin had just been through an acrimonious break up of his ten year partnership with Amantine Dupin better known as the novelist George Sands; he was ill with TB and homesick for Poland. It seems likely that the emotional load of playing the first movement in public was too much to bear.
In fact the first movement is an extraordinary ballade-like creation, There are four main themes, each begins lyrically, before growing to a passionate conclusion. The other movements are equally as inventive with some of Chopin’s most beautiful melodies before the energy of the finale returns us brusquely to the conflicts of the opening movement. Chopin ends, however, not triumphantly but (spoiler alert) on a tragic C minor chord, a far from joyous farewell.
Joy awaits us in the next piece Martinů’s Rossini Variations. They were composed in 1942 for the legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorsky while Martinů was living in exile in America to escape the Second World War. The work is based on the prayer-aria – ‘Dal tuo stellato soglio’ (from their starry throne) from Rossini’s opera Moses in Egypt. It is a light-hearted, virtuoso showpiece often using syncopated, folk-influenced rhythms. The opening theme certainly has an aria-like quality; graceful and with a sunny disposition and just a tint of humour - very Rossini.
EVENT 2
Friday 11 September 7:30pm
National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate
Tickets £20 (Under 18’s and Students FREE)
Concert by Festival Artists
Charlotte Scott,
Tim Crawford (violins)
Simone van der Giessen,
Lilli Maijala (violas)
Adrian Brendel,
Tim Lowe (cellos)
In this concert we bring all our string players on stage. Come and hear the cream of European string playing – an opportunity not to be missed!
It has now become customary to begin the concert at the NCEM with a Haydn string quartet, who through his genius invented the ‘modern’ string quartet creating an expressive ensemble which opened up the path to the future for so much chamber music. The six quartets of Op.20 are crucial in this process. Including these six from Haydn’s lifetime achievement of 68 quartets.
Joseph Haydn
String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4 (Hob.III:34)
In 1772 when he wrote the six revolutionary Op. 20 string quartets Haydn, age 40, had been Kapellmeister at the amazing palace of Prince Nicholas Esterházy for six years Among the musicians and friends with Haydn in the Esterházy orchestra were two excellent cellists, Joseph Weigl and an internationally famous player Anton Kraft. The orchestra’s virtuoso leader, Luigi Tomasini, was also a great friend. Having such high-class musicians meant that there was little technical constraint on Haydn’s compositional genius.
His discovery of what is obvious to us now but was entirely new then; that a string quartet has four independent voices, liberating the cello thanks to the virtuoso cellists in the orchestra. The technical facility of the players, Haydn’s extraordinary structural genius, his willingness to experiment, and a continuing maturing of his creative powers enabled him to explore the subtle development of his thematic material and above all its emotional impact.
Op. 20 No. 4, played in this concert, is the jewel in the crown – full of amazement; beautiful cello solos, serious and intense moments but in the final movements takes on a gypsy style - earthy, with jagged rhythms and a high speed chase to finish this exhilarating, iconic quartet (although - spoiler alert - Haydn ends the piece with a whisper).
Sergei Rachmaninoff
‘Romance’ from String Quartet No. 1 (Andante espressivo)
Sergei Rachmaninoff was the last of the Russian romantic composers in an extraordinary tradition that largely ended with the revolution of 1917. His extraordinary gift for lyrical melody may be found in abundance in his small output of chamber music, art songs, and choral music.
He twice attempted to write a string quartet but failed. He seemed to find it difficult to scale back to these smaller forces from his orchestral masterpieces. The Romance is the second movement from his first quartet written when Rachmaninoff was still a precocious student at the Moscow Conservatory, already recognized as a gifted composer and pianist. It dates from 1889 - 1890 when he was only 17.
Standing on its own the Andante espressivo is a beguiling miniature: graceful, wistful and colourful; a harbinger of his magnificently distinct voice as it matured especially in the works featuring the piano (monumental as well as miniature) of which he himself became the first great performer.
Felix Mendelssohn
String Quintet No. 2 in B flat major, Op.87
In the last decade of his brief life Mendelssohn juggled artistic exploits and obligations in London, Berlin, and Leipzig. He had a triumphant success with oratorio Elijah in Birmingham. For some respite from this schedule he moved his family to Frankfurt. More relaxed in the summer of 1845, he wrote his Second String Quintet, one of eight chamber works he composed in the 1840s, and one of his last. The Quintet holds several distinctions – not least that Mendelssohn chose not to publish it saying that it wasn’t good enough. The autograph score appears almost as a final draft, with very few markings, which deepens the mystery. Sometimes, though, the art is more important than the artist’s humility about it.
The piece as a whole is clearly a signpost to an evolving style, the growing pains of a composer freeing himself from contrapuntal writing and classical embellishments and pursuing more overt and dramatic expression. Only 36 when he wrote it and sad to say within two years Mendelssohn was dead, a life tragically cut short by a series of strokes and emotional heartbreak at the death of his sister Fanny a few months earlier.
Today the B flat Major Quintet is recognized as a masterpiece, for which we must surely be thankful.
EVENT 3
Saturday 12 September 1:00 – 2:00pm
Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate
Tickets £15 (Under 18’s and Students FREE)
Cello recital
Adrian Brendel (cello)
Adrian Brendel is one of the most versatile cellists of his generation. He travels the world playing, teaching, curating festivals. He is particularly passionate about new music and for many years had a close bond with the composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who wrote a collection of pieces dedicated to him. Adrian is a member of the Nash Ensemble of London and with the Nash and many other collaborators has recorded a wide range of music, not least Beethoven’s complete works for Cello and Piano with his father Alfred Brendel.
Imogen Holst (1907 – 1984)
The fall of the leaf (1963)
Imogen Holst lived under the shadow of her father, and of her beloved Benjamin Britten. But she had many talents of her own including composition. The fall of the leaf, written in 1963, is a set of three studies for solo cello based on a piece by Martin Peerson (c1572–1651) found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In the first variation, we can surely hear the gusts of wind swaying the trees, in the third the fallen leaves being blown hither and thither. The gently falling intervals of the melody imbue Imogen’s piece with an autumnal melancholy while leaves fall and swirl…
J. S. Bach
Cello Suite No 2 in D Minor BWV 10081
Prelude – Allemande – Courante – Sarabande – Menuet I-Menuet II – Gigue
These great masterpieces were written when the history of the cello was in its relative infancy. That the six suites survived at all is something of a miracle. There is no autographed manuscript and the surviving source is a copy taken in 1730 (about a decade after their likely date of composition) by Anna Magdelena, Bach’s second wife. We do not know exactly when Bach wrote them, nor why, nor for whom; but they date from the early 1720s when Bach held the post of Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold at Cöthen.
There were several court cellists who could have tackled these complex suites, most likely Christian Bernhard Linike who we know played them. At any rate, the suites—seemingly the earliest works written for solo cello in Germany—exploit the potential of the cello more fully and more satisfyingly than any work since. And like many mysterious works of art whose genesis remains unexplained, they retain the aura of a miracle.
The idea of the 'suite' existed, of course, before Bach. It consisted of a stylised cluster of dances - Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue - and to these Bach added newer dance forms - the Minuet, Gavotte and Bouree. When combined with the introductory Prelude Bach demonstrated what could be achieved by taking an innovative approach to blending the conventional and the new. The mixture of dance types and the choice of key are both clear indicators that Bach intended to give each suite a distinct character in the context of the whole cycle.
The second suite contrasts with the joyous first because the overwhelming mood of the piece is one of profundity and sadness, apparent immediately the suite begins in D minor. The Prelude has a song-like quality to it. Indeed the whole suite has a very ‘vocal’ feel. As the great Russian cellist Rostropovich put it, “When I play the second suite I feel like a singer.” Steven Isserlis goes further and suggests that – without undermining the abstract purity of the music - the cycle of six suites represent passages in the story of the Passion of Christ. The Second Suite takes us to the Garden of Gethsemane; a tender and lonely meditation, ending with a foreshadowing of the Crucifixion. The Sarabande is the saddest moment of the whole cycle, seeming to be like someone kneeling in rapt prayer.
EVENT 4
Saturday 12 September 7:30pm
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York
Tickets £20 (Under 18’s and Students FREE)
Concert by Festival Artists
Charlotte Scott,
Tim Crawford (violins)
Simone van der Giessen,
Lilli Maijala (violas)
Adrian Brendel,
Tim Lowe (cellos)
Katya Apekisheva (piano)
With all our players on stage at some point during the evening we invite you to hear two of the greatest chamber music masterpieces in a concert full of passion, an abundance of memorable melodies, and brilliance of piano writing. Hear also the only movement of Gustav Mahler’s chamber music that survives, Mahler in embryo, on the cusp of giving birth to massive symphonies that reshaped Western music.
Felix Mendelssohn
Piano Trio No 1 in D minor Op 49
After a gap of almost 10 years, in 1837 Mendelssohn returned to writing chamber music working on a set of three String Quartets while on his honeymoon. (!) The D minor Piano Trio followed soon after in 1839. It was an immediate success. Schumann loved it: ‘This is the master trio of our age, as were the B flat and D major trios of Beethoven and the E flat trio of Schubert in their times…’ The quintet is the composer at the height of his powers balancing classical elegance with restless nineteenth century ‘Sturm und Drang’.
After Mendelssohn had finished it, he showed it to the composer Ferdinand Hiller, a long-time friend of Liszt and Chopin. Hiller thought the piano part somewhat old-fashioned. Stung by this criticism Mendelssohn rewrote the entire piano part, making it less conventional in style – virtuosic and much more difficult to play.
The cello’s wonderful opening theme would seem leisurely if it were not for the piano’s agitated chords underneath it. The second movement is a lovely ‘Song without Words’ led by the piano. The fast scherzo is fiendish difficult for the pianist, with the opening motif constantly thrown from instrument to instrument, as if the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are at play. The finale is to be played ‘passionately’ but unexpectedly the cello launches into another of Mendelssohn’s sweeping melodies.
It is difficult to disagree with Schumann’s assessment of this gloriously tuneful work: ‘This is the master trio of our age’.
Gustav Mahler
Piano Quartet (movement) in A minor - Nicht zu schnell (not too fast)
The only surviving authenticated composition from a list of possible student compositions by Mahler, the Piano Quartet in A minor (first movement and thirty-two measures of a scherzo) was found in a folder in the early 1960s by Mahler’s widow Alma Mahler. Young Gustav began work on the Piano Quartet towards the end of his first year at the Vienna Conservatory when he was age 16. The piece had its first performance on July 10, 1876, at the conservatory with Mahler at the piano, but it is unclear from surviving documentation whether the quartet was complete at this time.
Listening to this quartet movement is an experience of listening to Mahler ‘in embryo’: his funeral marches, Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) energy, his gift for long aching melodies that would eventually define his 10 symphonies…the emerging sound world and imagination of a career that would reshape Western music.
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet in C minor Op 60.
Brahms instructed his publisher, Simrock, to print the cover of the score of the C minor piano quartet with a man in a blue coat and yellow breeches – the archetypal Romantic hero, Werther, who shoots himself in the last chapter of Goethe’s novel because of his anguished and unrequited love for a married woman. In reality Brahms is talking about his relationship with Clara Schumann. After Robert’s death in 1856.they decided not to marry - but their love never diminished. Most of Brahms’ music was composed for Clara and she and the violinist Joachim would nearly always be the first people to see his scores.
For twenty years the unfinished C sharp minor Piano Quartet remained in the composer’s drawer. In 1873–4 Brahms took up the work afresh and radically revised it, the tonality dropping by a semitone, as the Piano Quartet in C minor Op 60. It is believed that Brahms recomposed the original finale to make it the scherzo; a new finale replaced it, and almost certainly the Andante is new.
The key of C minor was for Brahms, as for Beethoven, the key of intensity, drama and restlessness. Indeed the first movement’s opening pitches us into a whirlpool of Romantic tribulation. Later on the andante begins with one of Brahms’ most luxuriant cello melodies, growing into a rapt duet between the cello and the violin, with a dangerously passionate side to it! The finale is also stormy with much romantic fervour. So the Quartet could be taken as a musical illustration of Goethe’s novel Werther. The abrupt final cadence is clearly Werther pulling the trigger!
EVENT 5
Sunday 13 September 3:00 – 4:30pm
St Olave’s Church, Marygate Lane
Tickets £20 (Under 18’s and Students FREE)
Concert by Festival Artists
Charlotte Scott,
Tim Crawford (violins)
Simone van der Giessen,
Lilli Maijala (violas)
Adrian Brendel,
Tim Lowe (cellos)
In the final concert of this year’s York Chamber Music Festival we play two iconic string quintet masterpieces. Beethoven – going deaf, refused in marriage – breaks out into radiant, powerful music, almost symphonic. Brahms, however, is out in the Alpine country. It’s spring. Content with his successful career he writes sunshine music.
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quintet in C Major Op. 29
Apart from the ailing Haydn, Beethoven, in the early 1800s was the undisputed master-composer of Europe. Uneducated (“I do everything badly except compose”), rough-mannered, but with an alluringly intense personality and of undoubted musical genius. He managed to secure the patronage of Vienna's cosmopolitan aristocracy who enthusiastically purchased his chamber works.
He arrived in Berlin on a concert tour, there as a pianist – his improvisations and performances of his own works had audiences gasping. But fate played its part because by the turn of the century he realised his deafness would in time put paid to performing. What to him appeared to be his greatest disaster was for our sakes gain because as his outer-ear faded so his inner-ear quickened.
His hope of domestic happiness also faded when his admiring 17-year old pupil Countess Giulietta Guicciardi declined to marry below her social station. Needless to say the 30 year-old Beethoven was at a very low ebb. In his String Quintet in C Major, however, there is no evidence of anguish. Rather than the overt tragedy found in his later works, his Quintet radiates a sophisticated, powerful energy, pushing the boundaries of chamber music toward something much more ‘symphonic’ in scope. It represents a composer at a crossroads: honouring the classical grace of the 18th century while simultaneously preparing to tear it down.
The String Quintet is a work of immense scale, foreshadowing the ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets and the great symphonies notably the Eroica that were to define the future of classical music.
Johannes Brahms
String Quintet in F major, Op. 88.
Brahms was a fierce self-critic and quite calculating in terms of what and when he published. He destroyed more chamber music scores than he published and so what is left it is a finely honed collection of 26 works. Within this collection his two string quintets enjoy a special regard.
In 1880 Brahms first visited the resort of Bad Ischl in the lovely Salzkammergut region east of Salzburg, an area of mountains and lakes widely famed for its enchanting Alpine scenery (and in more recent years the site of the filming of The Sound of Music). It became a favoured site for the summer retreats from the bustle and heat of Vienna. His two string quintets were both written there.
It is perhaps symptomatic of Brahms’s Classical orientation that both quintets follow Mozart’s example of adding to the string quartet ensemble a second viola rather than (as in Schubert’s C major Quintet) a second cello which has the effect of allowing the first violin to soar from a beautiful foundation. He famously told his friend Clara Schumann that this was one of his finest works, and it’s easy to hear why - it balances a sunny, pastoral disposition with a mastery of form that only a mature composer could achieve; Brahms captured the mood by writing ‘in the spring of 1882’ on the score; hence it is sometimes known as the ‘Spring Quintet’.
There are few, if any, more capriciously exciting moments in Brahms’s output.
Keep the festival alive!
Please consider donating as much as you feel you can.
