Tickets: £18/£15 (under-18s) including tea/coffee and cake
Celebrated cellist Adrian Brendel and pianist Christopher Glynn join the Berkeley Ensemble to bring the festival to a close with intimate chamber music from Vienna, including Schubert’s great C major string quintet and Mozart’s Kegelstatt trio. The concert will also feature the London premiere of festival patron Michael Berkeley’s At A Solemn Wake, dedicated to the memory of his late wife, Deborah Rogers.
Included in the ticket price are tea or coffee and cake, for a suitably Viennese flavour.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Kegelstatt Trio K498
Michael Berkeley – At a Solemn Wake
Franz Schubert – Arpeggione Sonata D821
Franz Schubert – Quintet in C major D956
Approximate finish 6.30pm
About the artists
One of the most versatile and original cellists of his generation, Adrian Brendel has travelled the world as soloist, collaborator and teacher. His early immersion in the core classical repertoire inspired an enduring fascination that has led to encounters with many fine musicians at the world’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls. His discovery of contemporary music through the works of Kurtag, Kagel and Ligeti in his teenage years opened a new and vital avenue that he continues to explore with huge enthusiasm alongside his passion for jazz and world music.
Adrian first studied the cello with William Pleeth, with whom he developed a deep attachment to chamber music. He then went on to study with Alexander Baillie and Frans Helmerson in London and Cologne, also frequently attending the masterclasses of Gyorgy Kurtag, Ferenc Rados, members of the Alban Berg quartet and his father Alfred Brendel. An acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s cello sonatas with his father is available on the Philips label, recorded during their recital tours of 2003/2004. Projects with contemporary composers and conductors during this time such as Kurtag, Thomas Ades and Peter Eotvos amongst many inspired him to cultivate new music in his concert programmes wherever possible. A recent three year project with Sir Harrison Birtwistle has led to premieres of his song cycle ‘Bogenstrich’ and a piano trio due for release on the ECM label in 2013. He also premieres York Hoeller’s cello concerto ‘Mouvements’ in January of the same year with NDR Hamburg alongside Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s ‘Canto di Speranza’.
In great demand as a recitalist and soloist, Adrian works with Aleksandar Madzar, Imogen Cooper, Till Fellner, Tim Horton and Kit Armstrong. His chamber music partners include Henning Kraggerud, Lisa Batiashvili, Lars-Anders Tomter, Andrej Bielow, Katharine Gowers and Alasdair Beatson to name a few. Over the last two years he has visited the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Verbier, Ernen, Salzburg, Sonoro, Enescu, Schubertiade and Ruhr international festivals, and is a frequent visitor to London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and many other important venues in Europe. He has performed concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, RSNO, SCO and many orchestras across Germany and eastern Europe. His annual visit to the International Musicians’ Seminar in Prussia Cove, founded by the late Sandor Vegh as a perfect environment for music-making, is of great personal and artistic importance.
Adrian is artistic director of the Plush festival, held every summer in Plush, Dorset since 1995. The programme is devoted to classical and contemporary chamber music, Lieder recitals, modern jazz, folk and world music concerts, featuring over 100 contemporary works and 200 musicians from around the world. The summer of 2012 saw performances of Nancarrow, Cage, Brett Dean, Birtwistle, Lindberg, Carter and Messiaen alongside Schubert’s trios, Janacek’s quartets, Beethoven and Brahms. Performers over the years have included Radu Lupu, Mark Padmore, Paul Lewis, Louis Lortie, Miklos Perenyi, Anthony Marwood and Lawrence Power.
Fortunately for an itinerant musician, travel is a passion for Adrian. He has participated in musical outreach projects as far afield as Bolivia, Argentina, Ukraine, Romania and east Africa in recent years, for example to present Baaba Maal’s Senegalese music festival from Podor for BBC Radio 4 in December 2012. He broadcasts regularly for radio stations around the world, most recently recording an album with Nils Wogram’s modern jazz group Root70 for Deutschlandfunk in October. Attempts to broaden his and the cello’s musical horizons have fostered projects with a range of different artists, more recently including Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Stian Carstensen, Patti Smith and Argentinian Bandoneonist Marcelo Nisinman.
Outside of his performing life, Adrian divides his time between south London, Berlin and Plush.
Christopher Glynn is a Grammy award-winning pianist and accompanist, working with leading singers, instrumentalists and ensembles in concerts, broadcasts and recordings throughout the world. He is also Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, programming around 60 events each year in the many beautiful and historic venues of Ryedale, North Yorkshire.
Described by The Times as having 'beauties and insights aplenty' and praised in Gramophone for his 'breathtaking sensitivity', Chris has performed with singers including Sir Thomas Allen, John Mark Ainsley, Sophie Bevan, Claire Booth, Susan Bullock, Allan Clayton, Lucy Crowe, Sophie Daneman, Bernarda Fink, Michael George, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Christiane Karg, Jonas Kaufmann, Andrew Kennedy, Yvonne Kenny, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Joan Rodgers, Kate Royal, Kathryn Rudge, Toby Spence, Bryn Terfel, Sir John Tomlinson, Robin Tritschler, Ailish Tynan, Roderick Williams, Catherine Wyn Rogers, Elizabeth Watts and many others.
He has also performed with instrumentalists including Julian Bliss, Andrej Bielow, Adrian Brendel, Michael Collins, Nicholas Daniel, David Garrett, Tine Thing Helseth, Daniel Hope and Steven Isserlis; with ensembles including the Elias, Heath, Fitzwilliam and Szymanowski Quartets, London Winds, Britten Sinfonia and Scottish Chamber Orchestra; and with choirs including The Sixteen.
Chris was born in Leicester and read music an organ scholar at New College, Oxford, before studying piano with John Streets in France and Malcolm Martineau at the Royal Academy of Music. His many awards include a Grammy, the accompaniment prize in the 2001 Kathleen Ferrier competition, the 2003 Gerald Moore award and the 2002 Geoffrey Parsons award.
Since making his debut at Wigmore Hall in 2001, Chris has performed in major concert venues and festivals throughout Europe and North America, and toured to Japan, China, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Russia and Canada. He has made over 20 recordings on labels including Hyperion, Decca, Erato, DG, Coro and Signum. He has also made many studio recordings and live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3.
Chris enjoys working with young musicians and is a Professor at the Royal College of Music, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, a coach for the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, and a course leader for the Samling Foundation. He has been an adjudicator for many international competitions.
Recent highlights include recording the piano soundtrack for the forthcoming film 'Altamira' (starring Antonio Banderas), the world premiere of a newly-discovered work by Mendelssohn on BBC Radio 4, performances at the BBC Proms, collaborations with the Richard Alston Dance Company and Rufus Wainwright, rediscovering the 'serious' songs of Donald Swann for a forthcoming CD, and 'The Passion' with The Sixteen and Streetwise Opera.
Future plans include a series of concerts entitled 'Songbooks' that he will curate for Wigmore Hall, Winterreise with Mark Padmore at the Endellion Festival, and a forthcoming CD of Grainger songs and piano pieces with Claire Booth. Chris will also join Toby Spence, Roderick Williams and Sir John Tomlinson for the first performances of new English translations he has commissioned from Jeremy Sams of Schubert's song cycles.
Hailed as ‘an instinctive collective’ (The Strad) the Berkeley Ensemble takes its name from two British composers of the last hundred years, father and son Sir Lennox and Michael Berkeley. It was formed in 2008 by members of Southbank Sinfonia, Britain’s young professional orchestra, with the aim of exploring the wealth of little-known twentieth and twenty-first century British chamber music alongside more established repertoire. It now enjoys a busy concert schedule performing throughout the UK and abroad, and is also much in demand for its inspiring work in education.
The ensemble’s flexible configuration and collaborative spirit has led to performances with leading musicians including Sir Thomas Allen, Richard Sisson, Gabriel Prokofiev and Nicholas Daniel. The group enthusiastically champions new music and has worked with composers John Casken and Robin Holloway. It was proud to premiere its first commission, Michael Berkeley’s Clarion Call and Gallop, in 2013 and featured the piece on its debut recording. Released in March 2014, the album was praised by Gramophone for ‘the vibrancy of the Berkeley Ensemble’s performance even compared with Dennis Brain and friends in [the Ferguson Octet’s] first recording.’
The ensemble is rapidly building a reputation for innovative and thought-provoking programming and in spring 2014 received official recognition with a Help Musicians UK Emerging Excellence award. Equally at home on the summer festival circuit and in the concert hall, the group has performed at the Latitude and Greenbelt festivals.
Taking its music to new audiences, most importantly through education work, is central to the ensemble’s activities. Its work in this area includes self-directed projects in addition to collaborations with Southbank Sinfonia, Merton Music Foundation and Pan Concerts for Children. The ensemble regularly coaches students in chamber performance at the University of York, is ensemble-in-residence at Queen Elizabeth School in Cumbria and Ibstock Place School in London and runs an annual residential chamber music course in Somerset.