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Michael Collins & Friends (1 of 2) – Friday 28 April

Michael Collins & Friends
Michael Collins clarinet | Steffan Morris cello | Michael McHale piano

Robin Holloway   Romanza & Scherzo
Glinka   Trio pathétique in D minor
Brahms   Clarinet Trio in A minor Op 114

 

Michael Collins has been delighting audiences in and around Leamington for many years and he comes with some of his many musical friends to contribute to the 2023 Festival with its various connections. Michael McHale is Michael Collins’s regular accompanist and Steffan Morris is the cellist in the Castalian String Quartet.

In the first of the six works programmed to celebrate Leamington-born composer Robin Holloway’s 80th birthday, Michael plays the Romanza & Scherzo that Robin was invited to write for Michael’s 60th birthday and which Michael premièred at the Wigmore Hall last year. Glinka wrote this Trio in 1832, four years before his opera A Life for the Tsar, after which, with Ruslan and Ludmila, found him described as the founder of Russian national music. The Trio by Brahms, like his Clarinet Quintet, was inspired by the playing of Richard Muhlfeld and is one of the masterpieces for this combination of instruments.

£17.50 | £12.50
(£1 children / students)

Leonore Piano Trio – Thursday 27 April

Leonore Piano Trio
Benjamin Nabarro violin | Gemma Rosefield cello | Tim Horton piano

Rachmaninov   Trio élégiaque No 1 in G minor
Arensky   Piano Trio No 1 in D minor Op 32
Tchaikovsky   Piano Trio in A minor Op 50 ‘In Memory of a Great Artist’

 

The Leonore Piano Trio has become one of the firm Festival favourites for our audience. Established in 2012, the Trio appears regularly at the Wigmore Hall and other major venues, and their recordings – as with the two Piano Trios by Arensky – are highly praised.

The 2023 Festival is launched with an early work of 1892 by Rachmaninov, and his other monumental Trio (of 1907) features in the lunchtime concert on Monday. Arensky’s First Piano Trio (1894) was dedicated to the celebrated Russian cellist Karl Davidoff, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio (1881-2) was written in memory of his great mentor, Nikolai Rubinstein.

Concert generously supported by Peter Robinson in memory of Gillian

£26 | £16
(£1 children / students)

Roman Kosyakov and Sasha Grynyuk (piano)

Roman Kosyakov and Sasha Grynyuk piano

Mozart   Sonata K570
Prokofiev   Sonata No 1 Op 1
Purcell   Ground in C
Liszt   Variations on ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’
Mozart   Andante and Variations in G major K501
Schubert   Fantasy in F minor D940
Dvorak   Slavonic Dances Op 46

A powerful piano recital ends the 2022 Leamington Music Festival – a Russian and a Ukrainian pianist in harmony.

Generously supported by Peter Glanfield

Tickets: £25 reserved centre | £17 unreserved sides

Roderick Williams (baritone) & Paul Cibis (piano)

Roderick Williams baritone and Paul Cibis piano

When I was One and Twenty

We simply couldn’t mark RVW’s 150th year without including a performance from Roderick Williams, the current master of English Song.

This superb programme has something special for everyone with music by Chopin, Schubert and Schumann, alongside RVW, Rebecca Clarke, CW Orr, and Leamington-born composer William Denis Browne who was at Cambridge with RVW and was killed at Gallipoli.

Generously supported by Michael & Halldóra Blair

Tickets: £17 reserved centre | £12 unreserved sides

Rachel Mahon (organ)

Rachel Mahon organ

Director of Music, Coventry Cathedral

Rachel Laurin   Toccata from Symphony No 1
Parry   Chorale Prelude on “Martyrdom”
JS Bach   Prelude & Fugue in C minor BWV546
Whitlock   Scherzo & Paean from Five Short Pieces
Vaughan Williams   Prelude on ‘Greensleeves’
Bales   Petite Suite
Widor   Adagio & Toccata from Symphony No 5

A whirlwind programme for our annual Bank Holiday organ recital of music spanning five centuries, which features Preludes, Fugues, and Toccatas from the very greatest composers for the instrument.

Generously supported by the Friends of All Saints Music

Free entry | Retiring collection

Emma Johnson (clarinet), Raphael Wallfisch (cello), John Lenehan (piano)

Emma Johnson clarinet
Raphael Wallfisch cello
John Lenehan piano

Beethoven   Trio in B flat Op 11 ‘Gassenhauer’
Beethoven   Cello Sonata in C Op 102 No 1
Vaughan Williams   Six Studies in English Folksong for Clarinet
Simpson   Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano

We welcome three of the UK’s most distinguished musicians back to Leamington for a little bit more of Ludwig who was so short-changed in 2020 thanks to the pandemic.

A sprinkling of RVW from the clarinet leads us on to Leamington-born composer Robert Simpson’s Trio which should have been played in last year’s Festival celebrating his centenary year. Raphael Wallfisch champions Simpson’s music and his father, Peter, played the piano in the Trio’s première in 1968.

Generously supported by Jennifer Lorch and Paul & Jane Watts

Tickets: £25 reserved centre | £17 unreserved sides

Organ Recital – Christopher Cromar

Christopher Cromar organ

Vaughan Williams   Prelude & Fugue in C minor
Howells   Psalm Prelude Op 32 No 1
Howells   Sonata for Organ (1st mvt): Vivo, energico ed agitato
Simpson   Eppur si muove

A Festival Feast of English music.

Generously supported by Dr J Fenlon, Dr Sara Liptai and Mrs N Kohler

Free entry | Retiring collection

Lynn Arnold & Charles Matthews – four hands one piano

Lynn Arnold & Charles Matthews – four hands one piano

Vaughan Williams   Suite
Maconchy   Preludio, Fugato and Finale
Ravel   Mother Goose Suite
Tovey   Waltzes
Bliss   Rout
Howard Skempton   Plain Sailing
Howard Skempton   Première of new work
Benjamin   Jamaican Rumba

A concert of music for four hands on one piano is a first for Leamington Music, but who could resist such an eclectic but exciting programme?

Howard Skempton celebrates his 75th birthday this year and commissioning a new work from him to mark the occasion was an absolute must!

These two wonderful pianists have a mutual passion for English music and this is the perfect platform for them to share it with us as we celebrate RVW and his inspirations.

Tickets: £17 reserved centre | £12 unreserved sides

Sinfonia of Birmingham with Michael Seal (conductor) and Nicholas Daniel (oboe)

Sinfonia of Birmingham

Michael Seal conductor

Nicholas Daniel oboe

Vaughan Williams   The Wasps Overture
Parry   An English Suite
Vaughan Williams   Oboe Concerto in A minor
Vaughan Williams   Symphony No 5 in D

No Festival celebrating RVW’s music could be complete without his Concerto for Oboe and Strings – written in 1944 and all too often woefully overlooked. We are delighted to welcome Nicholas Daniel, the UK’s premier oboist, to shine a much-deserved light on this beautiful work in the central concert of our five-day Festival.

Associate CBSO conductor Michael Seal directs the Sinfonia of Birmingham which last appeared in the area as part of the Warwick & Leamington Midsummer Music Festival last June and is quickly gaining a reputation with our audiences for its lively and exciting performances.

A quintessential reminder of the influence on RVW’s music by his teacher, Hubert Parry, appears in the form of another rare gem – Parry’s English Suite for Strings – but it is RVW who occupies centre stage in this concert as we take advantage of having a full symphony orchestra in our Festival for one night only!

Unreserved Tickets: £25 front nave | £17 rear nave