We are very sorry to announce that Alessandro Fisher is indisposed and will not be able to give his lunchtime concert in the Leamington Music Festival this Sunday.
We are delighted, though, that mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston has been able to step in at such short notice.
Hailed “a rather special mezzo” by Music Web International, Helen is a young artist increasingly in demand in the UK and abroad.
She won first prize in the 2018 London Handel Singing Competition and was a finalist in the 2019 Grange Festival International Singing Competition, won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is a BBC New Generation Artist.
Helen was a founder participant of the Rising Star of the Enlightenment programme, working alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; a member of Les Arts Florissants Young Artist Programme (Jardin des Voix) for 2021/22; and is a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist.
This does mean a change to the advertised programme however, and so Helen will instead be wowing us with the following:
Felix Mendelssohn Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
Felix Mendelssohn Schilflied
Felix Mendelssohn Die Liebende Schreibt
Fanny Mendelssohn Im Herbste
Fanny Mendelssohn Nach Süden
Schubert Vier Canzonen D688
Nathan James Dearden the way we go
Rebecca Clarke Down by the Salley Gardens
Dilys Elwyn-Edwards The Cloths of Heaven
Joshua Borin Nature is Returning
Stephen Bick On His Blindness
£17.50| £12.50
(£1 children / students)
Rachmaninov Preludes Op 32
Tchaikovsky Album for the Young Op 39
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Andrey Gugnin was introduced to the Festival in 2019 by the violinist Tasmin Little and they launched it with a memorable concert. Three days later, Andrey gave a lunchtime concert which ended with a performance of Pictures at an Exhibition, which prompted an immediate standing ovation. He was invited back to repeat this work the following year and the following two, but the pandemic and bureaucracy intervened. He returns this year with important examples of Russian music before repeating the Mussorgsky, which will again lead us to the Great Gate of Kyiv.
Andrey studied at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory and soon after leaving began to win an impressive number of prizes in Vienna, Sydney, Zagreb and many others. Valery Gergiev invited him to appear with the London Philharmonic and Mariinsky Orchestras and he has performed in many of the world’s most important concert halls.
Concert generously supported by Peter Glanfield
£26 | £16
(£1 children / students)
Roman Kosyakov and Tanya Avchinnikova
four hands one piano
Mozart Sonata for Piano duet in D K381
Schubert Ave Maria D839
Glière Douze Morceaux Op 48
Rachmaninov Six Morceaux Op 11
Siberian pianist Roman Kosyakov was a Leamington Music Prize winner in 2019, and stepped in at the last minute to save the day last year giving a stunning concert to close the Festival with Ukrainian pianist Sasha Grynyuk. This year he teams up with his Belarusian wife, Tanya Avchinnikova, for a delightful afternoon duo concert.
Opening with a piece that Mozart regularly included in his own programmes when touring with his sister, Nannerl, as child prodigies, we follow his charm with some of Schubert’s characteristic warmth. Glière was born in Kyiv, of German and Polish descent, and this is a rare opportunity to hear these delightful pieces written in 1909.
Rachmaninov’s Six Morceaux Op 11 are an absolute must for this Festival programme. Written in 1894, they are among the best compositions of his youthful period following his studies at the Moscow Conservatory.
Generously sponsored by Maestro! Touring
£17.50 | £12.50
(£1 children / students)
Includes tea and cake served afterwards
Coffee Concert
Gemma Rosefield cello and Tim Horton piano
Beethoven Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” Op 66
Rachmaninov Vocalise Op 34 No 14
Rachmaninov Cello Sonata in G minor Op 19
Two of the Festival’s favourite musicians met as members of Ensemble 360 and, with Benjamin Nabarro, formed the Leonore Piano Trio which opens the Festival.
Gemma Rosefield and Tim Horton bring a gorgeous programme for a Coffee Concert on a Saturday morning starting with Beethoven’s witty and virtuosic variations on Papageno’s aria from The Magic Flute, which are followed by Rachmaninov’s haunting and beautiful Vocalise. His Cello Sonata, written in 1901 is surely the most romantic ever written for the instrument, and no Festival focusing on his works could be complete without it.
Concert generously supported by Jennifer Lorch
£17.50 | £12.50
(£1 children / students)
Includes coffee – available from 10.30am
Preludes, Nocturnes and Rhapsody
Bach/Busoni Chorale Prelude “Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” BWV639
Chopin Nocturne in E minor Op 72 No 1
Chopin Nocturne in E flat Op 9 No 2
Gershwin Three Preludes
Valentin Silvestrov Nocturne
Rachmaninov Prelude in G Op 32 No 5
Rachmaninov Prelude in G sharp minor Op 32 No 12
Grieg Notturno Op 54 No 4
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Unwind at the end of the first full day of the Festival with a glass of wine in this relaxed late-night concert.
Since winning First Prize at the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona, Viv has enjoyed an extremely varied career as soloist and chamber musician, performing with most major British orchestras and many leading chamber groups. Viv last appeared in our Festival back in 2018, and one of his many admirers – Howard Skempton – proposed his return with a programme like this for us to round off a truly Festival day. We are pleased to include music by Valentin Silvestrov, who was born in Kyiv but currently lives in Berlin.
Generously supported by Howard Skempton
£16 unreserved
(includes a glass of wine)
Michael Collins & Friends
Michael Collins clarinet | Corey Cerovsek and Akiko Ono violins | Rachel Roberts viola | Steffan Morris cello | Michael McHale piano
Stravinsky The Soldier’s Tale: Suite
Robin Holloway Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano Op 79
Bartók Contrasts
Prokofiev Overture on Hebrew Themes Op 34
Shostakovich Piano Quintet in G minor Op 57
Michael Collins is joined for the evening concert by three more friends – Rachel Roberts who is a regular visitor with Ensemble 360, plus the Canadian violinist Corey Cerovsek and Japanese violinist Akiko Ono – and they bring a programme which is true Festival fare. It includes another work by Robin Holloway, premièred by Emma Johnson in Malvern in 1994. Stravinsky effectively left Russia before World War One and wrote The Soldier’s Tale in Switzerland. Bartók left Hungary in 1940 for America where he composed Contrasts for Benny Goodman. Prokofiev, who was born in Ukraine, spent fifteen years in the USA and France before returning to Russia in 1933. He suffered, like Shostakovich, from the ideological demands of Communism but wrote many great scores. Shostakovich was eventually allowed to travel out of the USSR and his reputation has grown over the last fifty years. His Piano Quintet written in 1940 is a powerful masterpiece.
£26 | £16
(£1 children / students)
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
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
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 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