Archive for: Live Concert

This concert is repeated on 6 August 2022 and 27 August 2022.

Bach Brandenberg Concerto No.3 
Bach Double Violin Concerto 
Vivaldi The Four Seasons

Ruth Rogers director

If this is your first experience of the world of Baroque music you can do no better than Bach’s famous ‘Brandenburg’ Concertos, or possibly his most popular orchestral work the Double Violin Concerto with its sublime slow movement. But Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons surely needs no introduction with each of the four movements painting an evocative picture of the seasons. In just one concert you will hear some of the best of Baroque performed in what is arguably the most perfect setting for the music, within the beautiful architecture and acoustic of St Martin’s.

Vaughan-Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto
Elgar The Spirit of the Lord
Coleridge-Taylor Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast
Richard Cooke conductor
Fenella Humphreys violin
Benjamin Hulett tenor
Royal Choral Society
Croydon Philharmonic Choir

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Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a household name in the early twentieth century thanks to popularity of his biggest hit Hiawatha. Every summer for some 30 years, thousands of people descended on the Royal Albert Hall for ‘Hiawatha Season’; a dedicated two-week stint of Coleridge-Taylor’s immense choral work, sung by the Royal Choral Society.

Born in Holborn and raised in Croydon, Coleridge-Taylor was regarded, by Elgar no less, as the most talented composer in Britain. So why don’t we hear more about him today? Joined by the Croydon Philharmonic Choir and the Royal Choral Society in their 150th year, this concert celebrates all things Coleridge-Taylor, including an exploration of his Croydon connections, his experience as a black composer in Edwardian London and a delve into the context of the original Hiawatha text and its depiction of native American culture.

In this concert, which includes Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto, we reimagine Hiawatha for a modern audience, surrounding it in music from Coleridge-Taylor’s contemporaries – Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

Who is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor?

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 to an English mother and a Sierra Leone Creole father whom he never met. He was named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and raised in Croydon by his mother. His maternal grandfather was a violinist who saw the young Coleridge-Taylor’s talent and encouraged him to enrol at the Royal College of Music. He won a scholarship, beating out Gustav Holst amongst others, and began studying as a violinist before switching to composition.

He was deeply involved with African-American networks, counting amongst his friends W. E. B. Dubois, Frederick Loudin, Booker T. Washington and Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose poems he set to music. In works such as ‘Symphonic Variations on an African Air’, he sought to integrate the melodies of African-American spirituals within the classical music tradition. Like Brahms, Dvořák or Grieg, Coleridge-Taylor was participating in the nineteenth-century trend of musical nationalism.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor died at 37 of pneumonia. Despite his popular successes, he had been prevented from reaping the financial rewards. With public support, a memorial concert was held at the Royal Albert Hall which raised significant funds for his family. His widow Jessie was granted a pension from the king and the Performing Rights Society was established to ensure composers were paid adequately for their works’ success. Later, his daughter became a composer-conductor and his son worked to ensure his father’s music was performed after his death.

An incredible tempest, a massive boat and an angry God take centre stage in this imaginative re-telling of the biblical story of Noah, his family, and their unlikely cargo of animals as they fight for survival for 40 long days and nights on the ark.

Based on the fourteenth century Chester Miracle Play, Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde was conceived as a community opera, to be performed by children with one or two adult speaking parts. The work has become a firm favourite, combining the naïve sincerity and humanity of the medieval original with inventive musical material that is as accessible as it is joyful.

London Mozart Players
Simon Blendis leader
Noye Alex Ashworth
Mrs Noye Kate Symonds-Joy
Will Vann conductor
With the combined choirs of Christ Church and Holy Trinity Schools, Trinity Boys School and Old Palace School
Thanks to Men in Sheds Penge and SJUN Hive

London Mozart Players
Jess Gillam saxophone
Ruth Rogers director

23-year-old saxophone superstar Jess Gillam has wowed audiences with her dazzling virtuosity ever since the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition. She joins the London Mozart Players at Deal Festival for an evening that balances Mozart and Haydn with Marcello’s baroque trills and Glazunov’s lyricism. Don’t miss an extraordinary night of music making!

Haydn Symphony No. 44 in E minor (‘Trauer’)
Marcello Concerto in C minor for soprano saxophone
Glazunov Concerto in E flat major for alto saxophone Op. 109
Mozart Symphony No.29 in A, K.201

Martin James Bartlett piano/conductor
Ben Johnson tenor
Alec Frank Gemmill horn

Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Mozart Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major Jeunehomme
Britten Young Apollo
Britten Serenade for tenor, horn and strings

Since winning BBC Young Musician 2014, Martin James Bartlett has built an international reputation for the wit and colourful range of his playing. In this programme, he explores the idea of youth, exploring Benjamin Britten as a young composer, but also encapsulating his own growth as a musician, pianist and conductor, and looking back to the young Mozart’s first unequivocal masterpiece – the sparkling Jeunehomme (or Jenamy) concerto.

London Mozart Players
Jess Gillam saxophone
Ruth Rogers director

23-year-old saxophone superstar Jess Gillam has wowed audiences with her dazzling virtuosity ever since the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition. She joins the London Mozart Players at the Festival of Chichester in the exquisite surroundings of Chichester Cathedral for an evening that balances Mozart and Haydn with Marcello’s baroque trills and Glazunov’s lyricism. Don’t miss an extraordinary night of music making!

Haydn Symphony No. 44 in E minor (‘Trauer’)
Marcello Concerto in C minor for soprano saxophone
Glazunov Concerto in E flat major for alto saxophone Op. 109
Mozart Symphony No.29 in A, K.201

London Mozart Players
Simon Blendis (director/solo violin)
Jeff Moore (conductor –Take Time)
musicians from Create Music

Mozart Symphony No. 29
Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending
Bartok Romanian Dances
Bacewicz Concerto for String Orchestra: II. Andante, I. Allegro
Jeff Moore Take Time

This year marks Vaughan Williams’ 150^th anniversary, and the elegiac The Lark Ascending perfectly showcases his work. Full of nostalgic, lyrical melodies, it evokes glorious images of the English countryside, with the violin taking the role of the lark, soaring ever higher on a silver chain of sound. LMP leader Simon Blendis takes the solo spot for this most popular of works.

The tempo changes with Bartok’s Romanian Dances, an upbeat arrangement of folk tunes from Transylvania, bringing the colourful variety of Romanian villages to the Sussex coast. Staying with the Eastern European theme we move to Poland for two movements from Grazyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra, which combines Polish folksongs with neoclassicism, drawing on the classical greats for inspiration. LMP’s preferred ‘classical great’ is Mozart, and his Symphony No. 29 is the perfect choice for LMP’s spring seaside sojourn! It’s a gem, full of light-hearted charm and elegance, designed to entertain and delight.

But the work which may stay longest in the memory is Jeff Moore’s epic Take Time, a rousing and exuberant work designed to bring together musicians of all ages, abilities and experience, from near-beginners to professional players. Young musicians from all over Sussex will join the LMP to play this exciting work, in a performance which is bound to be truly memorable!

Cecilia McDowall Shipping Forecast
Grace Williams Sea Sketches
Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony

London Mozart Players
Joanna Tomlinson conductor
Constanza Chorus
Eleanor Dennis soprano
Matthew Brook bass-baritone

Constanza Chorus is delighted to be joined once again by the London Mozart Players at Cadogan Hall for a performance of Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, during the 150th anniversary year of the composer’s birth. This choral symphony sets poems by Walt Whitman in a folk-inspired epic masterpiece.

The nautical theme is continued in Cecilia McDowall’s Shipping Forecast and Grace Williams’ Sea Sketches.

Constanza Chorus, under Music Director Joanna Tomlinson, has previously performed with the London Mozart Players and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at Cadogan Hall, and sung Mass at St Peter’s Basilica, Rome and Thomaskirche, Leipzig.

Mozart Serenata Notturno
Telemann Horn Concerto
Cecilia McDowall Off the Ground
Arnold Horn Concerto No. 2
Coleridge-Taylor Four Novelletten

London Mozart Players
Ben Goldscheider horn
Ruth Rogers director

London Mozart Players, in association with Orchestras Live, returns to Suffolk with an adventurous programme of music for horn and strings, including a world premiere written especially for soloist Ben Goldscheider – rising star and BBC Young Musician brass champion.

Composers across the centuries have written music for the French horn, with Telemann one of the first to explore its unique solo sound. His adventurous Concerto for horn and strings is the perfect piece with which acclaimed soloist Ben Goldscheider can show off his prowess on the instrument. Goldscheider is destined for stardom – ‘one of our youngest and most succulent horn players’ said The Times. Malcolm Arnold’s outstanding second horn concerto, written for Dennis Brain in 1956, requires superb cantabile playing of the soloist, something that Ben delivers with every performance.

Alongside works for the French horn, LMP’s strings get their moment in the spotlight. Mozart’s Serenata Notturno is a delightful serenade for two orchestras – one of solo violins, viola, and double bass, and the other of strings and timpani – that marries formal dignity with a romantic minuet, and shows off Wolfgang’s more playful side. The dance theme continues with Coleridge-Taylor’s Four Novelletten, a brilliantly-crafted series of four dance-like pieces that recall Elgar and Dvorak. And to top this off is Cecilia McDowall’s inventive and invigorating Off the Ground. Buckle up for a musical whirlwind!