ESO Open 2017 Shirehall Sunday Series with Vivaldi, Bach and Telemann featuring Academia Musica Choir

4 February, 2017

For Immediate Release

ESO Open 2017 Shirehall Sunday Series with Vivaldi, Bach and Telemann featuring Academia Musica Choir

ESO Artist-in-Association, bass-baritone and cellist Matthew Sharp

The English Symphony Orchestra, hailed as the International Orchestra of Elgar Country, kick off their 2017 series of very popular Shirehall Sunday concerts at 3:30 Pm on the 19^th of February with a programme of Baroque favourites by Bach, Vivaldi and Telemann. The ESO are joined on this occasion by the outstanding Scholars Choir of Hereford Sixth Form College, Academia Musica, and a top-flight team of local and national soloists, including Lucy Bowen, Caitlin Prowle, Emma Curtis, Jon Weller and Matthew Sharp. The concert will be conducted by the ESO’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Director, Kenneth Woods.

The Academia Musica choir continue to go from strength to strength. In addition to their weekly evensongs at Hereford Cathedral, a number of exciting concerts are planned for 2017. Aryan Arji, Director of Music of Academia Musica said, ‘It is a privilege to perform on a regular basis with this great orchestra with whom we now have a well-established partnership.”

Kenneth Woods, Artistic Director, says the relationship between the ESO and Academia is a special one. “Since we first started working together a few years ago, the ESO and Academia Musica have collaborated on several really important projects- tours to London, world-premiere performances. They’re a wonderful, spirited and polished choir, and there’s always energy when we work together. Doing this very uplifting music of Bach and Vivaldi promises to be a particularly rewarding collaboration.”

The ESO are one of the region’s most active proponents of music education, offering regular orchestral courses in addition to the work they do in partnership with regional music hubs and groups like Academia Musica, which give young musicians a chance to perform as colleagues with leading professionals. Hereford audiences can sample the achievements of the ESO Youth Orchestras and young guest musicians from around Herefordshire in a free pre-concert youth performance at 3PM. The assembled youngsters will showcase the result of their recent work on ESO courses with a performance including the world premiere of a new work written just for them by the ESO’s acclaimed composer-in-association, Philip Sawyers, conducted by James Topp.

In addition to their busy concert schedule and work in support of music education as Orchestra in Residence of Herefordshire, the ESO also present an uplifting series of dozens of concerts in care homes and hospices across the county, bringing the comfort of live music to people living with dementia.

2016 was a landmark year for the ESO. The orchestra is currently enjoying a major artistic resurgence, having recently released their first full-length CD in over 10 years- a recording of Krenek Piano Concertos which won a string of five-star reviews and landed on the Sunday Times Best Recordings of 2016 list. 2016 also saw the release of the ESO’s recording of the Elgar Piano Quintet as arranged for symphony orchestra by Donald Fraser- a recording which became Disc of the Month on Classic FM and a one of the year’s best-selling CDs. Other highlights of 2016 include winning Classical Music Magazine’s “Premiere of the Year” accolade for the second year in a row and a stream of international broadcasts.

[ENDS]

PROGRAMME INFORMATION

Sunday 19 February 2017 at 3:30 PM

Hereford Shirehall
Part of ESO Shirehall Sundays

English Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Woods- Principal Conductor

Academia Musica Choir- Aryan Arji, director

Lucy Bowen- soprano
Caitline Prowle- soprano
Emma Curtis- contralto
Jon Weller- tenor
Matthew Sharp (ESO Artist-in-Association)- bass-baritone

Programme:

Vivaldi- Gloria RV589

Telemann-Ouverture-Suite, ‘”Burlesque de Quixotte”

‘Bach- Cantata no. 140 “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”

TICKETS- https://esobachintown.eventbrite.co.uk/

Book by phone via Worcester Live- 01905 611427

£18/general admission, £22/premium seating, £5/children age 5-18

Booking charges may apply

More about the ESO: http://eso.co.uk/

More about Kenneth Woods: http://kennethwoods.net

More about Matthew Sharp: http://www.matthewsharp.net/

More about Emma Curtis: http://www.emmacurtis.com/

Interview requests, additional materials and images: Melanne Mueller <melanne@musiccointernational.com>

December 12, 2014

America’s March Toward Freedom

18 June, 2014
ESO Chamber Music
Magna Carta Celebrations at Worcester Cathedral
8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA

Samuel Barber-“Dover Beach” for Baritone and String Quartet
Kile Smith- “Plain Truths” for Baritone and String Quartet
Antonín Dvořák- String Quartet in F Major “American”
Matthew Sharp, Baritone

BOX OFFICE: ON SALE SOON
Our celebrations of Magna Carta continue with a programme looking at the evolution of freedom in the United States. Kile Smith has been regularly hailed as one of the greatest American composers of our time- his song cycle Plain Truths is a richly observed portrait of life in the small town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, from Revolutionary rumblings through the Emancipation movement of the 1850’s-60’s through to the modern day. Dvořák’s beloved “American” Quartet was first published with a different title—a word now considered a racial slur. Dvořák’s inspiration was to highlight the musical riches of African-American culture and the complexities of the Black experience. American cellist Kenneth Woods introduces this fascinating programme featuring the ESO’s newest artist-in-association, Matthew Sharp.

— Music by Kile Smith: “Spectacular, profoundly contemporary”—Gramophone | “Ethereally beautiful, magnificent”—Fanfare | “Breathtaking, spellbinding”—Philadelphia Inquirer | “Profoundly direct emotional appeal”—Audiophile Audition | “Almost preternaturally beautiful”—Philadelphia City Paper

September 29, 2013

ESO Programme Notes Online- Hans Gál Concertino for Cello and Strings

Hans Gal (1890-1987)

Concertino for Cello and Strings, opus 87

Hans Gál was born in the small village of Brunn am Gebirge, just outside Vienna. He studied with some of the foremost teachers in Vienna, including Richard Robert for piano (teacher of Rudolf Serkin , Clara Haskil and George Szell) and Eusebius Mandyczewski for composition, who had been a close friend of Brahms. In 1915 he won the K. und K. (Royal and Imperial) State Prize for composition for a symphony (which he subsequently discarded). In 1928 His Sinfonietta (which was to become his ‘First Symphony) won the Columbia Schubert Centenary Prize. The next year, with the support of such important musicians as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss and others, he obtained the directorship of the Mainz Conservatory. Gál composed in nearly every genre and his operas, which include Der Artz der Sobeide, Die Heilige Ente and Das Lied der Nacht, were particularly popular during the 1920s. When Hitler rose to power, Gál was forced to leave Germany and eventually emigrated to Britain, teaching at the Edinburgh University for many years.

Gál’s music enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity in the years immediately after World War II, and was featured regularly in broadcasts on BBC radio. However, by the 1960s, BBC director William Glock’s programming philosophy, sharply slanted in favour of strictly modernist music, meant that Gál and other tonal composers of the time found themselves unable to get their music on the airwaves of the “Third Programme.” Gradually, performances also became more and more scarce, and Gál was deeply affected by the death in 1964 of his friend and foremost champion, conductor Otto Schmitgen. There were personal tragedies as well- Gál’s younger son Franz died by his own hand during this period. Circumstances for new work in a tonal idiom were similarly bleak on the continent, and commissions for new works in standard genres or for traditional instruments were almost non-existent. Indeed, the main champions and patrons of Gál’s music at this time were recorder player Carl Dolmetsch and Vinzenz Hladky, Professor of Mandolin at the Vienna academy of Music and publisher of mandolin music, who had instigated Gáls’s writing for mandolin in the period back in Vienna between 1933 and the Anschluss in 1938. Now in the 60s, Hladky published and regularly performed Gál’s music with his mandolin ensembles, to which Gál responded with two Sinfoniettas for Mandolin Orchestra, amongst other works. The Concertino for Cello and Strings, the last of Gál’s five concertinos, was written in 1965, inspired purely by Gál’s inner impulse, rather than a commission. It was premiered in 1968 by the Sudwest Rundfunk Orchestra.

What exactly does Gál mean by a “Concertino” rather than a “Concerto”? For some composers, the word “concertino” implies a certain frivolity or lightness of tone, while for others, it implies a work of very modest scale. Neither is true for Gál- the sole unifying factor of his five concertini is that they are all scored for solo instrument and strings, rather than full orchestra. Certainly, there is nothing frivolous about the Cello Concertino, and it is substantial work by any measure- at 27 minutes, it is roughly the same length as his Violin Concerto from 1933. There, however, is plenty of quirky humour in the Finale, which bears the curious tempo marking of “Allegretto ritenuto assai” or “slightly fast, but very held back.” The first movement, which is far more serious in tone, is built from the six note cell which opens the entire piece. Typical of Gál is the persistent ambiguity of major and minor which makes for an atmosphere both questioning and uncertain. At the work’s heart is a touching and lyrical Adagio, absolutely echt-Gál in its bittersweet tenderness. Had he so wished, Gál could certainly have made a killing in the lullaby-writing business.

Kenneth Woods