Dante Quartet
Zoë Beyers and Ian Watson violins
Ben Newton viola | Richard Jenkinson cello
with Benjamin Frith piano
Haydn Quartet in B flat Op 76 No 4 ‘Sunrise’
Simpson Quartet No 8
Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat Op 44
The Dante Quartet returns to Leamington after a four year gap and with a new line-up. Simpson’s Quartet No 8 dates from 1979 and shows the composer at his best in an attractive, powerful and gripping work which, dedicated to an entomologist, includes a most intriguing depiction of the mosquito.
With the concert having started with Haydn at his sunniest, the Festival will close with Schumann’s sparkling Piano Quintet, with Benjamin Frith back here after too long a time. Known as a soloist and member of the Gould Piano Trio, he was a pupil of the legendary Fanny Waterman and, among many awards, won the Gold Medal in the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Israel in 1989.
Bach Partita No 1 in B flat BWV825
Schuman Novelette in F Op 21 No 1
Schumann Kreisleriana Op 16
We are delighted to offer a concert to a 2019 Leamington Music Prize winner, following some excellent concerts by winners in the recent Midsummer Music Festival, and the success of Claire Barnett-Jones, a winner in 2013, who took the Audience Prize in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition earlier this year.
Roman, who came to the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire from the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatoire in 2017, has won many prizes in Britain and the USA and has made a recording of works by Liszt for Naxos. He includes Schumann’s masterpiece, Kreisleriana, as we prepare for his Piano Quintet to finish the Festival in style in the evening.
Schubert Four Impromptus D899
Schubert Sonata in C minor D958
Beethoven Sonata in B flat Op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’
Peter Donohoe’s contribution to music is immense, with a reputation built internationally, nationally, and here in the Midlands – particularly with the CBSO from Simon Rattle’s time, but in recent times too.
Leamington Music welcomes him back with a programme that will thrill and delight – late Schubert and Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’, the colossus among his thirty-two piano sonatas, needing Herculean strength and surpassing tenderness. This is a truly Festival programme, most eagerly awaited.
Organist and Director of Music at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, Aberdeen
Bach Prelude & Fugue in D BWV532
Haydn Pieces for a Musical Clock
Simpson Eppur si muove
Free Entry | Retiring collection
Simpson Variations and Finale on a theme of Haydn
Beethoven Sonata in F minor Op 57 ‘Appassionata’
Coventry-born, and a noted pupil of Aldo Ciccolini, The Times has called Mark Bebbington “truly a remarkable pianist”; his international career has taken off in recent years, and we welcome this great champion of British music back to Leamington.
Mark has recorded extensively for the Somm label to critical acclaim, with no fewer than nine of his recent CDs awarded 5 stars by BBC Music Magazine.
Simpson’s Haydn Variations dates from 1948 and, with the Piano Sonata, represents the absolute best of his writing for keyboard. This paring with Beethoven’s most explosive and tempestuous sonata is an absolute must-hear.
Maxwell Davies Fanfare Salute to Dennis Brain Op 227b
Beethoven Sonata for Horn and Piano in F Op 17
Simpson Trio for Horn, Piano and Violin
Brahms Trio in E flat
Another champion of the music of Robert Simpson, Richard Watkins recorded the Trio nine years after its completion in 1984, and we begin the concert with a tribute to the great horn player, Dennis Brain, who shares Simpson’s centenary this year.
Beethoven’s Sonata was written at an exciting time of the most important developments in all wind instruments. And to follow, with the addition of the violin, this unusual combination of instruments brings the concert to a wonderful climax in Brahms’s glorious composition.
Richard Watkins is joined by two illustrious colleagues for this wonderfully crafted programme. Magnus Johnston is well known to Leamington audiences having performed here with both the Navarra Quartet and the Aronowitz Ensemble. Michael McHale is much in demand as a collaborator, and last played for Leamington Music with clarinettist Michael Collins in the 2017 Festival.
Leonore Piano Trio
Benjamin Nabarro violin | Gemma Rosefield cello | Tim Horton piano
Haydn Trio in C Hob.XV:21
Beethoven Trio in B flat Op 97 ‘Archduke’
We look forward to welcoming back Leamington Music favourites, the Leonore Piano Trio, to the Royal Pump Rooms for the first time since May 2019 – the last Festival we were able to put on there!
This delightful programme brings works by two of Robert Simpson’s most championed composers. Simpson referenced Haydn’s music in many of his own works, and this joyful Trio was one of the last that Haydn wrote.
The ‘Archduke’, too, was the last of Beethoven’s contributions to the genre. It is a grand work of vast proportion and emotional depth, which can surely go to show why Simpson – and so many others – held Beethoven’s music in such high esteem.
Coull Quartet
Roger Coull and Philip Gallaway violins
Jonathan Barritt viola | Nicholas Roberts cello
with Martin Outram viola
Schubert Quartettsatz in C minor D703
Simpson String Quintet No 1
Beethoven String Quintet in C Op 29
With such close ties to Robert Simpson, only the Coull Quartet could be the right fit to open a Festival celebrating the composer’s works and the music of those composers he loved, especially Beethoven whose 250th birthday was to have been celebrated with the 2020 Festival.
The Coull enjoyed many years of working with Simpson, commissioning the Quartet No 10 to celebrate their tenth anniversary in 1984, in the early days of their residency at Warwick University. They premiered three of his Quartets and this Quintet, and have recorded all of these works for Hyperion over the years.
Joined by Martin Outram from the Maggini Quartet, this concert also gives a rare opportunity to hear Beethoven’s Quintet, which paired with the Simpson offers a beautiful synergy with which to begin our much-loved Festival.
Browne To Gratiana Dancing and Singing
Farrar Silent Noon
Butterworth A Shropshire Lad
Schubert Schwanengesang D957
Hailed as today’s leading singer of English song, the first half of Roderick Williams’s recital is of British composers, whose lives were cut short in the Great War, including William Denis Browne who was born in Leamington. In the second half he completes his Schubert Project, having already sung Winterreise and Die schöne Mullerin in Leamington Music concerts.
Concert generously supported by Paul and Jane Watts
Bliss Pastoral
York Bowen Clarinet Sonata Op 109
Elgar Violin Sonata in E minor Op 82
Debussy Etude pour les arpèges composés
Debussy Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon
Stravinsky Suite from ‘The Soldier’s Tale’
Jack McNeill, a Leamington Music Prize winner in 2010 returns to the Festival with well known colleagues in a programme of music written during the Great War, with the exception of York Bowen, who was invalided out and wrote his Clarinet Sonata during World War Two. Stravinsky moved to Switzerland during the War and his dramatic Soldier’s Tale was premiered there in 1918, the year in which Debussy died and Elgar wrote one of his finest works.