Your events at Classical Events
Details
St John the Evangelist Church
Church Lane
West Meon
Hampshire
GU32 1LF
England
Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Duo no.2 in B flat major, violin and viola, K.424
Johannes Brahms – Piano Quartet no.2 in A major, Op.26
Franz Schubert – Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D.821
Performers
Primrose Piano Quartet
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
A festival with wide appeal
This year’s West Meon Music Festival, from 14th to 17th September, promises a wide range of classical music to appeal to all tastes: favourite chamber pieces, song and piano recitals, early music and composers from Monteverdi to Mahler, Schubert to Schoenberg. The Festival features brilliant award-winning young performers and a dramatic renaissance band joining the festival’s founders – the internationally acclaimed Primrose Piano Quartet.
The festival, now in its thirteenth year, opens with the event’s founders the Primrose Piano Quartet, performing Brahms’ A major Piano Quartet as well as duo works by Mozart and Schubert. Friday evening sees a recital "rising star"by Thomas Kelly who will be playing works by Chopin, Scarlatti and Rachmaninoff. Thomas has won first prizes at several international competitions including Pianale International Piano Competition, the Kendall Taylor Beethoven competition, Theodo Leschetizky competition and most recently he was awarded second prize and special prize for best semi-final performance at Hastings International Concerto Competition 2022.
Thomas' concert will be followed by “Who’s afraid of Arnold Schoenberg?”an informal late night concert by the Primrose exploring his work.
On Saturday 16th September the festival spreadsout across the Meon Valley: in the morning the strings of the Primrose will perform a version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at East Meon’s historic All Saints Church while in the afternoon the beautiful twelfth century Church of Our Lady at Warnford hosts the Gonzaga Band one of the country’s leading specialist early music groups – exploring the works of Monteverdi and his contemporaries. Formed by cornettist Jamie Savan in 1997 the band takes its name from the Gonzaga family of Mantua who employed Claudio Monteverdi as their maestro della musica atthe turn of the seventeenth century. Jamie is joined by soprano Faye Newton and Steven Devine on chamber organ. performing works from the “Age of Monteverdi”.
On Saturday evening the Primrose are back at West Meon Church with Schubert’s Trout Quintet with the chance to hear one of the country’s rising stars when double-bass player Will Duerden will join the Primrose for Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Will rose to prominence after reaching the StringsCategory Final of the 2018 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and this year has been selected as one of six young musicians to be supported by the Young Classical Artists Trust. Will has already had several significant new works specially written for him, with premières in Milan and London.
Sunday morning sees a recital of French song with exciting young soprano Harriet Burns. Since graduating from the Guildhall Opera School, British soprano Harriet has won a raft of international awards including second prize and German Lied Award at 2022 Concours Musical International de Montréal, the Compulsory Song Prize and Recital Prize at the International Vocal Competition in ’s-Hertogenbosch, and first prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at the Wigmore Hall. She is fast-developing a reputation as a “polished, witty, expressive and sweet-toned” (The Times) performer both in recital and on stage and on Sunday 17th September at West Meon church she will be giving a morning recital, enticingly called “Les Chemins d’Amour" (Pathways of Love) featuring songs by French composers including Fauré, Poulenc, Gounod and Debussy.
The French theme continues for the “Festival Finale” in the afternoon with works by Fauré, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, Françaix and Bizet.
In all there will be eight concerts during the four-day festival and full details can be found at www.westmeonmusic.co.uk where tickets (priced from £14) are also available.
The West Meon Music Festival is a registered charity no. 1185082.
The Primrose Piano Quartet is one the country’s leading ensembles and its acclaimed discography includes classical favourites as well as many unjustly neglected works by early twentieth century British composers. Their major commissions include piano quartets written for them by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Anthony Payne. The quartet appears regularly in London at Kings Place and the Conway Hall and has recently toured Denmark, Germany and Bulgaria. The quartet is a leading exponent of historically informed performance and Its latest recording of the complete Brahms piano quartets, made in Vienna on authentic pianos of the period, was highly recommended on Radio 3’s “Record Review”. A new CD of French nineteenth century works, also using an historic piano, is currently in production.
Susanne Stanzeleit – violin, DorotheaVogel – viola, Andrew Fuller – cello, John Thwaites – piano. www.primrosepianoquartet.org.uk
