Rehearsals for Concert at St. Christopher’s Hospice
At present, we are rehearsing for a concert on Thursday the 4th March at St. Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham. With a small concert hall seating 70 to 80 people, it will be an intimate recital, with the music available via intercom to anyone resident in the hospice to listen to if they would like to.
We decided to play two main works which we have particularly enjoyed whilst exploring neglected chamber music - both are uplifting pieces and in our opinion, real undiscovered gems. The first is a string quartet in G by Ferdinand Ries who was a pupil and secretary of Ludwig Van Beethoven. Having such close and prolonged contact with the latter’s towering greatness left it’s mark and the influence of Beethoven is evident throughout this work by Ries, not only thematically but also in it’s idiom. Having said that, it would be difficult to imagine having a finer teacher and role model and this work brims with an ebullience and lightness of spirit which we hope will uplift the listener, even on a first hearing at this rare performance.
The other main work is a piece we have blogged about before - in a performance at St Michael at the North Gate in Oxford - namely Spohr’s String Quartet in G (Op. 82 no. 2). This is the work for which the sheet music was unreadable and contained so many inaccuracies that I felt compelled to re-set it using Sibelius software and meticulously checking against an original autographed score supplied by the Spohr society. This work has a style unique to Spohr and deserves to become a regularly played piece as it’s qualities are abundant and themes are memorable. Spohr proves to be a master of contrapuntal quartet writing as well as possessing a rare harmonic gift: he often takes the music into unexpected twists and turns before effortlessly guiding it back to safety. A genial first movement leads to a sustained and ethereal slow movement which is then followed by a rousing Alla Pollacca and bracing yet memorable finale.
The third, short item in the programme will be Schubert’s Quartetsatz and the musicians will be as follows:
Vaughan Jones and Louise Bevan - Violins, Fay Sweet - Viola, Tony Woollard - Cello
These monthly hospice concerts (known as the Dame Cicely Saunders Concert Series) have recently included performances by cellist Robert Cohen and the Alba String Quartet and there are plenty of other enticing items programmed in throughout the year - it may prove to become an established addition to London’s musical calendar. Anyone wishing to reserve tickets (which are £10 including a glass of wine and canapes) for this Thursdays performance can do so by calling the hospice on 020 8768 4747 (Monday to Friday between 10am and 4pm), or emailing Debbie Calvert on d.calvert@stchristophers.org.uk.
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