Coffee Concerts

Coffee Concert 9th December 2018 – Philip Higham – Other reviews

 

The curtains are open and the stage, lit and ready, containing just a solitary black piano stool. An oddity in any other situation. Apiece of furniture left behind? Forlorn-looking? Or dignified? Is a piano about to join it?

Or have we come on the wrong day? Not a concert at all but Continue reading Coffee Concert 9th December 2018 – Philip Higham – Other reviews

9th December 2018 – Philip Higham – Programme notes by Andrew Polmear and Chris Darwin

Bach’s  Suites for Unaccompanied Cello

There are few works of classical music that inspire the awe that cellists feel for the Bach Suites. They start to play them within a year or two of taking up the instrument and, if hands and minds hold out, they are still working on the same pieces 60 years later.

We know very little of the background to the Suites. They were written in about 1720 when Bach was Continue reading 9th December 2018 – Philip Higham – Programme notes by Andrew Polmear and Chris Darwin

Coffee Concert 18th November 2018 – Jacquin Trio – Review by Andrew Polmear

A lovely brisk day, sunlight filling ACCA’s café, an engaging brief talk by Jessie Grimes: everything augured well for this concert by the Jacquin Trio. Yet I found myself slightly thrown for a moment or two. It was partly that Schumann opens his Märchenerzählungen with quirky little Continue reading Coffee Concert 18th November 2018 – Jacquin Trio – Review by Andrew Polmear

18th November 2018 – Jacquin Trio – Programme notes by Chris Darwin

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Märchenerzählungen Op 132. (‘Fairy-tale tellings’) for clarinet, viola & piano (1853)

Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell
Lebhaft und sehr markirt
Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck
Lebhaft, sehr markirt

In September 1853, the 20-year old Johannes Brahms arrived unannounced at Robert and Clara Schumann’s house bearing an introduction from their mutual friend the violinist Joseph Joachim. Robert Schumann’s mental health was deteriorating, but Brahms’ arrival stimulated Schumann to new compositions: a happy collaboration between Schumann, Brahms and Schumann’s close friend Albert Dietrich produced the triple-authored F-A-E violin sonata dedicated to Joachim, and then in three days from 9 – 11 October 1853 Schumann wrote Märchenerzählungen which he dedicated to Dietrich. ‘Predominantly cheerful pieces, written with a light heart’ he told his publisher. The tautological title ‘Fairy-tale tellings’ stands in contrast to his Märchenbilder (‘Fairy-tale pictures’) for viola and piano written four years earlier. Continue reading 18th November 2018 – Jacquin Trio – Programme notes by Chris Darwin