Nash Ensemble – ‘From My Homeland’ – Music from the Czech Lands with works by Brahms

December 9th 2023 at 17:30 – 18:30

This lively programme explores Czech music of the 1920s: Erwin Schulhoff’s wind Divertissement and Martinů’s sunny Sextet are infused with edgy jazz harmonies and dance rhythms. Janáček, four decades their senior, looks back to his own childhood in Mládí.

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Musical Puzzles – Mozart, Vasks, Shostakovich

January 31st 2023 at 19:30 – 21:30

Conceived whilst ill and in hospital, Shostakovich’s final symphony is among his most enigmatic works; an intimate and moving orchestral statement that poses many questions but reveals few answers. We hear medical equipment, electric shock treatment, vulgarity and satire, and a procession of musical quotes – Rossini’s William Tell, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Wagner’s Ring Cycle – which drift in and out of consciousness like voices in your head whist delirious. Distant Light begins very quietly on the solo violin which leads to a winding lyrical line with a shimmering accompaniment. Its soulful, melancholic passion remains key to Vasks’ desire to re-connect with nature, beliefs and ideals that he sees being lost. Mozart’s Serenade for wind octet is one of his most puzzling and mysterious works. Orchestrated for an ensemble that is traditionally employed for light entertainment, it is defiantly dark in its character.

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Chamber Series: Hallé Wind Ensemble

February 17th 2023 at 13:00 – 14:30

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Café de Paris with Maxim and Friends

February 25th 2023 at 15:00 – 16:15

Join Maxim Emelyanychev at the keyboard for a sophisticated afternoon of Gallic wit with some of the SCO’s world-renowned wind soloists, in music much-loved and lesser-known.

Principal Flautist André Cebrián delivers the ancient incantations of Jolivet’s dazzling flute showpiece Chant de Linos, while Principal Clarinettist Maximiliano Martín is soloist in the sensual harmonies of Debussy’s dreamy First Rhapsodie.

Françaix sends up high-class restaurant music in his deliciously sardonic L’heure du berger, while Poulenc offers plenty of musical high-jinks to close in his perky Sextet.

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Liverpool Wind Collective

March 11th 2023 at 20:00 – 21:30

A wind quintet is like a sonic paintbox. Today the Liverpool Wind Collective explores the impressionist colours of France, celebrates the sounds of 20th century America, and takes a trip to the world’s most improbable zoo!

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Close-up: Tutti in threes

June 16th 2024 at 14:15 – 16:35

The Close-up series is the best way to experience the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s musicians as individuals! Tonight wind players form the orchestra will come to the foreground, playing music by Beethoven, Reicha, Glinka and Poulenc, with the number 3 as the unifying theme.

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Woodwind Forward!

June 16th 2024 at 11:00 – 13:00

Already in the first half of the 20th century, French composers and orchestras used to put the woodwinds in the foreground. It should define their style and the special French sound. Francis Poulenc was one of the most important representatives of this tradition, and his music focuses on multicolor and sensitive poetry.

“”After all the impressionistic mists, will not this simple and clear art [of Poulenc], so reminiscent of Scarlatti and Mozart, be the next phase of our music?”” of wind music prove true in any case. With his few wind works, he set standards that still have an impact today.

Poulenc’s compositional spheres are complemented by the music of Henri Tomasis, Jean Françaix and Charles Koechlin. Behind the seemingly naïve title of Tomasi’s rural concerto »Concert champêtre« lies a knowledgeable allusion to French rococo music mixed with the Corsican flair of Tomasi’s homeland.

Charles Koechlin’s Bassoon Sonata takes us back to the sounds of Impressionism. In the France of his time, Koechlin was considered an outsider and yet created an exceptional work that shows how delicate and at the same time wild and intoxicating the bassoon is. And how many magnificent nuances of sound the instrument, which usually stands in the background, carries within itself.

Jean Françaix’s trio in four movements shows the 82-year-old composer still at the height of his creative power: melodic invention, rhythmic wit, harmonic elasticity and an elegant instrumental writing form a particularly fortunate combination.

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