This will be an evening in the company of two remarkable musicians. Long-standing friend of Luton Music, the violinist Sara Trickey and legendary international pianist Stephen Kovacevich join forces in two great sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms. Stephen will also play some solo repertoire in the remainder of the recital.

The Brahms sonata is perhaps of special interest regarding our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music. With the nickname of Regensonate (Rain Sonata) its melodic material is derived from two songs by the composer – Regenlied and Nachklang (his Op 59 settings of two ‘rain’ poems by Klaus Groth). The sense of yearning that informs these lines is clearly reflected in Brahms’s treatment of the texts, entirely appropriate when we consider the composer’s biographical circumstances as he worked on the piece in the relaxed atmosphere of the Carinthian lake resort of Portschach over the two idyllic summers of 1878 and 1879. Brahms was godfather to Felix Schumann, the youngest child of Robert and Clara (named in fact in memory of their dear friend Mendelssohn); and indeed had made a setting of his 19 year old godson’s poem about a nightingale (Meine Liebe ist grun wie der Fliederbusch) as a Christmas gift for Clara one year. It had become Brahms’s annual habit to retreat to the countryside every summer to concentrate on his writing and this liberation from the daily round of city life was inspirational for him. He would rise early every morning and walk for hours through the woods, communing with nature and then returning home to compose with a fluency that he seldom found in the rest of the year. It was under such a regimen that in Portschach during the summer of 1878 Brahms began to work on what was to become this first violin sonata. He had already destroyed at least three earlier efforts to write such a piece, so the free-flowing ease of this composition bears witness to the comfort that he found in his glorious summer retreat. Sadly before Brahms was able to return the following year to finish the work his beloved godson Felix had died of tuberculosis at the age of only 25. This tragedy touched Brahms deeply and yet this sonata (perhaps originally to have been a simple sonatina for Felix himself to play) seems to me to resist any obvious sense of melancholy, celebrating perhaps the simple beauty in that young life, even in the jagged funeral march of the slow movement which leans instead towards the heroic. Felix’s mother, Clara, loved the work, declaring that she wished the final movement could accompany her into the next world. This piece , with its origins in those emotive lines of the Romantic poetry of Klaus Groth, further modulated by a celebration of the young life of Felix Schumann and then kissed by the summer sunshine of those contented morning walks in Portschach, is a wonderfully layered work with Brahms clearly at the summit of his compositional power.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

We welcome back Peter Bussereau’s Symphonia Academica in another diverse and imaginative programme. Both the Wagner and the Schoenberg have an obvious resonance with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music.

Based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg, Wagner’s version of the legend is refracted through the prism of the philosophical writings of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Schoenberg’s inspiration for Verklärte Nacht was a poem by Richard Dehmel – Zwei Menschen (Two People), taken from his poetic novel Weib und Welt (The Woman and the World). The poem is printed as a preface to the score. In a letter to Dehmel, Schoenberg writes: ‘Your poems had a decisive influence on my musical development. They made me look for a new note in lyrical poetry for the first time. That means I found this without looking for it, when I mirrored in my music what your verses aroused in me’.

Two figures walk through the bare, cold grove. The moon glides with them, they look into her face. The moon glides over high oak trees. No wisp of cloud veils the light from the heavens, into which the black branches reach.

The voice of a woman speaks: “I carry a child, but he is not yours. I walk in sin beside you; I went astray; I no longer believed in happiness, and yet the longing for meaning to my life, for the cares and joys of motherhood, lay heavy upon me. I grew shameless as my shuddering body yielded to the embrace of an unknown man, and so I am now with child”. She looks up, the moon glides on. Her dark face is drowned in light.

The voice of a man speaks: “Let the child you have conceived be no burden on your soul. Just see how all the Universe glistens. Everything around us gleams. You are floating with me on a cold sea, yet between our two hearts there flickers some special warmth, from you to me, from me to you, that will bear that child to me, by me. You kindled that flame in me. You have turned even me into a child”. He caught her around her strong hips. Their breath kisses in the air. Two figures walk through the high, bright night.

It is a special pleasure to welcome Kwanyee Chan to Luton to play Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2. This has been made possible by a generous donation to the club, allowing us in particular to encourage young artists. Kwanyee is pursuing a Masters degree at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama as a pupil of pianist Lucy Parham (who made such memorable contributions to our Christmas concert last season).

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

Pentecost Praise this year will be held at Luton Christian Fellowship, 101 Castle Street, LU1 3AL. at 7pm

We invite you all to join us for an evening of Praise and Worship with others from across Luton.

Parking will be at the south road car park opposite the church and street parking available around by the church.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – String Quartet No.20 in D Hoffmeister K499

INTERVAL

Antonín Dvořák – Piano Quintet in A Op 81

Performers
Amarins Wierdsma – violin
Kate Maloney – violin
Christoph Slenczka – viola
Yoanna Prodanova – cello

It is a pleasure to welcome Guernsey-born pianist Tom Hicks back to Luton. His repertoire for this season could hardly be more appropriate for our theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music.

He was inspired to create this recital programme after reading Aldous Huxley’s 1931 collection of essays Music at Night. And so we have a collection of Nocturnes, Rêveries and other introspective and moonlit repertoire. It will be a wonderful musical journey through a penumbral landscape, but perhaps it is worth remembering that the night time is not merely about stillness, quietude and sleep. It is also a time for deep thought, disturbing reflection and tumult of the soul!

Please join us in the beautiful twilight surroundings of St Mary’s Church for Music at Night.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

If one was looking for an illustration of our season’s theme, The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music, perhaps one of the most obvious examples might be a song recital. The fusion of poetry and music, the response of composer to poet, the synthesis of aesthetic ideals are all part of this thrilling art form.

Internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately is joined by Simon Lepper at the piano. Together they represent surely one of the finest such pairings in the country. They have chosen a range of music that encompasses the artistry of German Lieder from the 19th Century, English lyricism from the 20th, right through to more recent vocal writing from the last 40 years. There will be a rare chance to hear music by Margerete Schweikert (1887-1957), a German composer who wrote over 160 songs.

This concert has been made possible by an anonymous donation from two members of Luton Music who this year are celebrating 40 years of support for the club. We thank them for their generosity and hope that the evening will serve as another treasured musical memory for them both.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

This relatively new piano trio has been founded by performers with already enviable reputations as formidable collaborative musicians. It is a pleasure to welcome them here to Luton for the first time as an ensemble.

They bring a thrillingly virtuosic programme, of which a highlight will surely be the Dvořák trio, written as a memorial to his mother who died at the end of 1882. If we are looking for music to illustrate our season’s theme, The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music, then perhaps Judith Weir’s O Viridissima will be of special interest. It is a work inspired by O Viridissima Virga (O greenest branch), a monodic hymn from Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th Century herbalist, nun and composer. Her text explores ideas relating to the Virgin Mary’s fertility as it is reflected in the world of nature. After Hildegard’s surprisingly dark observation – ‘Eve rejected these things’ – the hymn closes with more positive affirmation – ‘Now let there be praise to the highest’.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

This event has been curated to explore our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music. In the afternoon prior to the concert there will be a workshop led by Dr. Elizabeth Haines, encouraging participants to explore practically the connection between music and painting or drawing. Her own practice is closely associated with a pluralist aesthetic and she is the author of a PhD, The Web of Exchange.

At 7.30 pm there will then be a more formal interview with Dr. Haines and composer Edward Picton-Turbervill, discussing the artistic processes involved in synergising the power of one art form with another. The second part of the evening will be a forty minute recital of organ music that has inspired Dr. Haines’s workshops. This will be presented alongside song repertoire from Edward and mezzo-soprano Lyla Levy-Jordan , including his magnificent setting of Selima Hill’s poem The Cow.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

Further details of the workshop will be posted on this link in due course. There will an opportunity for about 12 participants to enjoy this fascinating experience.

Last season’s audience may well remember these two extraordinary musicians from the opening concert that year given by the Rossetti Ensemble. They now return with a programme designed to offer special insight into our theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music. Schumann’s Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) is at once both programmatic and abstract. Are they portrayals of Rapunzel, of Rumpelstiltskin or of Sleeping Beauty? The composer makes no specific reference to the exact source of his inspiration, but there are instances in his journals at the time relating to these mythical characters. There is a similar, vaguely allusive idiom in Bax’s haunting Legend (one of several pieces with similar such titles by Bax), the composer drawing us into an imagined world of saga, myth and folk history. Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is much more direct in its provenance – his ballet score based on the Shakespeare play is now recognised as a masterpiece and rightly acclaimed wherever it is heard, even as incidental music for BBC’s The Apprentice!

The programme also includes a fascinating early work by William L. Harris, a mid 20th Century British composer, recently recorded by these performers on their latest CD, English Music for Viola and Piano. The recital ends with the thrillingly virtuosic Rachmaninov sonata, originally for cello and piano, but here thoughtfully transcribed for the viola by Victor Borisovsky.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

The Delphine Trio played for us here in Luton for the first time in May last year and it was immediately clear that the audience would be delighted if they were to return. So here they are in a programme that neatly engages with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music.

The Ireland trio is a fascinating work evolving in three incarnations over a number of years. There is no direct association with specific literature but the composer’s love of the written word (the fantasies of Arthur Machen and the Satyricon of Petronius, for example) was always an indirect influence on his musical aesthetic. Per Nørgård’s Spell explores a gentle play on words, suggesting how the letters of the notes are spelled out into the shapes that cast the magical spell of the music – the alchemy of the language itself.

The Beethoven trio is sometimes known as the Gassenhauer Trio. This arose from its third movement which contains nine variations on a theme from Joseph Weigl’s then popular L’amor marinaro ossia Il corsaro. The melody, Pria ch’io l’impegno (Before I go to work), was so popular it could be heard in many of Vienna’s lanes (Gasse in German). A Gassenhauer therefore usually denotes a simple tune that many people (in the Gassen) have taken up, whistling and singing it as they go about their lives.

Daniel Schnyder’s A Friday Night in August is a splendidly atmospheric piece, synergising the metropolitan vibe of 90s Manhattan echoing to the open-air sounds of the Caribbean. Meanwhile the Juon which closes the concert is a straightforward portrait of nymphs and satyrs taken from the pages of Classical mythology. I hope you’ll enjoy this wonderfully varied programmatic feast!

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

Ben Goldscheider

It is always a pleasure to welcome Ben Goldscheider back to Luton. He has been playing for us since 2015 and it has been so exciting to witness his remarkable success over the last ten years. He returns on this occasion with one of the country’s finest chamber ensembles, the Heath Quartet, playing Mozart’s ever popular Horn Quintet written for the composer’s great friend, the cheesemonger Joseph Leutgeb.

Heath Quartet

If we are searching for connections with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music, then perhaps Eleanor Alberga’s The Shining Gate of Morpheus will have the richest resonance. It is one of a series of nocturnal chamber pieces that this Jamaica-born composer began some 20 years ago. She enjoyed a period as music director of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and there is no doubting the influence of wider artistic synergy in her compositions – dance works, theatre pieces, song settings and other programmatic works inspired by literature.

The concert ends with York Bowen’s sweeping essay in full blown Romantic chamber music. Arguably out of kilter with his time, Bowen was an unapologetic Romantic; with the benefit of historical perspective it is perhaps easier for us today to respond to his full blown chromatic harmony and overtly dramatic style – we no longer need to make allowance for any such harmless retrospective tendencies.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

This programme was prompted by the theme of this current season, The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music. In the early 80s I was commissioned to write a score for The Royal Ballet of New Zealand. The work was to be based on a short story by the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield. Before sending the score off to be choreographed on the other side of the world, I was anxious to check that musically everything was in order, so I organised a concert in London to try out the music.

This was the first professional concert I had curated and played in and it is nostalgic for me to re-visit it some 40 years later. The concert opens with a Mozart sonata that I was studying at the time with my teachers, Irene Kohler and James Gibb. The short story, Bliss, is then read aloud by Joanna David. It was Joanna who read it for that first concert all those years ago and it is such a pleasure now to welcome her back to Luton. After the interval we will then hear how the music for this score has interpreted the narrative of Bliss. It is scored for clarinet, string trio, double bass and piano. For the concert I have invited performers all of whom I have met over the many happy years I have spent helping to organise concerts here in the town. It has been such an interesting project for me to look again at the music after 40 years and to work on preparing it with such fine musicians and friends. I hope you too will all enjoy this special evening.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

It is always a pleasure to welcome Leon McCawley back to Luton Music. We have enjoyed remarkable recitals from him over the last five years and this programme of Romantic piano music promises to be another such memorable occasion.

Although Schumann’s 2nd Piano Sonata is essentially musical in its discourse, it does have a resonance with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music in that the slow movement is based on a setting that Schumann had made of a poem by Justinus Kerner – Im Herbste.

Be off with you, O sun,
Hurry away from here!
So that she might be warmed
By only me!

Wither, flowers, O wither!
Hush now, little birds!
That only I might sing to her
And bloom in doing so.

 Woven into the poetically inspired melodic invention of this movement (and indeed in many other places in the work) is the composer’s motto theme for his beloved wife Clara. She was his greatest muse and this is another of his works that bears testimony to his unswerving devotion to her.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

This programme has been drawn from the repertoire which the Solem Quartet have recently recorded on their latest CD Painted Light. That project broadly explored the idea of ‘colour’ in music. The quartet is perhaps inviting the listener to consider whether for example the intense ‘colours’ of music written at the time of the French Impressionist art movement might well be correlated to that aesthetic. This music by the Boulanger sisters and Debussy make a very convincing case…

As in the Maja Ratkje piece from earlier in the season, Edmund Finnis’s String Quartet Devotions is inspired by Beethoven. In his late Op 132 quartet the third movement was written while the ailing viennese composer was convalescing at Baden after a serious illness in 1824-25. He wrote the slow movement entitled Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart as a hymn of thanks to God for his recovery, praising his reawakened life. Edmund Finnis has used this profoundly uplifting movement as the inspiration for Devotions.

As we consider throughout the year’s season The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music, it is fascinating to get a glimpse of how often composers find their inspiration in other works of art. Notwithstanding such glorious synergies, we are as a result then reminded how music still achieves these things in an incontrovertibly unique way. Although its genesis may often be rooted in the world that surrounds it, yet its individuality and power is so very singular.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

This much admired wind ensemble return to Luton with a programme particularly featuring Stephen Dodgson’s Promenade No.2. Stephen was for many years associated with Luton Music, generously giving his time to serve as a Vice-president. 2024 is the centenary of his birth and it is an honour to programme this fine piece in his memory. We are most grateful to the Dodgson Charitable Trust for their support with this event.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)

We end the season with the unique talents of Kosmos. The chief music critic of The Times, Richard Morrison, has described them with these words:

‘..telepathic rapport, dazzling virtuosity, serious scholarship, intellectual curiosity and impeccable musicianship. I defy you not to be mesmerised.’

The members of Kosmos have travelled extensively, performing with musicians all over the world, as well as within the broad multiculturalism of London’s music scene. They have collectively studied music from North Africa, the Middle East, Jewish, Balkan and Gypsy music, Argentine tango, flamenco, Celtic and jazz traditions as well as contemporary classical music. They combine all their knowledge with a respect for their own Western classical music training, performing freely with panache, innovation and creativity, incorporating improvisation into their own unique arrangements and compositions. With such pluralist refinement their approach is an embodiment of cross-cultural fusion and as such will be a perfect final exploration of our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music.

As the season ends there will be an air of general celebration for another year of remarkable musical achievement. It may well involve mince pies and mulled wine – everyone will be most welcome.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)