Endymion will be appearing on 29th June at the Ashbourne Festival, performing one of our most popular programmes, the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets. It’s our first appearance at Ashbourne so we’re delighted to continue to meet new audiences, even after 34 years of performing! You can get tickets for the concert here.
Posted in 2013 concerts
Tagged ashbourne, brahms, Clarinet Quintet, Mozart, schubert
Endymion is taking part in “Brahms Unwrapped” at Kings Place in just a few weeks, bringing their celebrated programme of the Brahms Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in A minor, Op.144 and the Horn trio in E flat, Op.40. We’re happily augmenting our regular short programme with both of his Clarinet Sonatas, Op.120.
The Horn Trio is by far the earliest work in the concert, written in 1865 after the death of Brahms’ mother. It’s full of childhood memories of woodland and countryside, as well as “a sense of enigma, turbulence, serenity, deep sorrow, exuberant joy,” according to our violinist Krysia Osostowicz.
Another frequent performer at Kings Place, Daniel Tong, joins us to perform the much later Clarinet Trio. Towards the end of his life, Brahms had pretty much decided to give up composing, but ended up exploring the potential of the clarinet as a chamber instrument like no one had since Mozart. A contemporary musicologist and friend of Brahms’ said his trio was “as though the instruments were in love with one another”. As well as the trio (from 1891), he wrote two Clarinet Sonatas in 1894, which are regarded as masterpieces for the instrument. At our concert, they’ll be performed by Mark van de Wiel with Daniel Lebhardt.
Tickets are on sale here. Kings Place has its £9.50 Internet Savers, and then tickets start from as little as £13.50. This concert really is full of Endymion’s core repertoire, and not to be missed!
Posted in 2012 concerts, Diary, London concerts
Tagged brahms, Brahms Unwrapped, Clarinet, Horn, Kings Place, Mark van de Wiel, Sonata, Trio
Endymion has a busy few weeks ahead, with performances at Cheltenham Festival, Temple Church and Wigmore Hall.
We will be joined by the BBC Singers for a Radio 3 broadcast concert on 5th July at Cheltenham International Music Festival, with a world premiere by Judith Bingham and a piece by John Tavener. Tickets can be bought here.
On 11th July we’ll be performing one of our most popular programmes at Temple Church, featuring the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets. Tickets for that are available here.
On 15th July, we’ll be making our first ever appearance in the prestigious Wigmore Hall Coffee Concert series, performing Brahms’ Clarinet Trio and Horn Trio. Don’t miss it! Tickets for that concert are only £12, with concessions available, and they are selling very well, so book quickly. Tickets available here.
Posted in 2012 concerts
Tagged bbc singers, brahms, cheltenham festival, clarinet quintets, Mozart, temple church, Wigmore Hall
A video of Endymion performing Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet at King’s Place a few weeks ago. Enjoy!
Posted in 2011 concerts, London concerts, Uncategorized, videos
Tagged brahms, Clarinet Quintet, Kings Place
We just received this photo from an enthusiastic member of the audience who was at our concert in Aberdeen on 12th November.
Bryan Watson is a very good amateur photographer and music fan, and was kind enough to send us this copy of his photo. You can check out his photostream here.
Posted in Photos
Tagged Aberdeen, Bryan Watson, EXAUDI, Pärt, Scotland, Sound Festival
Early next year Endymion will be exploring some fantastic chamber works with two concerts in January 2012 focussing on Quintets. Far from being the “fifth wheel” at the chamber music party, the Quintet will be taking centre stage to prove that the harmony and balance of the four-person Quartet is not the only way to true musical elegance.
Endymion performing Mozart's Clarinet Quintet at Kings Place in 2009
Endymion’s first concert is on 20th January at King’s Place in London, where we’ll be indulging in an all-Brahms programme, performing his two String Quintets and his Clarinet Quintet. Both String Quintets are scored for an extra viola (rather than an extra cello), leading to a warm sound-palette which is complemented by some typically Brahmsian harmonies and modulations, especially in the first movement of String Quintet No.1. By the time Brahms began writing his first String Quintet (reportedly his favourite chamber work) in 1882, he had left some of the classical sobriety of the two famous String Sextets of the 1860s behind him. Instead, we find a clever and high-spirited Romantic take on some well-known Baroque forms, such as the Sarabande and Fugue. The second String Quintet calls on some of the same folksy rhythms and melodies as his friend Antonín Dvorák, albeit always with Germanic shading. Brahms came out of retirement especially in order to write the Clarinet Quintet for the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, along with a Trio and two Sonatas, and it is often considered Brahms’ greatest work for chamber ensemble. Tickets for the concert are on sale here.
We’ve also been invited back to the University of Surrey in Guildford after our successful Mahler concert in July. On 29th January we’ll be performing an afternoon concert at 3pm of three Clarinet Quintets by Brahms, Mozart and Philip Venables. Mozart’s famous work was one of the very first written for that instrument combination, establishing the Clarinet in the chamber music repertoire, and undoubtedly forming a model for Brahms’ own Quintet a century later. Originally written for the basset clarinet, it has become one of the most popular chamber works of the last few centuries through its simple and joyous lyricism and faultless structural elegance. The Prelude by Philip Venables, written in 2006 (the 250th Anniversary of Mozart’s birth) for the Sounds New MozartNOW Festival in Canterbury in 2006, is indeed a prelude to Mozart quintet’s itself. Dissecting, manipulating and elaborating on the first two bars of Mozart’s quintet, Venables explores not only Mozart’s work but also the Clarinet quintet medium in a thoroughly absorbing fashion.
We’re also looking forward to coaching some of the students in Guildford on 31st January.
Posted in 2012 concerts, London concerts
Tagged brahms, Clarinet Quintet, Kings Place, Mozart, string quintet, surrey university, venables
Here’s another video of us performing at the Southbank Centre in September. As part of our celebration of Arvo Pärt, we performed several well-known chamber works by the 76-year-old composer, including Summa for string quartet and Fratres, on this video, in the version for string quartet. We also teamed up with EXAUDI to perform his wonderfully contemplative Stabat Mater – a video of that is coming soon!
You can see us perform all three of these wonderful pieces again on Saturday night at the Sound Festival, Scotland, alongside three great new commissions by Philip Venables (Endymion’s Artistic Director), James Weeks (EXAUDI’s Artistic Director) and Andrew Hamilton. Tickets are available here!
Posted in 2011 concerts, London concerts, videos
Tagged Andrew Hamilton, Arvo Pärt, EXAUDI, Fratres, James Weeks, Philip Venables, Sound Scotland, Southbank Centre
The Music for People project is now just under two weeks away, and promises great things. Once again we are teaming up with EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, and this project will combine three works by Pärt with three newly commissioned compositions.
Arvo Pärt has been a real focal point of our repertoire over the last year, and we will be performing Fratres and Summa along with the vocal masterpiece Stabat Mater. It is extremely exciting for us, as instrumentalists, to work with singers on Arvo Pärt’s music. I’ve always considered him an expert at combing textures, and the Stabat Mater brings strings and voices together with delicious originality. The interaction between voice and instrument is so carefully judged that the boundaries become blurred: voices creep into string textures, and vice versa, the strings embody personal, vocal qualities through the minimality of the scoring, and strings double vocal lines at the peaks and depths of their range to create new aural colours. These blurring techniques, in turn, make moments of unaccompanied playing or singing, exceptionally striking – and bringing all this this together with singers is an inspiring creative process.
In addition to Pärt, we will also be performing three fantastic new works. James Weeks’ Inscription is an expansive and thought-provoking work in Portugese, whilst the other two works are as riotous as Weeks’ is meditative. Andrew Hamilton’s right and wrong contains a vast sound pallet of buzzing, ringing, waltzing and even shouting, and Philip Venables’ ‘numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde’ contains a remarkable auralisation of swarming wasps.
These three new pieces were commissioned by Endymion, EXAUDI and SOUND Festival, Aberdeen, whose musical and financial support has been most valuable. We are also extremely grateful to the Leche Trust, the Marina Kleinwort Trust, and the Golden Bottle Trust, all of whom have generously funded this event.
The project takes place on November 12th, 7.30pm, at the SOUND Festival in Aberdeen. Tickets can be booked here, and are just £10 – £8 for concessions or a remarkable £2 for students. We look forward to seeing you there!
Posted in 2011 concerts, Diary, News
Tagged Aberdeen, Arvo Pärt, Endymion, minimalism, new compositions, Philip Venables, sacred music, Sound Festival, string ensemble
This week we’ll be travelling to the musical extremes of Eastern and Western Europe with our GOODBYE STALIN! concert in Leeds on Friday 4 November, and our French and German programme next Tuesday 8 November in London.
Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we’re celebrating with a programme of Russian and Estonian music in the fantastic Howard Assembly Room in Leeds. Inspired by Opera North’s production of Tchaikovsky’s dark tragedy The Queen of Spades, the programme at the HAR this Autumn aims to “shed some light on the endlessly fascinating Russian imagination” – and we are delighted to be reprising some of the material from our concert in May.
This is not just music for music’s sake – although the two piano quintets by Schnittke and Shostakovich really are some of the finest chamber works of the twentieth century. This is also music with a history. In our rehearsals we’ve been exploring both the light and the dark sides of the quintet that won Shostakovich the prestigious Stalin prize in 1941 and Schnittke’s memoriam of the older composer, his Duo. Alongside these Russian works we’ll be performing Summa – a string quartet by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who fled to Vienna in 1980 after a prolonged struggle against Soviet officialdom.
Next week, we treat ourselves with some of our favourite works from the other side of the Iron Curtain in the Michael Croft Theatre at Alleyn’s School in London. Side by side are two quintets for piano and wind, both in E flat major – the first, Mozart claimed, was “the finest work I have ever composed”, and the second is a homage to his master from the 26-year-old Beethoven. We’ve paired these Teutonic classics with some French fancy: Poulenc’s Sextet for piano and winds (an Endymion favourite!) and the fantastic Nissen arrangement of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. We’re also looking forward to working with pupils from the school in a coaching workshop in the afternoon.
There are still a few tickets left for both concerts – you can book tickets for the Howard Assembly Room here and for Alleyn’s School here.
Posted in 2011 concerts, Uncategorized
Tagged Alleyn's School, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven, Goodbye Stalin!, Howard Assembly Room, Mozart, Opera North, Poulenc, Ravel, Schnittke, Shostakovich
Here’s a wonderful video of our performance a few weeks ago at the Southbank Centre of Arvo Pärt’s ‘Summa’ for string quartet.
We’re playing this beautiful piece again on 4th November at Opera North, 12th November at Sound Festival in Scotland and on 6th March 2012 at City Music Society at the Bishopsgate Institute. Do come and join us to hear it again!