ELY SINFONIA

Reg. Charity No. 1161642 President: Raphael Wallfisch

presents

CRAIG OGDEN PLAYS RODRIGO

Ely Cathedral Saturday 30th September 2017

at 7.30pm

Ely Sinfonia Craig Ogden Guitar Steve Bingham Conductor

Programme

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio espagnol Joaquín Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez

– INTERVAL –

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony no. 2 in D major Arturo Márquez Danzón no. 2

By kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Ely Cathedral

Programme £1.50

WELCOME

The apotheosis of the dance?

Wagner famously referred to one of Beethoven’s symphonies as the “apotheosis of the dance”, and perhaps that is because dancers need music but music needs dancers too!

Tonight’s programme underlines this truth with wit and affection. We travel from a Russian view of Spain with its alboradas and fandangos to the grace and rhythm of sixteenth-century Spain seen through the prism of the twentieth century; from the sunny countryside of Heiligenstadt to the dance halls of old Veracruz. Take your partners!

Jeremy Harmer

Capriccio espagnol Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)

Alborada, Variazioni, Alborada, Scena e canto gitano, Fandango asturiano

After the success of his Fantasy on Russian themes Rimsky-Korsakov planned, as he wrote in his autobiography, to do another violin and orchestra piece, this time on Spanish themes. But he soon decided to make it an “orchestral piece with virtuoso instrumentation … to glitter with dazzling colours”. And boy, did he succeed! Recognised by all musicians for its extraordinary orchestration and for its energy and brilliance, Capriccio espagnol is an enduring favourite in the concert hall.

Rimsky-Korsakov was one of ‘the Five’ (with Balakirev, Borodin, Cui and Mussorgsky), who believed in creating a national music, although Rimsky-Korsakov himself was very familiar with Western styles and tropes. His own compositions, and his masterful orches-tration, certainly influenced Ravel and Debussy, Dukas and Respighi, to name but a few.

As well as being a musician and a music teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov had a career in the Russian navy and as a civilian inspector of naval bands, through which he learnt much about brass and woodwind orchestration. His wife Nadezhda (who predictably had to give up her own ambitions as a composer when she married) was a big influence on his writing. At one point he went through a compositional crisis – and suffered the scorn of some of the Five, who thought he was writing too many Western fugues. It was his three great works, Capriccio espagnol (1887), Scheherazade (1888) and the Russian Easter Overture (1888), which lifted him back into the mainstream, together with his developing friendship with Tchaikovsky. Later, during the 1905 Revolution, he was removed from his

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Joining the FRIENDS of ELY SINFONIA is a great opportunity to support live music in East Cambridgeshire whilst becoming part of a lively, friendly group of like-minded people.

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As the local community orchestra, Ely Sinfonia aims to give players the chance of orchestral experience close to home, to provide local schoolchildren with the opportunity to learn about music and instruments, and to bring a wealth of wonderful music to local music-lovers.

Your subscription will go towards developing the orchestra, allowing it to give more concerts in Ely and to take live music out to rural East Cambridgeshire and beyond. The Friends of Ely Sinfonia help us to perform in local venues and to run workshops during which young players have the chance to play alongside more experienced musicians and learn new, challenging pieces.

You can join the Friends through our website at http://www.elysinfonia.co.uk/ home/friends-of-ely-sinfonia, where you will also find a Gift Aid form. Alternatively, for more information, ask for details and a membership form at the Friends’ stall, or email friends@elysinfonia.co.uk.

MUSIC IN ELY: DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Coming up from Ely Sinfonia …

Saturday 28 April 2018 We present music from the Russian ballet, featuring two of the Ely Cathedral most evocative pieces of ballet music ever written: Khachaturian’s 7.30pm Spartacus Suite no. 2 and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite no. 1. Our third piece is still to be decided: email chair@elysinfonia.co.uk to nominate your favourite piece.

Concerts in Ely

Saturday 21 October Music for the Queen of Heaven: Emma Kirkby joins Ely Consort, Ely Cathedral Cadenza and members of the Chamber Choir of the 21C for a concert 7.00pm in aid of the Cathedral Music Fund.

Saturday 4 November Ely Choral Society is joined by the Ribe Kammerkor, a chamber choir Ely Cathedral from Ely’s twinned Danish city of Ribe, to sing Britten’s Rejoice in the 7.30pm Lamb, pieces by Gade, Mendelssohn and Rutter, and Schubert’s C Minor Mass.

Other concerts involving our players

Saturday 4 November The Cambridge Philharmonic Society presents Rachmaninov’s West Road Concert Hall The Isle of the Dead, Dvořák’s Symphony no. 7 and Britten’s Cambridge Violin Concerto, with soloist Matthew Trusler.

Saturday 18 November The Cambridge Concert Orchestra plays a concert of light classical St Luke’s Church music, jazz and tunes from the musicals in aid of Freedom From Cambridge Torture.

Sunday 19 November The Norfolk Symphony Orchestra presents a festival of Hollywood Corn Exchange film music and a hilarious murder whodunnit in which the narrator King’s Lynn investigates who in the orchestra killed the composer!

Saturday 12 December Kings Lynn Festival Chorus presents a concert for Christmas. St Nicholas’ Chapel Kings Lynn

Thursday 4 July 2018 A 300-strong visiting American choir sings A Celebration for Peace Ely Cathedral in commemoration of the centenary of the end of World War I, conducted by Craig Jessop and Stephen Cleobury.

post at the Conservatoire but continued to teach his expelled students privately. As if to compensate, he enjoyed triumphs in Paris as both composer and conductor.

Capriccio espagnol opens with an Alborada, a typically festive Asturian dance celebrating the rising of the sun. The second section offers variations on an original horn melody. We then return to the Asturian dance, but this time with a different orchestration. The following scene with a gypsy song opens with cadenzas by horns and trumpets, solo violin, flute, clarinet and harp against percussion rolls, leading to a 3/4 dance, which rushes us into the Fandango, another lively Asturian dance. A final bravura statement of the original Alborada brings this orchestral masterpiece to its brilliant end.

Concierto de Aranjuez Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–1999)

Allegro con spirito Adagio Allegro gentile

One evening in 1938, the Spanish guitarist Regio Sainz de Maza had dinner in Paris – a fine one, we understand – with his fellow countryman Joaquín Rodrigo. It seems he was on a mission: he wanted his friend to write a modern guitar concerto. After all, nothing significant had been written for guitar and orchestra for over a hundred years.

Rodrigo didn’t seem an ideal choice. True, he was a very fine pianist and had developed the ability to use Braille for composition (he was blind from the age of three), but he knew relatively little about the guitar and its capabilities. Nevertheless, when Sainz de Maza (to whom the work is dedicated) premièred the piece with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra in 1940, the world first heard what is possibly the most popular piece of Spanish music ever written. I would be prepared to bet that there isn’t a single member of tonight’s audience who hasn’t somewhere, sometime heard the theme of the slow middle movement. It has been copied and interpreted by many, including the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.

Rodrigo said that the Concierto de Aranjuez “should sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks, as strong as a butterfly, as dainty as a verónica [one of a matador’s most graceful passes]”.

Aranjuez is the former summer palace of the Bourbon kings and, inspired by its gardens, Rodrigo conjures up the musical heritage of Spain in a style that the guitarist John

been played at our concerts. The orchestra also has close links with Ely Cathedral, regularly providing groups to play at events such as the Easter Day Mass. Other projects include open workshops, when less experienced players have the chance to play alongside the orches-tra’s regular members and develop their orchestral and ensemble playing techniques.

www.elysinfonia.co.uk publicity@elysinfonia.co.uk

Violin 1 Kate Clow, Fiona Dagg, Viola Hay, Naomi Laredo, Rob Millman, Chris Moule, Donna Pullen, Charlotte Rowan, Tiago Sebastiao, Mel Siddall, Edwin Sung, Richard Williamson

Violin 2 Roz Chalmers, Jacky Cox, Judith France, Ursula France, Clare Hambling, Graham Jones, Esther McLeish, Jonathan Skerrett, Jane Stevens, Ashley Thorpe, IJmkje van der Werf, Eleanor Wilson

Viola Katy Baker, Alice Clow, Patricia Mathieson, Marlen Moss-Eckhart, Su Pyke, Hilary Sellars, Brenda Stewart, Yvonne Williamson

Cello Dave McLeish, Nick Balaam, Esther Clow, Jacob Cox, Charlotte Dean, Carol McEvoy, Joan Marchbank, Rachel Mycock, Sally Parnell, Saeko Soya-Dijkstra

Double bass John Chalmers, Stuart Clow, Chris Finch, Rosemary Hughes, John Richens

Flute/Piccolo Ellie Wolmark, Susan Gatell, Jean Swift

Oboe Jenny Sewell (+ cor anglais), Carol London

Clarinet Michelle Heathcote, Peter Fisher

Bassoon Phil Evans, Simon Laughlin

Horn Nick Sims-Williams, Laurie Friday, Rob Spivey, Adrian Watts

Trumpet Graham Berridge, Evert Bokma

Trombone Michael Rickwood, Matthew Ralph, Edwin Sung

Tuba Brian Partridge

Timpani Kate Wishart

Percussion Nigel Blazeby, James McLeish, John Richens, Derek Scurrl, Brenda Stewart

Piano John Richens

Harp Alexander Thomas

Artistic director Steve Bingham

Williams, who has performed and recorded the piece many times, calls “dissonant elegance”. Spain’s catastrophic Civil War had only just ended, so harking back to the sixteenth century seemed safer than anything more ‘modern’. Crucially, the composer resolves the difficulty of balance – the Spanish guitar is not a loud instrument in comparison with a symphony orchestra – by letting the instrument display its rhythmic and melodic strengths without ever having to challenge the orchestra’s full might.

Animated by a rhythmic spirit and vigour without either of its two themes interrupting its relentless pace (the composer’s words), the lovely first movement is instantly recognisable from the guitar’s opening strummed chords.

Was the second movement a lament for the destruction of Guernica during the Civil War? Not so, Rodrigo’s wife Victoria suggested in her autobiography. It harks back, she said, to their honeymoon, but is also tinged with sadness over the miscarriage of her first pregnancy. Whatever inspired it, the beautiful melody, played against a guitar accompaniment by the cor anglais before being taken up and elaborated on by orchestra and solo instrument, is deeply moving and evocative.

Returning from the B minor key of the Adagio, the final Allegro gentile is in the D major of the opening. Alternating between 2/4 and 3/4 time, the movement dances cheerfully to the concerto’s end.

In a long and successful composing career, Rodrigo wrote concertos, orchestral works and solo works for guitar, flute, harp, cello and voice. But his enduring fame will always rest on this fabulous concerto.

ELY SINFONIA WORKSHOP 7th January 2018

Ely Sinfonia’s next Come and Play workshop takes place on 7th January 2018, when

we shall be working on Holst’s Planets for the centenary of its first performance.

The workshop is open to all comers of Grade V standard or above.

For further details or to register for the workshop, check out our website, www.elysinfonia.co.uk, or email Dave McLeish at workshops@elysinfonia.co.uk.

KATE CLOW was born in Winnipeg and spent her school days in Wimbledon, starting piano and violin lessons at the age of 6. From the age of 11, Saturdays were dedicated to music as an Exhib-itioner in the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music. Kate spent two years playing with the National Youth Orchestra.

Kate decided on a career as a nurse, but spent a gap year working for the LRAM teaching qualification – and passed! She has subsequently always enjoyed teaching a few pupils at home.

As a student nurse and midwife at Addenbrooke’s, Kate would often be found dashing off to CUMS and other rehearsals after early shifts, and fitting in half a rehearsal before night duty. Benefiting from university social life helped her realise she had made the right decision to keep music as a hobby.

With student days over, Kate joined the Cambridge Philharmonic in January 1990, and for the past 18 years she has shared a desk with Steve Bingham as co-leader. Life now is busier than ever, with husband Stuart (in the double bass section), two teenage daughters and a part-time job as a nurse in a Cambridge GP surgery.

Kate also leads Steve Bingham’s Ad Hoc Sinfonia, the K239 Orchestra and the Montague String Quartet. She has recently taken part in the local charity fundraising ‘Grade One-a-thons’ and is proud to have passed Grade 1 in both flute and snare drum with Distinction.

Ely Sinfonia is delighted to welcome Kate in her first concert as our leader.

ELY SINFONIA was founded in November 1999 as a millennium project. It was the brainchild of local musicians and launched with the aid of ADeC (Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire) and various leading local organisations and individuals.

Since then it has more than achieved its aim of becoming a beacon of excellence as East Cambridgeshire’s own community orchestra. It is now regarded as one of the region’s best respected orchestras, with players of all ages and backgrounds, from school and college students to business professionals, retired people and local music teachers. Together they play everything from mainstream works to the contemporary, including special commissions.

Ely Sinfonia is particularly keen on promoting youth music and is a past supporter of the Cambridge Young Composer of the Year competition: winners’ pieces have frequently

IJmkje van der Werf Violin Maker and Restorer

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In 2017, Craig is recording a new album with vocalist Jacqui Dankworth, followed by a series of live performances. He has also presented radio programmes, including The Segovia Legacy on BBC Radio 3 (with Louis de Bernières), Ten Pound Pom Mum for BBC Northern Ireland (about his mother’s upbringing in Northern Ireland) and a series of four interviews with artists for ABC Classic FM (Australia). Craig was also invited by Sky Arts to be a mentor for the 2015 Guitar Star television series.

Craig Ogden is Head of Guitar at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, Adjunct Fellow of the University of Western Australia, Associate Artist of The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Curator of Craig Ogden’s Big Guitar Weekend at The Bridgewater Hall and Director of the Dean & Chadlington Summer Music Festival.

www.craigogden.com

STEVE BINGHAM studied violin at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1985 he formed the Bingham String Quartet, an ensemble which has become one of the foremost in the UK, with an enviable reputation for both classical and contemporary repertoire. The quartet has recorded numerous CDs and has worked for radio and television both in the UK and as far afield as Australia.

Steve has appeared as guest leader with many orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English National Ballet and English Sinfonia. He has given solo recitals in both the UK and America and his concerto performances have included works by Bach, Vivaldi, Bruch, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn and

Sibelius, given in venues as prestigious as St John’s Smith Square and the Royal Albert Hall. Steve has a growing reputation as a conductor, and alongside Ely Sinfonia is currently principal conductor of the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra and the Ad Hoc Sinfonia.

Steve is internationally renowned for his solo violin recitals, where he mixes acoustic pieces with live-looped electric violin arrangements in his own unique way. Steve has released four solo albums, Duplicity, Ascension, Third and The Persistence of Vision, alongside many single tracks.

Steve’s interests include ornithology, photography and Celtic knotwork.

www.stevebingham.co.uk

Symphony no. 2 in D major Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Adagio molto – Allegro con brio Larghetto Scherzo: Allegro Finale: Allegro molto

It was just after he had finished composing his second symphony in Heiligenstadt that Beethoven wrote to his brothers confessing to his increasing deafness and expressing suicidal thoughts, in a document widely referred to as the Heiligenstadt Testament. He had gone there on the advice of one Dr Schmidt, who hoped that the retreat to the country might slow the progress of this most ironic of afflictions for a composer. But of course it didn’t help at all, and Beethoven, understandably, was in despair. When his devoted student Ferdinand Ries visited him, he drew Beethoven’s attention to the sound of a shepherd playing on a reed pipe. Beethoven couldn’t hear it and so Ries pretended he couldn’t either, but no one was really fooled. Ries found his teacher increasingly quiet and morose.

So how, in the midst of all this gloom, did Beethoven manage to write one of his most energetic, cheerful and outgoing works? Perhaps part of his genius was always to be flipping between darkness and light – witness, for example, his extraordinary ninth symphony and the remarkable late quartets.

The second symphony was premièred in Vienna in 1803, in a concert which also included his third piano concerto and his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Beethoven considered the oratorio the main work of the evening, but ultimately it was his new symphony which ‘won the day’. The composer, however, confessed himself “only a little satisfied” and resolved to “take a new path”. Eroica was just around the corner.

Meanwhile, we will stay with this delightful composition, whose first movement starts with a quiet, rhythmic theme on the violas before the orchestra joins in. The next theme is shared by clarinet, bassoon and horns, and the development treats the two themes in order, each restated in its turn before an extensive coda brings the movement to a positive conclusion.

The second movement shows Beethoven at his most innocent and lyrical. Maybe it was the clear air of Heiligenstadt that inspired this tender movement, with its folk melodies and calls, foreshadowing the lovely pastoral symphony.

The Scherzo which follows, in minuet form, with its thigh-slapping dances and capricious dynamism, provides a perfect bridge between the Adagio and the Finale.

And what a finale! A mixture of sonata and rondo forms, with a rhythmic first theme and

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Australian-born guitarist CRAIG OGDEN is one of the most exciting artists of his generation. He studied guitar from the age of 7 and percussion from the age of 13. In 2004, he became the youngest instrumentalist to receive a Fellowship Award from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

One of the UK’s most recorded guitarists, his recordings for Virgin/EMI, Chandos, Nimbus, Hyperion, Sony and Classic FM have received wide acclaim. Craig’s sixth Classic FM recording, launched in June 2017, is Summertime Deluxe, a re-release of his most popular album Summertime featuring three brand new tracks.

Craig has performed concertos with all the major UK orchestras and many abroad, in countries including Latvia, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and Australia. In December 2015, he was asked at short notice to step in for Miloš Karadaglić, and performed a concert series with the Royal Northern Sinfonia to critical acclaim. Craig again stepped in for Miloš in winter 2016, taking on the challenge of learning nine new pieces of music in one week.

Craig enjoys performing new works for guitar and in November 2017 he gives the world première of a concerto written for him by Andy Scott with the Northern Chamber Orch-estra in Manchester. David Knotts and Geoffrey Gordon are also writing concertos for Craig.

Craig regularly appears as soloist and chamber musician at major venues and collaborates with many of the UK’s top artists and ensembles. He has been invited to perform with John Williams at venues including London’s Globe Theatre, where he returned for a music and poetry performance with actress Meera Syal. Craig has also performed at many large outdoor festivals, including Jamie Oliver and Alex James’ Big Feastival and the Wilderness Festival. In August 2015, he gave a recital with tenor James Gilchrist at the Edinburgh Festival which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. In July 2016, Craig gave concerts and master classes in Hong Kong and Shanghai as part of the Hong Kong Guitar Symposium.

a more cantabile (singing) second one. The themes are restated, a quiet passage ensues and then a galloping coda introduces a new theme that carries the symphony to its cheerful, vibrant close.

Time for another tequila!

Danzón no. 2 Arturo Márquez (1950–)

It was in the summer of 2007 that Gustavo Dudamel brought his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra to the BBC promenade concerts and delivered one of the most exhilarating, passionate programmes that unique festival has ever seen (reader, I was there!). They played Shostakovich and Bernstein, Ginastera and Moncayo, and a piece that was not widely known outside the composer’s Mexico, Márquez’ Danzón no. 2. Arguably it is the Venezuelans’ repeated performances of that work that have made it, today, such a popular concert piece.

Arturo Márquez was born in the Mexican northern state of Sonora, the son of a mariachi musician. He studied at the Mexican Music Conservatory and won scholarships to study in Paris and California. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes y Ciencias by Mexican President Felipe Calderón to add to his many prizes, which include the Medalla Mozart awarded by the Austrian Embassy.

In 1993 Márquez visited his friends, the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martinez, who were both passionate about the danzón, a popular traditional dance which is – or was – as typical of the port city of Veracruz (and the old dance halls of Mexico City) as the tango is of Argentina. The danzón came originally from Cuba, where it was at first as shocking as the waltz was in Europe: all that physical contact! It is this tradition that Márquez has captured in a work that was premièred in 1994. The danzón, he writes, is “a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world … The Danzón no. 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre … it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music.”

The piece is about ten minutes long. Starting with an elegant slow introduction, it quickly erupts into a wonderful burst of rhythm and syncopation. There are melodies, swirling strings, and beautiful solos and duets from clarinet, oboe, violin etc. (listen for the sweetness of a charming piccolo solo – not something you hear every day!). The dancers swirl and gyrate, ever more boisterous and exuberant, as fragments reappear, until a repeated rhythm and note in all the instruments bring the piece to a wonderfully definite conclusion.