Apollo5
​
29 September
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Apollo5 is an a cappella vocal group, an offshoot of the equally celebrated Voces8. The artists are Clare Stewart and Penelope Appleyard (sopranos), Josh Cooter and Oli Martin-Smith (tenors) and Greg Link (bass).

Performing across a wide range of musical styles, the singers have appeared in many European countries, the USA and Asia. In Britain they have sung at the Royal Albert Hall, Kings Place and the Barbican, as well as appearing frequently on BBC Radio 3 and recording numerous albums. 

​The group's recent album, O Radiant Dawn, leaped into the top 10 of the UK classical charts, and we believe they'll be bringing their new one with them, Where All Roses Go. The singers are known for their exceptional communication with audiences, frequently performing from memory. When not performing, the group is committed to offering workshops, masterclasses and children's concerts, as well as longer projects and residencies.

Tonight's programme is a wide-ranging selection of works spanning 500 years, from William Byrd and Thomas Tallis through to Gerald Finzi, Eric Whitacre and other composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and including works written for the ensemble.
Generously supported by Judy Moorhouse

The Sacconi Quartet​

20 October
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Mozart String Quartet No. 16 in E flat, K428 
Ravel String Quartet 
Schubert Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D804, 'Rosamunde'

​The Sacconi Quartet consists of Ben Hancox and Hannah Dawson (violins), Robin Ashwell (viola), and Cara Berridge (cello).

Founded by the current members over 20 years ago, the Sacconi Quartet has achieved widespread recognition in leading British concert halls and festivals in Britain and across Europe, and won major prizes in chamber music competitions. Since 2008 the group has run the Sacconi Chamber Music Festival in Kent.

Tonight's concert opens with a work from Mozart's early years in Vienna, dedicated to Haydn. It is followed by Ravel's String Quartet, one of the great standards of the canon; superficially modelled on Debussy's quartet, Ravel's is less impressionistic, and shows a return to the rigours of strict Classicism. The evening ends with Schubert's haunting 'Rosamunde' Quartet. 
Generously supported by Anna Jackson in memory of Tim Jackson

Alison Gill and Yoshie Kawamura
​(piano four hands)
​
17 November
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Programme to be finalised, but likely to feature the Schubert Fantasie, and works by Mendelssohn, Liszt and Stravinsky.
Generously supported by Sally and Nicholas Reckert

The New London Chamber Ensemble

2 February 2022
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​Beethoven Quintet for Piano and Winds Op. 16
Paul Reade Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite
Poulenc Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon
..........
John Woolrich A Cabinet of Curiosities
Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds K452

Tonight's performers are TBC (piano), Melanie Ragge (oboe), Neyire Ashworth (clarinet), Stephen Stirling (horn), Fraser Gordon (bassoon). (Photo, © Fiona Hanson, shows a slightly different lineup.)

A wonderfully varied season continues with a wonderfully varied programme from the London-based wind ensemble, returning to Richmond after a five-year absence. Among tonight's works two may stand out as less familiar. Paul Reade’s delightful piece was winner of the 1991 Ivor Novello Award for Best TV Theme, having been written to accompany the 13-part BBC2 series, The Victorian Kitchen Garden. It's a perfect distillation of the English pastoral tradition. John Woolrich's Cabinet of Curiosities is a delicate set of nine miniatures with little hints of Robert Schumann.

The evening comes full circle. Mozart's K452 ("the best thing I have written in my life") contains beautiful, idiomatic writing for the winds and some virtuoso work for the piano. It is believed to have inspired the Beethoven Quintet, with which we began, and which is also in E-flat, and which uses the same scoring. So does the Woolrich work. Mozart, echoing down the centuries...

The Consone Quartet

23 February 2022
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Haydn String Quartet Op. 71 No. 2
Beethoven String Quartet No. 5
..........
Carl Czerny String Quartet in D Minor

The Consone Quartet comprises Agata Daraškaite and Magdalena Loth-Hill (violins), Elitsa Bogdanova (viola), and George Ross (cello).

Formed in 2012 at the Royal College of Music, the Consone Quartet has garnered numerous awards, becoming the first period-instrument quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists. The Quartet is fast making a name for itself, and if you were listening to Radio 3 on 28 June, you may have heard the artists live from Wigmore Hall. 

All three of tonight's works span a great musical shift. Haydn's lyrical Op. 71 No. 2 looks forward to Romanticism, while Beethoven's String Quartet No. 5 looks back to Classical Mozart. The Austrian Carl Czerny wrote a huge amount of music which bridged the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Many of his works - like tonight's - are still being re-discovered.  

Maggie Cole (fortepiano)
​and Kati Debretzeni (violin)

16 March 2022
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Mozart Violin Sonata No. 32
Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 5 Op. 24, 'Spring'
Ivan Khandoshkin Sonata for Solo Violin
Haydn Keyboard Sonata in E Minor Hob XVI/34

We last saw Maggie Cole in 2019, when she appeared with Trio Goya on an evening of poor weather, with a last-minute change to the group's line-up and programme. Despite those apparent problems, there was a big turnout (our audiences have a nose for these things) and it was an excellent evening. Tonight she appears with her Trio Goya colleague, the violinist Kati Debrezeni - so expectations are high!

Mozart played the piano part in the première of his Sonata No. 32; although he remembered it well, he had no time to write it out, so performed with a sheet of blank music paper in front of him, to fool the audience. The Emperor Joseph II apparently saw the empty sheet music through his opera glasses, and asked Mozart to show him the manuscript. Mozart had to confess the truth, although that is likely to have amused the monarch.

Beethoven's 'Spring' Sonata, one of his happiest and most popular works, is followed by a piece by the relatively little known Ivan Khandoshkin, reputedly the finest violinist of eighteenth century Russia. The concert ends with a rare minor-key sonata by 'Papa' Haydn; scored for harpsichord or fortepiano, at the performer's choice, it shows Haydn's growing awareness of the dynamic possibilities offered by the fortepiano.

The Piatti Quartet

6 April 2022
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Beethoven String Quartet No. 3
Mark-Anthony Turnage String Quartet No. 4, 'Winter's Edge'
Dvořák String Quartet No. 12, the 'American'

The Piatti Quartet is Nathaniel Anderson-Frank and Michael Trainor (violins), Tetsuumi Nagata (viola) and Jessie Ann Richardson (cello).

The artists last came to Richmond four years ago, when their concert was dominated by a huge performance of Beethoven's late Op. 130 Quartet. Tonight's recital starts at the other end of Beethoven's chamber-music canon. His Quartet No. 3 is unusually light in texture, ending, as one critic has written, in a mischievous Presto with skittery rhythms, before disappearing in the musical equivalent of a puff of smoke.

Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the most played and most celebrated contemporary composers, blending classical and jazz idioms, modernism and tradition. The Piattis have a close relationship with Turnage; the artists premièred his Second Quartet at Wigmore Hall in 2016, and commissioned and performed this Fourth Quartet in 2019.

To end the evening, one of the most popular and recognisable of all string quartets: Dvořák's 'American' Quartet was written in 1893, when the composer lived in the United States. Dvořák was struck by the rich folk-music traditions he found, in whose melodies he discovered "all that is needed for a great and noble school of music".