It was a pleasure to welcome the Dorics back to Richmond. A six year gap emphasised just how the group has developed into the major quartet it is now, and the musicians had the large audience mesmerised. As several listeners commented afterwards, Haydn is often used to provide an 'unchallenging' introduction to a chamber concert - but with their strong, dynamic rendering of his Op. 33 No. 1, the Dorics made it clear from the outset that this was no mere warm-up act.

Britten's String Quartet No. 1 stood in strong contrast, with violist Hélène Clément performing on the composer's own instrument. The group's playing was admirable, and although the work as a whole doesn't really cohere, the movements were individually brilliant and explored a broad palette of moods. 

A remarkable evening ended with Schubert's great Death and the Maiden quartet. The audience was rapt, the applause rapturous - and the number of people queuing afterwards to upgrade their single tickets to Season Tickets bodes well for this new season.

Ordering buttons for Season Tickets are now live on our Home Page, www.rsconcerts.org. If you order online, your tickets will be waiting for you at the auditorium door on 28 September. If you can't wait to clutch an actual physical ticket, head on down to Castle Hill Bookshop in Richmond where they will be glad to oblige you. Take cash or a cheque, please.

We encourage early ordering, but there's one potential disadvantage: if you order early, we won't send you a printed Newsletter-cum-order-form when we do our mailing in mid-August. We'd rather spend money on artists than on stamps and envelopes. But if you want the Newsletter - and who wouldn't - you can download a copy here. Problem solved!

Our AGM took place last night, 24 June 2019, at the Black Lion in Richmond.

The Chair (Nick Reckert), Concert Secretary (Anna Jackson) and Treasurer (Philip Wicks) reported a season which had been exceptionally successful in terms of concert quality, member numbers, audience numbers and finances. The Society's Annual Report, which is produced for the Charity Commission, was approved.

Trustees and Officers were re-elected with no changes.  

The Divertimenti Quintet brought our season to a wonderful conclusion with a familiar favourite by Boccherini, a lively new work by the ensemble’s former viola player, one Sally Beamish, and Dvořák's brilliant Terzetto. The evening finished with a deeply moving performance of Schubert’s great C Major String Quintet. There was no encore. After a work like that, how could there be?

It’s been a great season for our Society, with appearances by the Chiaroscuro Quartet, Joanna MacGregor and Royal Northern Sinfonia among others, and larger audiences than we’ve had at any time in the Society’s 71 years. We hope you enjoyed it, and look forward to seeing you again next season.

Enjoy your summer!

We would really like to find one or more people to help with our publicity and marketing. This probably takes a couple of hours a week, averaged out over the year. It’s an enjoyable and rewarding role, and can be wide-ranging or quite focused, depending on applicants’ skills and availability. Would you like to know more? Please don’t be shy, and don’t under-estimate how much we’d like to hear from you. Write to info@rsconcerts.org and we can tell you more.

We got news at the last moment that violinist Kati Debretzeni was unwell and would have to drop out of the concert on 2 March. Disaster! Then came news that the very distinguished Elizabeth Wallfisch was available to stand in. Saved, and in style! Trio Goya clearly have a very strong subs' bench.

As a result of the change, the planned work by CPE Bach was omitted, and Maggie Cole performed instead a wonderfully paced Haydn sonata on the fortepiano. It was a good evening, enjoyed by a large audience.

Here's a photo of the artists in rehearsal, courtesy of our excellent photographer, Jane Morris-Abson.

In January 2020 our concerts will move from Saturday to Wednesday. This will benefit audience members who regularly go to other artistic events. Yes, it does happen. For example...

• Do you visit the Georgian Theatre Royal? Their events are three times less likely to be staged on a Wednesday than a Saturday.

• Are you a fan of Richmondshire Choral Society, Richmondshire Orchestra, Wensleydale Concerts? Those societies hold most of their concerts on a Saturday. From next year that won't be a problem.

• Do you have a joint Richmondshire Concerts/Darlington Music Society sub? The Darlington concerts are all on a Saturday, and sometimes - try as we may - there's an unavoidable clash. In future that won't happen.

This change will help sustain the healthy audience numbers which allow us to put on the best professional concerts in the region, by the very best artists and at the most reasonable prices.

Members are entitled to receive our concert programmes free of charge, by email, and we always send them out five days before a concert. Recently, though, a lot of those emails have been wrongly rejected as spam; in every case the member concerned had a btinternet.com email account. 

We can work round this issue in future, but the functionality of the emails will be reduced. A pity - btinternet.com really should know better.

Dark nights and icy roads mean our January concerts sometimes get a thin audience. Not last night, though, when mild weather, a sparkling Mozartish programme and the pull of the name Royal Northern Sinfonia drew an audience of almost 280 to the Influence Church. And didn’t everyone, listeners and artists alike, clearly enjoy the recital of classical and neo-classical wind octets?

There’s a bit of a gap now until our next concert, by Trio Goya on 2 March. If you haven’t previously come across this period-instrument ensemble, that’s not surprising; their recordings are as infrequent as they are admired. Their Haydn came out way back in 2010, and now their recording of Beethoven’s Opus 1 Trios has been released by Chandos, to enthusiastic reviews in The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, Classical Music (“one of the finest performances anywhere” - beat that) and on Amazon, where you can discover listeners’ enthusiasm and find more detail. If 2 March isn’t already in your calendar, block out the date now.