Chichester Chamber Concerts launches into its 22nd season with a busy programme in the Assembly Room, Chichester from October to March.
Concerts coming up include:
Thursday 2nd October – Ofer Falk and the English Chamber Orchestra Graduates Ensemble
Thursday 6th November – Amatis Piano Trio
Thursday 4th December – Carducci String Quartet
Thursday 22nd January – Orsino Wind Ensemble
Thursday 26th February – Trio Sitkovetsky
Thursday 26th March – Kleio Quartet
For all concerts tickets are £25, under 25s go free, available from Chichester Festival Theatre. A season ticket for six concerts costs £135; a season ticket for four concerts costs £90.
Read more on SussexWorld.
Download the season brochure (3 MB).
Artists Featured
Three of our six concerts this season are by artists new to us.
The Amatis Piano Trio are a German-British-Dutch group founded in 2014 in Amsterdam but now based in Salzburg. They have toured an extensive repertoire all over Europe and recorded two unusually interesting CDs including music by Enescu and Messiaen.
The Orsino Wind Ensemble describe themselves as a “flexible” group reflecting not only their individual instrumental skills but the range of wind music they play. A glance at their recent recordings playing music by ten different composers speaks volumes, and a look at the composers they bring to Chichester adds two more unexpected names, Ligeti and Haas.
The Kleio String Quartet were 2023 prize winners at the prestigious Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark and have drawn plaudits wherever they have played. They too are bringing a varied repertoire including a substantial piece by Kaija Saariaho, the first of her works to be heard in our series.
Ofer Falk brought an ensemble from the English Chamber Orchestra strings last season. The concert was so well received that we are repeating the event in a second visit with, of course, different music. Their decision to play a chamber arrangement of Beethoven’s great Violin Concerto is not to be missed.
The Carducci String Quartet are of course well known and well established. They too have visited us twice before, first in 2007, so they class as old friends. We are delighted that they are bringing an all-Shostakovich programme in this 50th anniversary year of the great composer’s death. They play all fifteen quartets in a Wigmore Hall series and come to Chichester with three of them.
The Sitkovetsky Trio are also old friends, having played for us no less than three times, including, in 2013, Brahms’ Piano Trio Op.101. It will be exciting to hear them performing Op. 87.
This Season’s Musical Highlights
Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975 making this year the 50th Anniversary of his death. Few composers of the last century have a greater claim on our attention, so the visit by the Carducci Quartet to play three of his string quartets has to be a highlight. None of his quartets are early works so we are promised an evening of wide ranging, mature pieces, engaging and sometimes very dramatic music. Any performance of Beethoven’s quartets has to be a highlight of any season, but the prospect of his Violin Concerto, arranged for string group, is utterly enticing. This is one of the greatest of concertos, and a very big piece, some 40 minutes long. I am sure hardly any of us have ever heard it like this, making the October concert a must.
The March concert by the Kleio Quartet, containing the Op. 95 String Quartet, is another definite. It is a reminder that Beethoven was a very advanced composer indeed, writing Op. 95 nearly a century before his fellow Viennese resident, Anton Webern, whose challenging Five Pieces Op. 5 is in the same programme.
The Orsino Wind Quintet play pieces by Pavel Haas and György Ligeti that may be new to many, though both works are very accessible and quite enchanting. Ligeti wrote his Six Bagatelles when a student and they make for highly enjoyable listening. Pavel Haas, a student of Janáček, and a tragic victim of the Nazis (as his dates indicate), wrote his Wind Quintet in 1929. Its infectious third movement and stately chorale finale are sure to appeal.
For those who prefer better known music we have Mozart, Dvořák, Schubert, Brahms and Mendelssohn sprinkled throughout our concerts, guaranteeing a large dose of the familiar. Mendelssohn, brought to us by the Amatis Trio as well as the Kleio Quartet, is especially welcome in this respect, since his chamber compositions are not as often heard as they deserve to be. The Sitkovetsky Trio perform Bruch, Mozart and Brahms in February, and the Amatis November concert includes Schubert’s late Op. 100 Trio in E flat.
All of this makes another season ticket a very good idea.
Anna Hill
