Beethoven 250
Thursday 17 September, 5pm & 7.30pm
St Thomas Church, Lymington
Programme
BEETHOVEN Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 4 in A minor Op. 23
BEETHOVEN Sonata for Piano and Cello in G minor Op. 5
BEETHOVEN Clarinet Trio Op. 11
Jack Liebeck, violin
Jesper Svedberg, cello
Katherine Spencer, clarinet
Sam Haywood, piano
Jack Liebeck
“His playing is virtually flawless in its technical ease, scintillating articulateness and purity of tone.” (Gramophone)
Violinist, director and festival director Jack Liebeck, possesses “flawless technical mastery” and a “beguiling silvery tone” (BBC Music Magazine). Jack has been named as the Royal Academy of Music’s first Émile Sauret Professor of Violin and as the new Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music from 2022. Jack’s playing embraces the worlds of elegant chamber-chic Mozart through to the impassioned mastery required to frame Brett Dean The Lost Art of Letter Writing. His fascination with all things scientific has included performing the world premiere of Dario Marianelli’s Voyager Violin Concerto and led to his most recent collaboration, A Brief History of Time, with Professor Brian Cox and Benjamin Northey. This new violin concerto was commissioned for Jack by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from regular collaborator and composer Paul Dean, and is written in commemoration of Professor Stephen Hawking; A Brief History of Time received its world premiere in November 2019.
In the 25 years since his debut with the Hallé, Jack has worked with major international conductors and orchestras including Andrew Litton, Leonard Slatkin, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Sir Mark Elder, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Brett Dean (Royal Stockholm Philharmonic), Daniel Harding (Swedish Radio), Jukka Pekka Saraste (Oslo Philharmonic), David Robertson (St Louis Symphony), Jakub Hrůša and many orchestras across the world including Belgian National, Queensland Symphony, Moscow State Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Indianapolis Symphony and all of UK orchestras.
From 2022, Jack will be the Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM). He is also the artistic director of his own festivals Oxford May Music, the DESY Humboldt Science and Music Series in Hamburg, and Alpine Classic in Grindelwald, Switzerland where programming is centred around themes of music, science and the arts. A professional photographer, he loves film and can be heard in the soundtracks of The Theory of Everything, Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina. As the first Émile Sauret Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music he will work as an ambassador helping to recruit both at home and internationally in addition to his teaching. He has written and curated pieces for BBC Radio 3, Strad Magazine and has guest edited Classical Music Magazine. Jack is also a member of the Salieca Piano Trio and directs his own ensemble of regular collaborators, ‘Jack Liebeck and Friends’.
Jack’s new album, Schoenberg and Brahms violin concertos with BBC Symphony Orchestra, was released in March 2020 on Orchid Classics as part of his 40th birthday celebrations. The album has continued to receive glowing reviews and was the May BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month; “Stellar Brahms and an expressive Schoenberg: Jack Liebeck responds with astonishing command, allowing the music’s expression to speak with a real degree of freedom, even fantasy” (BBC Music Magazine). Other recordings and collaborations for Jack include the world premiere recording of Stuart Hancock’s violin concerto released on Orchid Classics, a chamber disc for Albion Records (Holst and Vaughan Williams) with Mary Bevan, and a recording of Braun’s beautiful From the Shtetl with London Chamber Orchestra for release in summer 2020. Recital touring includes performances across Europe, USA and Australasia for festivals and venues such as Wigmore Hall and Sydney International Piano Competition.
Jack has had an acclaimed recording career, from films to albums including Dvorak (Sony Classics) which won Jack Classical Brit Young Artist of the Year in 2010. His Brahms Violin Sonatas with pianist Katya Apekisheva was reviewed as “His tone is sweet and effortlessly expressive, his lyrical spans marked by many a tastefully judged portamento” (Strad Magazine). Jack’s notable relationship with Hyperion Records has included Kreisler with Katya Apekisheva and a complete Bruch concerto series with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins which won much praise “delightful mix of charm and bucolic spirit through Liebeck’s remarkable artistry and imagination” (The Telegraph). Jack has featured as a soloist on Classic FM’s, The Glorious Garden (poetry by Alan Titchmarsh, narrated by Alan with music by Debbie Wiseman), in The Mozart Question with Michael Morpurgo and the LPO, and as BBC Music Magazine’s cover disc in celebration of Paganini, The Virtuoso Violin.
Regular chamber collaborators throughout Jack’s career include internationally acclaimed artists such as brothers Brett Dean & Paul Dean, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Gary Hoffman, Gérard Causse, Mary Bevan, Imogen Cooper, Angela Hewitt, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piers Lane, Julius Drake, Alexander Madzar, Pascal Moragues, Michael Collins, Nicholas Daniel, Katya Apekisheva, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro and Mathieu Herzog.
Jack plays the ‘Ex-Wilhelmj’ J.B. Guadagnini dated 1785 and is generously loaned a Joseph Henry bow by Kathron Sturrock in the memory of her late husband Professor David Bennett. Jack Liebeck is managed worldwide by Percius. www.percius.co.uk
Jesper Svedberg
Swedish-born cellist Jesper Svedberg began his cello studies aged eight and he completed his Soloist Diploma in 1998 at the Edsberg Institute of Music in Stockholm under the tutelage of Frans Helmersson and Torlief Thedeen. He continued his cello studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Louise Hopkins. He graduated with a Masters Degree in Chamber Music in 2001 and was appointed Professor in Chamber Music at the University of Gothenburg where he remained for 10 years.
As soloist, Jesper has performed with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Symphony, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Dala Sinfonietta and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
Jesper is a founding member of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio. The trio took first prize in the 1999 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and was in 2000 selected for the BBC New Generation Artists Scheme. The trio has recorded for NAXOS with music including Schubert, Mozart, Haydn, Faure and Chopin. They have just finished recording the complete piano trio repertoire by Robert Schumann which will be released on the BIS label in 2020.
In 2010 Jesper was appointed Principal Cello with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He plays a rare 1699 Grancino cello, kindly loaned by the Jarnaker Foundation.
Katherine Spencer
Katherine Spencer is principal clarinet of The City of London Sinfonia, a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, guest principal of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and a busy freelance player with Britain’s leading orchestras. Katherine made her concerto debut at the Royal Festival Hall aged just 14 and has since performed there as concerto soloist many times. She has appeared as soloist in most of Britain’s major concert venues with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. She has made live Radio 3 solo broadcasts, and performs regularly on Classic FM and European radio stations on both modern and period instruments. She has recorded the Brahms Sonatas and Beethoven Trio for the Oxford Classic label and a large number of her discs have had much critical acclaim. Her competition prizes include the Yamaha European Foundation Award, and she won the Concertina Praga competition, which led to tours throughout Europe. She continues to perform internationally with her piano duo partner Sam Haywood. Among Katherine’s notable performances are the first live concert broadcast in Buckingham Palace, and a private solo performance for the Emperor of Japan. Katherine gives regular master classes and tuition in many of Britain’s leading conservatoires and universities and is equally committed to bringing classical music to life to the wider community, in venues such as hospices, hospitals, day centres, schools and care homes.
Sam Haywood
Sam Haywood has performed to critical acclaim in many of the world’s major concert halls. The Washington Post hailed his ‘dazzling, evocative playing’ and ‘lyrical sensitivity’ and the New York Times his ‘passionate flair and sparkling clarity’. He embraces a wide spectrum of the piano repertoire and is equally at home as a soloist or chamber musician, using modern or period instruments. He has recorded two solo albums for Hyperion, one featuring the piano music of Julius Isserlis (grandfather of Steven Isserlis) and the other Charles Villiers Stanford’s preludes. His passion for period instruments led to a recording on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano, part of the Cobbe Collection. In 2013 Haywood co-founded Solent Music Festival in UK. The annual Lymington-based festival features highly varied programmes and projects in the local community. Guest artists have included the King’s Singers, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Steven Isserlis, Anthony Marwood, Michael Portillo, Mark Padmore and the Elias Quartet. He was mentored by David Hartigan, Paul Badura-Skoda and Maria Curcio. Following his early success in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded him the Julius Isserlis Scholarship. He studied both at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, of which he is an Associate (ARAM). As a composer Haywood has written several miniatures for piano. ‘The Other Side’ was recently premiered in the Konzerthaus in Vienna and the ‘Song of the Penguins’, dedicated to Roger Birnstingl, is published by Emerson Editions. His invention ‘memorystars®’ can significantly reduce the time needed to memorise a music score. His other passions include literature, physics, natural history, technology, magic, fountain pens and table tennis. Originally from the English Lake District, he now lives in Kent with his wife Sophia, their young son James and cockapoo Poppy.