Sam Haywood and Friends
Thursday 23 Sept 2021 | 7.30pm
St Thomas Church, Lymington
Programme
BEETHOVEN Sonata for Piano and Violin in D major Op. 12 No 1
SCHUMANN Fantasiestücke Op. 73
Interval
BRAHMS Clarinet Trio Op. 114
Works to be announced from the stage
Aleksey Semenenko, violin
Christian Elliott, cello
Katherine Spencer, clarinet
Sam Haywood, piano
Join Sam and his friends for an evening of various combinations of instruments, including one of Brahms’s late works, the Clarinet Trio, dedicated to his friend the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld.
Aleksey Semenenko
After his Kennedy Center debut, the Washington Post wrote: “Semenenko … explored every corner of the composer’s imagination … a real triumph”. Shortly thereafter, the New York Times raved that his New York appearance was “particularly enriching”. At least since winning the prestigious Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 2012, the young violinist Aleksey Semenenko has belonged to the world’s elite violinists and can look forward to lively concerts in Europe and the USA, as a soloist and chamber musician.
As the winner of the Boris Goldstein International Violin Competition in 2015, he was invited to perform at the Musical Olympus Festival in St Petersburg, where he received the Audience Award and then made his debut with the Moscow Philharmonic. In addition, he won 2nd prize at the renowned Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, also in 2015. The violinist’s other awards include the “Artist of the Month” award from the magazine “Musical America Worldwide”.
The musician’s most recent engagements include appearances in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cologne Philharmonic, the Philharmonic in Essen, the Louvre in Paris, the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Moscow Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw-Orkest in Amsterdam.
Born in Odessa in 1988, Aleksey started studying violin at the age of 6 with Zoya Merzalova, who also trained Yuri Bashmet. His talent was recognized early on when he won a children’s music festival in Odessa just a year later and made his debut as a soloist with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra. Many important appearances followed quickly, including with the Moscow Virtuosos under the direction of Vladimir Spivakov.
After Aleksey completed his concert exam studies with Zakhar Bron in Cologne, he is currently studying chamber music with Prof. Harald Schoneweg, also at the Cologne University of Music. He plays a Stradivarius violin from 1699, which was made available to him by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.
Christian Elliott
Christian Elliott enjoys a varied career as chamber musician, orchestral musician, and soloist. He was appointed Principal Cellist of the Irish Chamber Orchestra in 2016, with whom he has appeared as soloist and director. He is also a member of the Phoenix Piano Trio whose upcoming discs feature works by Robert and Clara Schumann, Niels Gade, Brahms, and Mendelssohn.
Christian joined the Zehetmair Quartet in March 2014, which performs string quartets written as late as the mid-20th century from memory. They have also recorded and premiered several works by the Swiss composer, oboist, and conductor Heinz Holliger. Christian was recommended to that position by Steven Isserlis. Appearances with the quartet include the Lucerne Festival, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, Zurich Tonhalle, and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Christian has played as guest principal with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Welsh National Opera Orchestra, the RTE Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the RSNO, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and the Halle Orchestra.
Resident in Edinburgh, Christian is a founding member of the Raeburn Quartet which performs on classical period instruments. He is also a frequent guest member of existing chamber groups, such as the Arowonitz, Hebrides, and Mercury Ensembles. He was formerly a member of McGill University’s Lloyd Carr-Harris String Quartet awarded the Grand Prize at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition.
In October 2011, as soloist, Christian premiered Kevin Malone’s “E pluribus unum” for cello and orchestra with the Nottingham Philharmonic, and he is featured on Kevin Malone’s new disc of compositions entitled “The Music of 9/11” on the Prima Facie label, performing Requiem77 for solo cello and recorded voices. In a rare stroke of fate, in May 2009 a cellist booked to perform Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto injured himself two evenings before the concert, and Christian undertook the role of soloist at this incredibly short notice. He later performed the concerto again, with the RNCM Chamber Orchestra, in 2010.
Also a composer, Christian premiered his own string sextet composition at Wigmore Hall in July 2012, commissioned by Steven Isserlis to commemorate the Prussia Cove International Musicians Seminar’s 40th anniversary. Other commissions include a work for the Francoise-Green Piano Duo, and a solo viola work for Ruth Killius.
Christian began his musical studies with his father, guitarist Garry Elliott, at the age of nine. Having always loved the cello’s sound, when he was 13 he had the opportunity to learn the cello with Pawel Szymczyk-Marjanovic. He furthered his studies with Don Whitton and Thomas Wiebe, before taking his Bachelors degree at McGill University with Matt Haimovitz. Subsequently he studied at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music with Hannah Roberts and Ralph Kirshbaum, taking part in masterclasses with Steven Isserlis, Frans Helmerson, and Miklós Perenyi.
Katherine Spencer
Katherine is a member of the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra, principal clarinet of the City of London Sinfonia as well as regular guest principal with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Gabrieli Consort and Players. Her freelance work sees her regularly playing with many of Britain’s leading orchestras of both period performance and modern symphony orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Northern Symphonia.
Katherine is passionate about bringing music to all areas of society. She is always devising and delivering hugely valuable projects from composing and recording an entire film score written in collaboration by a mainstream and special needs school, to linking art and music to homeless people, which were exhibited in London’s main art galleries.
Sprinkled into the gap between quintets is a succession of other solo wind pieces including “Linoi”, in a knockout performance by clarinettist Katherine Spencer.
The New York Times
Her playing sounded effortless, coaxing a whole gamut of timbres from her instrument in a stunning display of virtuosity.
Manchester Evening News
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.