Schubertiade
Thursday 30 May, 7.30pm
St Thomas Church, Lymington
We opened our very first concert with a Schubertiade – a mixed, salon-type of Schubert’s music and are excited to be doing so again, this time featuring a collection of short pieces by living composers.
Programme
SCHUBERT
A selection of Lieder including The Trout, An die Musik, Ave Maria
The Shepherd on the Rock, D965
Composers Corner – short works by Huw Watkins, Jelena Poulíčková and Michael Czani-Wills
Fantasy in C major for violin and piano, D934
Soprano TBC
Katherine Spencer, clarinet
Aleksey Semenenko, violin
Sam Haywood, piano
Katherine Spencer
Clarinettist Katherine Spencer made her concerto debut at the age of fourteen at the Royal Festival Hall and has since performed there as concerto soloist many times.
She has also appeared as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Hannover Band, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in venues such as the Barbican Centre, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall; made many live Radio 3 solo broadcasts; and performs regularly on Classic FM and European radio stations.
Katherine is principal clarinet of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, City of London Sinfonia, Academy of Ancient Music as well as regular guest principal with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort and Hannover Band. Her freelance work sees her regularly playing with many of Europe’s leading period performance orchestras and modern symphony orchestras.
As a chamber musician Katherine was chosen by the BBC to be on their Young Generation Artists Scheme, which has facilitated her to continue to perform internationally with her ensembles in festivals such as the BBC Proms and the Barbican’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
She has recorded the Brahms Sonata and Beethoven Trio for the Oxford Classic label with Sam Haywood and Martin Storey. Many of her discs with the Galliard Ensemble, of which she is a long standing member, are highly acclaimed in the world press, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazines.
Katherine is committed to bringing music to all areas of society. She is regularly devising and delivering valuable community 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. She believes in the power of therapeutic music making to make the difference to all peoples lives.
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 gig proved “particularly rewarding . ” Since winning the prestigious Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 2012, the young violinist Aleksey Semenenko has been one of the world’s elite violinists and can look forward to a busy concert career in Europe and the USA, as a soloist and chamber musician.
As the winner of the International Boris Goldstein Violin Competition in 2015, he was invited to perform at the Musical Olympus Festival in St. Petersburg, where he received the Audience Prize and then made his debut with the Moscow Philharmonic. He also won second prize at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, also in 2015. The violinist’s other awards include the “Artist of the Month” honor from the magazine “Musical America Worldwide”.
The musician’s most recent engagements include performances 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 with the Concertgebouw Orkest in Amsterdam.
Born in Odessa in 1988, Aleksey began studying violin at the age of 6 with Zoya Merzalova, with whom Yuri Bashmet also studied. His talent was recognized early on when, just a year later, he became a prizewinner at a children’s music festival in Odessa and made his debut as a soloist with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra. Many important performances quickly followed, including with the Moscow Virtuosos under the direction of Vladimir Spivakov.
After Aleksey Semenenko 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 Stradivari violin from 1699, which was provided to him by the German Stiftung Musikleben.
Sam Haywood
Sam Haywood has performed in many of the world’s major concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philharmonie de Paris, Vienna Konzerthaus and the Wigmore Hall. The New York Times hailed his ‘‘Passionate flair and sparkling clarity’ and the Washington Post his ‘dazzling, evocative playing’. He has a special fondness for Indonesia, where he has performed and taught for many years.
He embraces a wide spectrum of the piano repertoire and is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician or working with singers. He has toured extensively as a duo with American violinist Joshua Bell and also with cellist Steven Isserlis.
He has composed several instrumental miniatures, including ‘The Other Side’, first performed at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. His Song of the Penguins for bassoon and piano, dedicated to Roger Birnstingl, is published by Emerson Editions.
For Hyperion Records, Haywood has recorded two albums of music by Charles Villiers Stanford and Julius Isserlis. Passionate about early instruments, he also recorded a Chopin album on the composer’s own Pleyel piano, part of the Cobbe Collection, to celebrate his bicentenary in 2010. For Sony Classical he has recorded a selection of works by the child prodigy Alma Deutscher and for Toccata Classics the violin and piano sonatas of Agnes Zimmermann with Mathilde Milwidsky. His recording of Mozart, Poulenc and Thuille with the Galliard Ensemble is soon to be released by Deux-Elles Records.
