Saturday 16 September 7.30pm
£20.00 (18 and under free)
Book all 5 York Chamber Music Festival events in the same transaction and save £15.00
Venue: Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York

Festival Artists

John Mills, Jonathan Stone violins
Hélène Clément, Simone van der Giessen violas
Jonathan Aasgaard, Tim Lowe cellos
Billy Cole double bass
Katya Apekisheve piano

Frank Bridge Three Idylls H.67
Vaughan William Piano Quintet in C Minor
Elgar Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84.

These three gems of English chamber music all date from a period of just over a decade between 1907 and 1919 when the traumatic events of World War One shattered Victorian certainties. Bridge’s and Vaughan Williams’s pieces were pre-war, early works as they began to find their way, their unique voices. Both were at the Royal College of Music in the 1890s and as with Elgar they were practical string players. VW discovered a national musical tradition sung and played by ordinary English working people going about their daily labours and sung from the galleries of parish churches. It was there in plain sight.

Elgar was largely self-taught. He said he took music from the air , ”… the world is full of it and – you – simply – simply – take as much as you require.” But he more than any other English composer was rooted in a long pastoral tradition – Constable, Keats and Wordsworth, through Shakespeare and Chaucer, through the English parish churches and medieval cathedrals, perhaps in the mists of time to King Arthur and Tintagel. This was the foundation of his genius but it meant he knew more about the future and he was highly sensitive to the political and social world that eventually ensnared him.

The Piano Quintet alongside his Cello Concerto were two of his last great statements, joined at the hip; Elgar incarnate.

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