Norrington String Trio
Richard Booth's Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye
Tickets £12 (students £6) in person from Richard Booth's Bookshop, 44 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye or (afternoons) from Bookshop Cinema - entrance in Brook Street
or by telephone: 01497 822 010 / 820 322
or online through Booth's Bookshop
Please note: time given for end of concert is approximate.
Alena Baeva – violin Lilli Maijala – viola
Amy Norrington – cello
Bach: Selected Preludes and Fugues arranged by Mozart for string trio
Beethoven: String Trio Op. 9 No. 1 in G Major
Martinu: Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola H.313
Dohnanyi: Serenade for String Trio Op.10 in C Major
Alena Baeva is fast emerging as one of the finest violinists of her generation, having already carved out an impressive career to date and working regularly with many of the world’s finest orchestras and conductors.
Born in 1985 to a musical family, she studied with Professor Eduard Grach at the Central School of Music (an affiliate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire), and from 2002-2007 at the Moscow Conservatoire itself. In addition to her formal studies, Baeva was a protégée of Mstislav Rostropovich (at whose invitation she studied in France, 2003) and Seiji Ozawa (whose Academy in Switzerland she began attending in 2007).
Aged 16, Alena won the Grand Prix at the 12th International Henryk Wieniawski Competition, as well as the Prize for Best Performance of a Contemporary Work. She went on to take the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Niccolò Paganini Competition, including a Special Prize allowing her to perform on the 1723 Wieniawski Stradivari for one year.
With an already vast and rapidly expanding repertoire, including over forty violin concerti, Baeva is a champion of lesser known works. Her extensive discography reflects the impressive breadth of her repertoire, with recordings of Bruch and Shostakovich, Szymanowski (DUX), Debussy, Poulenc, and Prokofiev (SIMC). She has been frequently broadcast live in concert on radio and television across Europe, Asia, and North America.
Amongst the conductors with whom she works regularly, Alena has long-standing collaborations with Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Jurowski and, following their work together in Moscow, Baeva and Jurowski will come together again for her debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in December 2018.
Alena enjoys a particularly strong profile in Russia, working regularly with the Mariinsky Orchestra, MusicaÆterna, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ (GASO), and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, amongst others. Elsewhere, she works with top orchestras and ensembles such as the Israel Camerata, London Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, and Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a regular performer at major international festivals across Europe.
Lilli Maijala, born in Finland, gave her first solo performance with the Oulu Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17 and has since appeared regularly as both a soloist and a chamber musician on stages across Europe. In recent years she has appeared with orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Camerata Salzburg, Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen and Tapiola Sinfonietta. In 2013 she premiered the viola concerto of Lauri Kilpiö with Jyväskylä Sinfonia; the 2017-2018 season includes e.g. a CD recording with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, conductor Juha Kangas and bass player Olivier Thiery of Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s Concerto for viola, double bass and chamber orchestra.
Lilli studied the viola at the Sibelius Academy, Hochschule für Musik Detmold and the Edsberg Chamber Music Institute with teachers such as Teemu Kupiainen, Diemut Poppen and Lars Anders Tomter. A first prize winner of the viola competition Klassik Festival Ruhr, held in conjunction with music academies across Europe, Lilli has won numerous awards, including second prize at the Nordic Viola Competition and special prizes at the ARD Competition Munich and Tokyo International Viola Competition.
Based in Amsterdam, she’s currently dividing her time between a teaching post at the Sibelius Academy and international music festivals as West Cork, IMS Prussia Cove, Resonances, Peasmarsh, Schiermonnikoog. Alongside the Jean Baptiste Vuillaume viola, on loan by kind permission of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Lilli also performs on baroque viola.
Amy Norrington comes from London where she studied with Alexander Baillie at the Royal Academy of Music. She also studied with Steven Doane at the Eastman school of music in USA. She is now based in Brussels where she is a cellist in high demand. Amy is a regular guest with chamber ensembles and at festivals all over Europe. She is a member of ensemble Oxalys and of the piano trio Talisma. She plays as guest solo celllist with La Monnaie, Brussels Philarmonic Orchestra, de Vlaams Opera, De Filarmonie Antwerp, Symphonie Orkest van Brugge and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Amy is the Artistic Director of the International Chamber Music Festival in Belgium, ‘Resonances’, and of the chamber music series in Dublin called ‘Howth Chamber Music’.
