St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye

Tickets £15 (student cards £7.50, under 18s free)

Tickets in person from Richard Booth's Bookshop, 44 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye

or online through Booth's Bookshop

or at the door if available (cash only)

Please note:  time given for end of concert is approximate.

Max Baillie – violin     Ruth Gibson – viola  

Robin Michael – cello     William Conway – cello

Centred round the great Op. 9 String Trio of Beethoven, this quartet of amazing players will also perform three lesser known but wonderful string works from Russia. 

Programme

Beethoven (1770 – 1827):  String Trio Op. 9 No.1

Alfred Schnittke (1934 – 1998):  String Trio (1985)

Reinhold Gliere (1875 – 1956):  Duos for 2 cellos, Op 53

Anton Arensky (1861 – 1906):  Quartet Op. 35 in A minor - version for violin, viola and two cellos.

Maverick violinist and violist Max Baillie performs across a diverse spectrum of music embracing new commissions, improvisation, and collaborations with artists from all over the world. Based in London, England, he has performed as soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral leader on stages from the Royal Albert Hall to Glastonbury and from Mali to Moscow. Artists he has worked with come from many backgrounds and include Bobby McFerrin, John Williams, Bjork, Stevie Wonder and Anoushka Shankar.

Max is a member of ZRI, Zum Roten Igel. Named after the Red Hedgehog Tavern in Vienna, the ensemble has toured to major festivals with its re-scored versions of the Brahms clarinet quintet and the Schubert C major quintet, including accordion and santouri (dulcimer). The group has recently added a new program Adventures with Charlie Chaplin to its repertoire, a live score to an early Chaplin classic.

Since April 2017 Max has been regularly leading and directing Swiss-based chamber orchestra CHAARTS, with whom he made a disc for Sony and toured with Turkish pianist Fazil Say. He looks forward to projects next year including the Boswil Summer Festival and a tour with cellist Mischa Maisky.

Max is a graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School, Berlin’s UdK, and has a degree in Political Philosophy from Christ's College, Cambridge.

Irish Violist Ruth Gibson manages a busy career of solo and chamber work. She began her musical studies at the age of 5, studying the violin with Maria Kelemen. At 12 she started learning the viola and it soon became her principal instrument, studying with Prof. Ronald Masin. Ruth has won many solo and chamber cups in the Irish Feis Ceoil including the repertoire, concerto, viola solo and chamber competitions. In December 2003 and 2004 she performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the Young European Strings Chamber Orchestra in Dublin's National Concert Hall. In the summer of 2004, Ruth was runner-up at the European String Teachers Association Young Musician of the Year in Rotterdam.

In 2009, Ruth graduated with First-class honours from the Royal Northern College of Music and in 2011 completed her Masters in Performance with Lawrence Power at the Royal College of Music.  In 2011 she was soloist with the Bournemouth Symphony where she played Holst’s elegiac Lyric Movement for Viola and Orchestra under Sir John Elliot Gardiner. Ruth performs with the Mercury Piano Quartet, the Barbirolli and Benyounes String Quartets, and has collaborated with numerous notable soloists including Erika Raum, Philip Graffin, Andrés Díaz, Barry Douglas and Amy Norrington.

Ruth plays regularly with Camerata Ireland, and led the viola section whilst the orchestra was on tour in South America, Russia, Finland and France.

Robin Michael studied at the Royal Academy of Music with David Strange and Colin Carr and later with Ferenc Rados. He is principal cellist in Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, Solo cellist with Orchestre Les Siecles (Paris) as well as regular guest principal cellist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, RTE Concert Orchestra, English Baroque Soloists, English National Opera and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Robin was the cellist in the Fidelio trio for over 10 years with whom he toured Europe, North America, Asia and South Africa. He has also appeared in collaboration with the Dante and Eroica quartets. Recent concert highlights include complete Bach and Britten suite cycles in France and London, the South Korean premier of Jonathan Harvey's 'Advaya' for cello and electronics, both Haydn concertos at the Spier festival in South Africa as well as festival appearances in Buenos Aires, Library of Congress, Washington, and European festivals including Cheltenham, Aldeburgh and St. Magnus. 

Forthcoming projects include a recording of the Brahms sonatas with Daniel Tong for Resonus Classics to be released in spring 2017, a Bach suite cycle at the St. Magnus festival, Britten Suite cycle at festival 'Phil Grobi' in the Auvergne and the first Kinnordy Chamber music festival in Scotland where he is co-artistic director with Daniel Tong.Robin plays on a cello made for him by the German luthier Stephan von Behr, 2010.

William Conway is an internationally renowned conductor and cellist, whose performances have been described as ‘astonishingly convincing’ (Opera magazine), ‘a tour de force’ (Guardian), with ‘a flair for the unpredictable’ (Financial Times). On the podium, he is known for his conviction, clarity and intelligent musicianship, while his collaborations with Hebrides Ensemble, of whom he is the Artistic Director and founding member, have been praised for their fresh and inspirational approach to programming.

Born in Glasgow, Conway studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music then London’s Royal College of Music before returning to Scotland to take the position of Principal Cello with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a post he held for ten years. He is a founding member and Co-principal Cello of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and has worked with many of the great conductors including Abbado, Berglund, Boulez, Karajan, Guilini, Haitink, Harnoncourt, Maazel, Nezet-Seguin and Rattle. He is a passionate advocate of contemporary music, is the dedicatee of several works and has commissioned and performed a huge range of new works from composers such as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir James MacMillan, Nigel Osborne, Stuart MacRae and David Fenessy.  His work with Hebrides Ensemble, described by The Scotsman as ‘one of the most innovative and thrilling ensembles in Europe’ and now in its 25th year, underpins this commitment. By placing new music at the heart of a diverse range of repertoire, often in new and surprising contexts, Hebrides Ensemble encourages audiences to approach familiar music with fresh ears. His dedication to developing contemporary music has been recognised by an award from the Scottish Society of Composers for an outstanding contribution to new music.

As a conductor, he studied in Helsinki with Jukka-Pekka Saraste and was a finalist and prizewinner in the 1994 Leeds Conductors’ Competition. Since then, he has established himself as a conductor of versatility in chamber, symphonic and operatic repertoire and has conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, Chamber Orchestra of Europe (with whom he has made a CD recording released by Warner), and the Symphony Orchestras of Cairo, Sofia, Zagreb, de Filharmonie of Flanders, the Belgian orchestra Beethoven Academie, Teatro di Cagliari, Göettingen and  the American Phoenix Symphony Orchestra in all repertoires from baroque to present day. He has conducted many operas and in 2018 he made his conducting debut at the BBC Proms in a performance of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. 

He is Music Director of Edinburgh Studio Opera and is Artistic Director and Head of Strings at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh.  He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Linn Records, Unicorn-Kanchana and Delphian Records in a series of highly successful recordings of music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir James MacMillan which have both reached no 3 and no 1 respectively in the classical music charts. 

Refreshments available during the interval

St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye

Tickets £13 (student cards £6.50, under 18s free)

Tickets in person from Richard Booth's Bookshop, 44 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye

or online through Booth's Bookshop

or at the door if available (cash only)

Please note:  time given for end of concert is approximate.

Anna-Marie Bacanu Marvic Monreal Ben Smith Jake Muffett

Hay Music welcomes an international cast of outstanding singers from The National Opera Studio in a programme of familiar and less familiar operatic arias and songs.

Programme details to follow

Soprano Anna-Maria Bacanu hails from Bucharest in Romania. At the age of 10, she was admitted into the Children’s Choir at Romania’s Radiobroadcast (Corul de Copii al Radiodifuziunii Romane) where she performed in both concerts and competitions in her home country and abroad, until she went to the National University of Music, Bucharest in 2011. In 2014, she began to perform at the Comic Opera in Bucharest, where roles included Konstanze Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mademoiselle Silberklang Der Schauspieldirektor and Dochita in the operetta Crai Nou by Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu. She completed her Masters’ degree at the National University of Music in June 2018, where for her final exam she performed Donna Anna Don Giovanni. Ana-Maria has performed extensively on the concert platform, including engagements such as Mozart’s Requiem, Poulenc’s Gloria and Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Bacau State Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also taken part in numerous concerts at Peles Castle, Cantacuzino Castle, the Romanian Atheneum Hall and the Romanian Radio Hall. Ana-Maria is sincerely grateful for the continued guidance and support of her teacher, Bianca Manoleanu.

Anna-Maria is generously supported by The Carne Trust.

Maltese mezzo-soprano Marvic Monreal completed her two-year Opera Course at the Royal Academy of Music this year. Marvic also obtained her MA in Voice with distinction from the Royal Academy of Music. Before starting her studies in London, she completed a degree in Tourism Studies at the University of Malta. Marvic spent the summer of 2017 in Salzburg participating in the Young Singers Project: she had her debut at the Salzburg Festival with the role of Pisana I due foscari opposite Maestro Placido Domingo and tenor Joseph Calleja in the title roles. Recent performances include Joseph Calleja’s annual summer concert in Malta, where Marvic had the opportunity to share the stage with the tenor himself as well as Sir Bryn Terfel. She was the soloist in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, conducted by Maestro Semyon Bychkov at the Royal Festival Hall, and a soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Brian Schembri for Europe Day Concert earlier this year. Marvic was a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2016. For Royal Academy Opera, she has had the pleasure to perform Bradamante Alcina, Venus Orphee aux enfers, Mrs. Peachum Die Dreigroschenoper, Older Woman Flight and Carmen La tragédie de Carmen. She is most grateful to the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation for their continuing support. Marvic is also supported by an Independent Opera Fellowship. Last summer, Marvic participated in the Solti accademia di bel canto.

Marvic is generously supported by the Nicholas John Trust and a Glyndebourne New Generation Programme Young Artist Development Award.

Welsh tenor Ben Smith graduated from the RCM with a BMus (Hons) degree in Music before furthering his training on the Masters of Performance programme with Timothy Evans-Jones. During his time at the RCM, Ben was the Sir Peter and Lady Walters Soirée d’Or Scholar, was supported by a Douglas and Hilda Simmonds Scholarship as well as the Arts Council of Wales Advanced Study Award, the Ryan Davies Memorial Trust, the Henry Wood Accommodation Trust and the Josephine Baker Trust. In 2018, Ben was a member of the Glyndebourne chorus, performing in Giulio Cesare, Vanessa and Pelléas et Mélisande, the latter of which he also performed at the BBC Proms. Ben has worked with Neil Shicoff, and received guidance from Craig Rutenberg and Joyce Fieldsend. He was a 2016 Iford Arts Next Generation Artist and worked at Nevill Holt Opera in 2017, singing in the chorus of Tosca. Ben continues his studies with Marie McLaughlin. During his training at the RCM, Ben performed Pastore/Apollo L’Orfeo, Septimius Theodora and created the roles of Razomikhin and Devlin in a co-production with Tête a Tête Opera. He has sung Nemorino L’elisir d’amore for Arcadian Opera, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni for British Youth Opera, Tamino Die Zauberflöte for Chelmsford City Opera and Tybalt Romeo et Juliette for Opera at Bearwood. His solo performances have taken him to the Royal Albert Hall with the 1000 Welsh Male Voices, to St John Smith Square and to the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace for a performance of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music under the baton of John Wilson. He was subsequently invited to perform with John Wilson and the CBSO at Symphony Hall, Birmingham in a semi-staged concert of The Yeomen of the Guard. Ben made his Wigmore Hall debut performing Habdonah Esther for the London Handel Festival. He is a former member of Classical Brit award-winning group Only Men Aloud.

Ben is generously supported by Sir Peter and Lady Walters and Chris Ball.

Baritone Jake Muffett was born and raised in Grantham, Lincolnshire. He graduated from the University of York with a BA (Hons) in Music and received an MMus in Vocal Performance from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before completing their Opera Programme under Dominic Wheeler and Martin Lloyd-Evans. He is a vocal student of John Evans, and has been since beginning his postgraduate studies. Jake was one of the eight Monteverdi Choir apprentices for the academic year 2014/15. During this time, he worked closely with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, performing with the choir in concerts across Europe and the United States. Since completing the apprenticeship, he has continued to sing with the group on a regular basis, including various solo engagements. He was a member of the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus for the 2016 season, covering the role of Fiorello Il barbiere di Siviglia and performing a principal role in Glyndebourne Youth Opera’s production of Lewis Murphy’s A Garden Dream. Jake is delighted to have returned for the 2018 season as a Jerwood Young Artist. His most recent operatic engagements include the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni for British Youth Opera, the role of John Sorrell The Consul and Le Marquis de la Force/ 1st Officer Dialogues des Carmélites for GSMD. He made his major London solo debut at the Royal Albert Hall in Orff’s Carmina Burana with The Really Big Chorus conducted by Bob Chilcott, and sang again with the group for the 2017 performances of Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Ben Parry and Brian Kay. A keen semi-professional clarinettist, Jake still plays with orchestras and chamber groups when the opportunity arises. Jake is also supported by a Help Musicians UK Sybil Tutton Award.

Jake is generously supported by the Carne Trust, Chris Ball and a Glyndebourne New Generation Programme Young Artist Development Award.

Refreshments available during the interval

Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye

Tickets £13 (student cards £6.50, uner 18s free)

Tickets in person from Richard Booth's Bookshop, 44 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye

or online through Booth's Bookshop

or at the door if available (cash only)

Please note:  time given for end of concert is approximate.

Beatrice Philips – violin    Venetia Jollands – violin    

Hannah Shaw – viola    Hannah Sloane – cello

Programme

Haydn:  String Quartet Op 9, No 1 

Bartók:  String Quartet No 3 

Beethoven:  String Quartet No 15 in A minor, Op. 132

Finalists of the 2018 Royal Overseas League Competition, The Eusebius Quartet are fast gaining a reputation for imaginative and communicative performances. Formed in autumn 2015, they were resident String Quartet at the Lewes Chamber Music Festival 2016 and 17 and at FitzFest, Fitzrovia’s newest music festival playing quartets by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Haydn and Bartok. Since forming the quartet they have appeared at numerous London venues including Conway Hall, St James’ Piccadilly, the Foundling Museum, Blackheath Halls as well as other venues across the country. 

The quartet enjoys exploring unusual repertoire and last year collaborated with pianist Alasdair Beatson in three performances of Gabriel Pierné's Piano Quintet. They have also performed with clarinettists Matt Hunt and Michael Collins and bassoonist Amy Harman and oboist Daniel Bates. The Eusebius Quartet performed live on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune before appearing as quartet-in-residence at the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival 2017. Here, they performed Beethoven's Opus 132 and collaborated with Marie Bitloch of the Elias Quartet in a performance of Taneyev's String Quintet No.2. 

The Quartet returned to the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury, London, in February 2017 with a concert coinciding with the launch of a new exhibition ‘Child's Play’. This project paired repertoire with particular paintings and themes from the museum's collection, preceded by a tour of local primary schools in Camden.  In May 2018, the quartet did a similar schools tour in Lewes, which took repertoire from the forthcoming Lewes Chamber Music Festival programme to five schools in the surrounding area. These projects give school children the opportunity to hear and interact with a professional live string quartet. 

The members of the quartet have played together in different formations for many years, having met as teenagers studying together and then again later at IMS Prussia Cove. After completing studies in London, New York, Helsinki, Paris and the Netherlands they have been very excited to reunite as a quartet, sharing their passion for the extraordinary music written for this formation. The quartet enjoys experimenting with different styles of playing, studying early Haydn editions as well as string quartet recordings made in the twenties and thirties and feel extremely lucky to have this opportunity to spend their lives exploring the intricacy and importance of fine quartet-playing today. 

The quartet takes its name from one of the two fictional characters invented by Robert Schumann for his musical journal writings. These characters became symbolic of Schumann’s opposing moods: the fiery and impassioned Florestan contrasted the more introverted and dreamy Eusebius. 

Refreshments available during the interval

St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye

Tickets £17.50 (student cards £8.75, uner 18s free)

Tickets in person from Richard Booth's Bookshop, 44 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye

or online through Booth's Bookshop

or at the door if available (cash only)

Please note:  time given for end of concert is approximate

By popular demand Hay Music is delighted

to welcome once again

the Choir of Clare College - Director Graham Ross

Since the founding of a mixed voice choir in 1972, the Choir of Clare College has gained an international reputation as one of the world’s leading university choirs. In addition to its primary function of leading services three times a week in the College chapel, the Choir keeps an active schedule recording, broadcasting, and performing. Former directors have included John Rutter and Timothy Brown. Under the direction of Graham Ross, Director of Music since 2010, it has been praised for its consistently ‘thrilling’ and ‘outstanding’ performances worldwide. Recent engagements include Handel’s Messiah with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), Mozart’s Requiem with the Manchester Camerata, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and the world première of Alexander Raskatov’s Green Masswith the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), Fauré’s Requiem with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and concerts in Notre Dame Cathedral, Évron Basilica, the Howard Assembly Room and across the USA. The Choir’s 2018/19 schedule includes Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the OAE, Britten’s War Requiem in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, performances in Westminster Cathedral, St John’s Smith Square’s Christmas and Holy Week Festivals, Barcelona’s Le Palau, and tours of the USA, Canada, Mexico and Spain.

In addition to live performances, the Choir has produced an impressive discography of more than forty recordings. Their recordings under Graham Ross on the Harmonia Mundi label have been released to great critical acclaim, earning praise for ‘exceptional singing’ and ‘immaculate performances’, a Le Choix de France Musique and a Diapason d’Oraward, and garnering a Gramophone Award nomination. The Choir’s nine-disc series of Music for the Church Year has received numerous 5 star reviews in the national and international press, with recordings for Advent (2013), Passiontide (2014), Christmas (2014), Ascensiontide and Pentecost (2015), All Saints and All Souls (2015), Easter (2016), Epiphany (2017), Corpus Christi (2017) and Trinity (2018). The Choir’s album Remembrance featured as Classic FM’s Album of the Week, and other acclaimed recent recordings have included the first recording of choral works by Imogen Holst, and Reformation 1517-2017, a special album of music celebrating the quincentenary of the Reformation.

The Choir has toured widely, including in the United States of America, Australia, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, the Middle East and mainland Europe. It has collaborated with the OAE in performances of Handel’s Jephtha under the direction of René Jacobs, with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall conducted by Sir Mark Elder and Vladimir Jurowski, and with many other ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, European Union Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, Israel Camerata, Aurora Orchestra, the Schubert Ensemble and the Dmitri Ensemble. The Choir performs a wide range of repertoire throughout the year, and has commissioned and premièred works by many composers, including Herbert Howells, John Tavener, John Rutter, Giles Swayne, James Whitbourn, Andrew Carter, Jonathan Dove, Julian Phillips, Tarik O’Regan, Alexander Raskatov, Graham Ross, Brett Dean, Matthew Martin and Nico Muhly.

Refreshments available during the interval