St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5EB. Doors open 4.00pm. Refreshments.

The Fitzwilliam String Quartet and pianist Sarah Nicolls conclude our 2025 Hay Music Festival.

Tickets: £22.50 / £11 under 25s

Programme

Alexander Glazunov:  Interludium in Stile Antico (Movement 3) from 5 Novelettes, Op. 15    

Mieczyslaw Weinberg:  Improvisation and Romance                                                                       

Sergei Rachmaninoff:  String Quartet No. 1 in G minor     

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op. 49                                                                                       

Dmitri Shostakovich:  Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57                

Alexander Glazunov did not live in exile or as an émigré but experienced difficulties during the early Soviet era including a decline in official support for his work and criticisms of his artistic style.  Glazunov was strongly committed to Russian culture and music and while he considered leaving Russia, he ultimately remained in the country until his death.

Mieczysław Weinberg's experience involved both exile and emigration, though in a unique way. He fled the Nazi occupation of Poland for the Soviet Union, which was a form of exile, but also involved emigration from his homeland. This move initially gave him refuge but later presented him with challenges under Stalin’s regime. Weinberg, later however, found significant success as a composer in the USSR, particularly during the 1960s and 70s.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was forced to flee Russia after the 1917 Russian Revolution at the age of 44. He established a new life, primarily in the United States, and his music reflects a struggle to reconcile his Russian identity with American culture and his music often carries the weight of longing for his homeland.

Dmitri Shostakovich, while never formally exiled or an émigré in the sense of leaving the Soviet Union, navigated a complex and often precarious relationship with the Soviet regime throughout his career. He remained within the USSR, but his music was subject to censorship and criticism, and he faced threats of political persecution, including potential exile or worse, throughout his life. 

THE FITZWILLIAM QUARTET, Lucy Russell - violin, Andrew Roberts - violin, Francis Kefford - viola, Ursula Smith - cello, has experienced a seismic change over the past year. It has embraced Francis Kefford on viola following the retirement from the ensemble of legendary founding-member, Alan George. After an incredible fifty-eight years with the quartet, Alan leaves behind a cherished legacy. While Alan’s contribution will be sorely missed, the transition provides the quartet with an exciting opportunity to revise and reimagine its music-making. By continuing to add new music and fresh creativity to its core repertoire, the quartet is honouring the spirit of its foundations. The Fitzwilliam Quartet was founded in 1968 by four Cambridge undergraduates and the group quickly achieved international recognition as a result of the members’ personal friendships with Dmitri Shostakovich and subsequent championing of his string quartets following his death. He entrusted the quartet with the Western premières of the last three, and before long it had become the first quartet outside of the Soviet Union to perform and record all fifteen. These discs, which gained many international awards, secured for the quartet a worldwide concert schedule and a long-term recording contract with Decca. While the Fitzwilliam Quartet’s pre-eminence in the interpretation of these works has persisted, the authority gained has also been put to the service of a diverse list of other composers from the late 17th century to the present day. The quartet has appeared regularly across the UK, Europe, North America, the Middle and Far East and Southern Africa, and has made many award winning recordings for Decca, Linn, and Divine Art. A long-term ambition to record Schubert and Beethoven on gut strings, following the success of previous discs on historical instruments, was initiated during the quartet’s 50th anniversary season in 2018 with recordings of Schubert’s late quartets; Beethoven’s Opp.131 and 135 are soon to be released. The quartet continues to champion new works and has helped to bring about the addition of over 60 new works to the repertoire. These range in diversity from a jazz-fusion collaboration, with German saxophonist/composer Uwe Steinmetz and former Turtle Island Quartet violinist Mads Tolling, to quartets and quintets by Ian Stephens, Michael Blake and Liz Dilnot Johnson. The Fitzwilliam Quartet has held various university residencies:  at York for twelve years, Warwick for three, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2020 and at Bucknell (Pennsylvania, USA) from 1978-2016. The quartet’s current university work continues at Clare Hall, Cambridge and at St Andrews University. The ensemble is also committed to working with amateur musicians, running its own course, Strings in Spring, at St Andrews University, and teaching regularly at Benslow Music near London. During the 2025/26 season, the Fitzwilliam Quartet will be presenting a series of programmes contrasting works by Beethoven and Shostakovich with works by female composers Amy Beach, Doreen Carwithen and Charlotte Bray. In so doing, the quartet is celebrating its rich history and carrying forward its traditions.

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SARAH NICOLLS is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Music and Engineering at King’s College, London and a recipient of the Arts Council England ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ award.  She has been developing her compositional work and creating a new virtual instrument of her ‘Inside-Out Piano’. She started composing her own music when she started inventing pianos to make playing the strings easier and more within reach, to create layers of textured sound.  She built her first ‘Inside-out Piano’ in 2008.  With £500 to spend, she hacked apart an upright and stuck it back together with some steel legs made by a Liverpudlian ship builder.  In 2014, she collaborated with Pierre Malbos to re-shape an Erard grand which became a sculptural feast of an instrument, standing 2.5m tall and able to swing.

Sarah has made shows about motherhood and climate change (working with climate scientists across the UK, ‘12 years’ was a Guardian Autumn 2020 Top Pick and was featured on BBC 4’s Front Row). She’s been a soloist in the PRSF New Music Biennial and Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project, is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and has had residencies at Southbank Centre’s Collision programme, Artangel’s Library of Water in Iceland, the Arvon writing centre The Hurst and Snape Maltings Festival of New. She has premiered multiple piano concertos with orchestras such as the London Sinfonietta and ASKO/Schonberg Ensemble, including special commissions from the BBC and works including Larry Goves, Richard Barrett, Niccolo Castiglioni and Wolfgang Rihm.

Sarah also built an eco-house with her husband and now runs conservation and artists residencies on their land in Stroud, through ‘Rattle and Brash’.