Little Missenden Festival 2008

A

Event 8 2008

Wenlock Edge

Thursday October 16th, 7.30pm

Little Missenden Church

Tickets £17, £12.50, £8

Nathan Vale tenor, Simon Crawford-Phillips piano

SACCONI QUARTET:  Ben Hancox violin, Hannah Dawson violin, Robin Ashwell viola, Cara Berridge cello  

Nathan Vale is a fast-rising young tenor who has already sung this repertoire, and has just the right voice for it (described by reviewers as “silver” and “honeyed”). He was one of the first recipients of the Peter Pears Scholarship, and won the 2005 AESS English Song Competition and the 2006 London Handel Singing Competition.  He has given recitals for the Housman, Gurney, Warlock and Ireland Societies, and a recital to celebrate the life of Eric Sams alongside Dame Felicity Lott and pianist Graham Johnson,

We had originally asked tenor Robert Murray to sing for us, but unfortunately he has had to withdraw.  We are lucky to have such an excellent replacement in Nathan Vale.

Simon Crawford-Phillips is in demand as soloist, chamber musician and song accompanist.  In 2003 Simon was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. He holds teaching positions at the Guildhall, the Royal Academy and the Gothenburg Academy of Music and Drama.

The young Sacconi Quartet is rapidly becoming one of the outstanding ensembles of their generation. They’ve already won an impressive string of prizes, and their busy concert diary is an eloquent testimony to their quality and appeal.

Nathan Vale website

Simon Crawford-Phillips webpage

Sacconi Quartet website

RVW Society website

Ivor Gurney Society website

Ian Venables website

Housman Society website

Little Missenden Festival 2008

This is dedicated to our late Patron, Ursula Vaughan Williams, and celebrates the 50th anniversary of her husband’s death. There’s more RVW music in Events 3, 11 and 12.

Housman’s formally-simple but deeply-felt poems lend themselves to musical setting, and Shropshire Lad’s ‘land of lost content’ speaks to the pastoral longings embedded in the English psyche.  His poems have attracted many composers, three of whom are featured here.

On Wenlock Edge is one of RVW’s finest and best-loved works, a powerful and dramatic score, which shows the “French polish” he had sought by studying with Ravel – who thought the cycle “a revelation”.  His string quartet was also written after working with Ravel.  The French polish is very apparent (notably in the harmonies) – but so is the English timber beneath it.

Gurney’s superb Ludlow and Teme was inspired by the Vaughan Williams cycle – it uses the same forces, but sets different poems.  Gurney is less dramatic and more lyrical – he has a poet’s ear and is highly responsive to the texts.  His ecstatic setting of Far in a western brookland is surely one of the loveliest English songs.

Ian Venables has set four less familiar Housman poems. He’s recently been described as “perhaps the finest song composer of his generation” (British Music Society Newsletter).  This fine cycle will be performed in its tenor and piano version.

“Songs of Eternity and Sorrow by Ian Venables, was so gorgeously and unashamedly lyrical in its tonal language... you felt even Finzi himself would have been proud to own it” (David Hart, Birmingham Post)

“There is no mistaking the emotional and technical strength in Venables' songs, besides their very real beauty” (Classic fm Magazine)

Concert sponsored by Martin and Joanne Verden