Merton Abbey Music

We welcome the Hammig Quartet back with an outstanding programme.   After Dvorak’s ever popular, deliciously melodious quartet they give us for the first time in our series one of the late string quartets that were perhaps Beethoven’s supreme achievement of all.  Despite its length and profundity the B flat is an intimate, highly approachable work in six movements. The first finale, the “Grand Fugue”, was  found so difficult and strenuous by his contemporaries that he substituted an easier one, but hold onto your seats,  the Hammigs will take the bull by the horns and give us the mighty original.

JANACEK:  Piano Sonata

A sensational pianist, and happily a regular star of the series, entertains us with yet another thoughtfully original programme. Janacek's intimate, enigmatic piano sonata is followed by two sets of Brahms’s touchingly lyrical last thoughts for the instrument. Then we move to Russia for a rare Tchaikovsky miniature and a hair-raisingly virtuosic reminiscence of an opera by Mikhail Glinka, revered as the “Father of Russian Music”.

A RECITAL OF CHAMBER MUSIC FOR BRASS QUINTET THROUGH THE AGES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD
      

The BBC Concert Orchestra’s Principal Trumpet Kate Moore made her memorable debut with us last year, and we’re delighted to welcome her back with her outstanding group in a fascinatingly varied programme for this unusual sonority.  They play early music from Spain and Italy, including that iconic master brass composer Giovanni Gabrieli, various arrangements of classics, and the delightful “Suite Americana” by the celebrated Uraguayan trombonist (and founder of the great German Brass Quintet) Enrique Crespo. As usual we like to give you something entirely different!