Our 60th Season has been planned both to showcase some outstanding performers in the chamber concerts for which SVAM has become so well known, and also to introduce new educational events to give young people in our area a taste of instrumental music.
We look forward to welcoming you and your guests at all our concerts and events.
SVAM's 60th Birthday Party and Concert took place on 26 June 2010. The Members' Party, held at East Bergholt Lodge by kind permission of our President, Lady Anne Wake-Walker, was also attended by Honorary guests, including Gillian Ure from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust and Rosalind Strover, who was a committee member in the 1950s and is now in her 106th year. A splendid birthday cake produced by Caroline Favell and Janet Cleave was cut at the party and transported to St Mary's Church where it was consumed with a glass of something appropriate in the interval. The highlight of the celebration was, however, the wonderful recital open to the public and given by Elizabeth Watts (soprano) and Gary Matthewman (piano). The programme of Lieder and Songs was very well received and the audience was delighted to hear Elizabeth again (she first came in 2007) and to witness her star qualities and sparkling personality and also to hear Gary's sensitive and lively piano playing. Following the songs by Wolf, Schubert, Brahms and Barber they performed some lighter encores.
As a special event this year we are presenting the English Guitar Quartet, one of whose members is Tim Pells who lives in East Bergholt. The Quartet has been established for many years as leading exponents of the guitar in ensemble. They have performed world-wide, including Canada, Australia and Israel. Further information about the concert can be found on the enclosed leaflet
Tim Pells is organising a half-day workshop given by the members of the quartet for anyone interested in learning or trying out the acoustic guitar. For further information about the workshop please contact Tim Pells: 07736 711306.
As usual we have five concerts in our Season Ticket programme together with our annual lecture. In addition we have our ninth Supper Concert which has been moved to February in the hope of avoiding the extreme weather we had last year.
East Bergholt on 8 October at 8 pm, and are pleased to present the Florestan Trio for the first time; they are world renowned and we are privileged to be able to hear them in the wonderful setting of our Parish Church. Anthony Marwood came here in 1996 with the Raphael Ensemble, and before that also with the Nash Ensemble. He has since then developed the Florestan Trio with Susan Tomes and Richard Lester. We are particularly grateful for the very generous sponsorship for this concert from our anonymous donor; we also thank Mary and Rodney Loudon and Joan and Michael Brown for their generous contribution towards the cost of hiring a Steinway Concert Grand for Susan Tomes. Michael Brown as Chairman and Mary Loudon as Concert Secretary made an enormous contribution to SVAM over many years and this concert was especially requested by them. We are therefore delighted that the Florestan Trio agreed to come in response to our request to help celebrate this 60th Season.
Our second concert will again be in East Bergholt Church on Sunday 7 November at 4 pm when The Barbirolli Quartet will perform a programme of Haydn, Beethoven and Szymanowski. The Barbirolli are new to us except for Katie Stillman who came, as part of the Countess of Munster scheme in 2008 with Victoria Simonsen, and performed an exciting and difficult programme extraordinarily well. Katie is second violin of the Barbirolli. They have had excellent reviews so we look forward to a sparkling concert. This will be followed by the AGM (members only)
Our Countess of Munster Recital this year is on Friday 3 December at the Constable Hall. Stephanie Oade (cello) and Helen-Jennie Moston (piano) are presenting a very attractive programme. We are very grateful to the Countess of Muster Musical Trust for their support of this concert.
On Sunday 23 January 2011 at 4pm we are delighted to welcome back the Henschel Quartet. The quartet needs no introduction, and we are sure they will delight us yet again with their interpretation of Mozart, Webern and Schubert. Since their last visit to us in 2008 amongst a raft of prestigious concerts in Europe and Japan they have played for the Pope in Rome and the Spanish Royal Court in Madrid! Once again we thank a generous sponsor for support of this concert.
We round off this celebration Season with a return visit from the London Concertante who opened our 59th Season. We had such a positive response to a larger group of performers that we decided to invite them back but instead of a string septet they will present a combination of wood-wind and strings. We hope for a resounding end to the season.
The Annual Lecture this year is to be given by Lucy Archer on Friday 11 March at the Constable Hall at 8pm. Very appropriately Lucy's subject is her father the architect Raymond Erith who designed the Constable Hall itself which provided a performance venue for SVAM since 1958. Apart from this link with SVAM's history the lecture will provide a link, which may be less obvious, with last year's lecture on Ravilious. He and Erith were almost exact contemporaries (Ravilious born 1903, Erith 1904), both came to live in Essex in the 1930s and both drew on the past to produce new and original work which was simultaneously modern and traditional. It should be an inspiring and interesting evening.
We have taken up a suggestion to move the supper concert to a later date and we hope that you will be able to join us on Saturday 19 February 2011 for a recital by a young pianist Erdem Misirlioglu. We are grateful to Pauline Young for introducing Erdem to SVAM and for sponsoring the piano hire. We look forward to hearing him and to enjoying a convivial evening with members and friends. We are once again very grateful to David Grier and Partners for sponsoring the evening which is one of our major fund-raising events and is not included in the Season ticket.
We presented six concerts including the ever popular Supper Concert. The Season started in St Mary's Church with the London Concertante, who gave a magical performance. They were so well-received that we are having them back to round off our 60th Season.
The Maggini Quartet gave us an interesting afternoon including Rubbra with Mendelssohn and Haydn in their programme. It was the last occasion when Gina McCormack appeared with them as first violin before returning to a solo career. Gina had visited us as first violin of the Sorrel Quartet in 1998 and 2000.
The Countess of Munster Musical Trust concert was a duo: James Turnbull (oboe) and Victoria Davies (harp). We look forward to seeing them go from strength to strength. Another young performer was Mateusz Borowiak who gave a piano recital including one of his own compositions. We believe that he is another young star of whom we shall be proud to say that we heard him first in East Bergholt.
Our final concert was well chosen to finish our Season with brio: Trio con Brio Copenhagen who not only played brilliantly but were charming presenters of their programme, too.
The Supper Concert deserves special mention. It was a dramatic evening: amid blizzards and deep snow the concert took place but not quite as planned since our soprano soloist was unable to leave her home in the Chilterns. The resourceful Pells household came to the rescue with Mary on viola da gamba and her duo partner harpsichordist Martin Knizia. We are very grateful to Peter Holman who lent Martin his harpsichord for this concert. 64 guests made it and had a really good evening. We were sorry that those who were not able to come because of the weather missed it. Thank you to all those who refused refunds and donated their ticket price to SVAM.
The Annual Lecture was given by Jeremy Greenwood who showed us some of the many woodcuts of Eric Ravilious and told us about his work, skills and background. It was a revelation to most of us as most of the works are unsigned and some were already familiar as book illustrations.
We are currently updating the design and lay-out of our website. Please bear with us while this work is going on. We aim to make it simpler to update and easier to navigate.
We are also aiming to provide more information about our artists and their programmes, including links to their websites.
Naturally, we would like to attract even more visitors to both website and events, so that we can continue to widen the range of concerts on offer.
We would welcome feedback on this, and we would also like to widen our e-mail circulation list. So please tell your friends about us.