Ten years of At Lunch - from the stage

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of our At Lunch concert series, we asked some of our players to share their favourite memories from the last decade of lunchtime concerts...

Joy Farrall (Principal Clarinet):

"There is real excitement in opening a brand new piece of music once a year (if not twice on occasion), knowing it is a piece written especially for your orchestra and your colleagues by an amazing establishment figure or up-and-coming young genius, and for that privilege to have been on-going for ten years is a total delight."

Clare Finnimore (Principal Viola):

"In Norwich there's always a fabulous keen and supportive audience. We can really feel that they're with us every step of the way- they're especially open and receptive to the new music. 

With the BBC broadcasts often being taken from Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall there is always an 'edge' to these lunchtime performances in more ways that one. I'll always remember the bitter cold at the beginning of the rehearsal and the howling gale coming in through the back door with the BBC wires! It's always lovely chatting to audience members here afterwards, then going to Burwash Manor Barns for tea and cake.

Wigmore Hall is such a special place holding many memories for each one of us. With the pressure of the live broadcast behind us it's great to wallow in this perfect acoustic!" 

Huw Watkins (Principal Piano):

"It's been a huge privilege to launch so many new pieces in the last 10 years of At Lunch. I'm particularly proud to have written one of the very first of these commissions in 2006, Dream, for violin, clarinet and piano. Not only was this a remarkable experience musically (working with Joy Farrall and Alina Ibragimova, who joined us for this tour) - we also took the programme to Kraków, where the food was unforgettable!"

Alina Ibragimova, Joy Farrall, Michael Zev Gordon (whose music also featured in this programme),
and David Butcher (Chief Executive) on tour in Kraków.

Miranda Dale (Principal Second Violin):

"Perhaps most of our interesting experiences have been played out before Norwich concerts, including the time when we turned up in a taxi to play at the Assembly Rooms and Jackie realised that she had left her violin on the train! On hair-tailing back in said taxi and feverishly searching the train, which luckily had not started it's return journey, she even more luckily spotted a cleaner walking down the platform with her violin on the trolley! Not much rehearsal was had before that concert, just tea and scones required!

The other famed Norwich incident was when it started snowing just after our train started out from Liverpool Street station in London - it snowed so hard and fast that our train could not cope and we limped towards Norwich having to disembark at Ipswich in order to wait on the freezing platform for another train. Phone calls were feverishly made to and fro to our colleagues and concert manager who had driven there from nearer by and as the time ticked quickly by and the concert should have started we were still on the train! Joy and David valiantly saved the day (Norwich audience as ever game) by having a pre-concert talk (only during concert time!) whilst we scrambled to the Assembly House. I seem to remember Caroline running onto the stage from the taxi and joining Huw in her stocking feet to play a sonata with him followed by our commission before jumping back in a taxi to catch our return train!"

Thomas Gould (Associate Leader):

“At Britten Sinfonia we often say that a chamber music mentality is at the core of everything we do, and the At Lunch series provides us with the chance to put our money where our mouths are! As well as providing an opportunity to interpret chamber masterworks, each programme also features a world premiere composition. We've been privileged to work with composers such as Joey Roukens, Enrico Chapela, Dobrinka Tabakova, Charlie Piper, Nico Muhly and Jay Greenberg (to name but a few) over recent years, and it has been wonderful to see their careers flourish. A particular highlight for me was the At Lunch programme that featured Argentinian bandoneonist Marcelo Nisinman in music by his compatriot Astor Piazzolla. We had a lot of fun letting our hair down and undoing a few buttons for that one!"


Don't miss At Lunch Three, featuring music for the unusual combination of flute, viola and harp by Debussy, Takemitsu and a new work by Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason - Norwich Fri 19 Feb, Cambridge Tue 23 Feb & London Wed 24 Feb. More information and booking.

Find out more about Ten Years of At Lunch.

Roderick Williams - The Composer

Britten Sinfonia’s Development Assistant, Gabrielle Deschamps talked to esteemed baritone Roderick Williams about his second discipline, composing, and his views on new music.

Please summarise yourself in one sentence:
I’m Roderick Williams, I’m probably better known as a singer than I am as a composer, and I am an operatic baritone, recitalist, and sometime composer.

What do you like about music and singing?
The thing about singing is that you get to take part directly in the music, there’s no instrument, there’s no interface. It’s just something that you do when you’re alone in the bath or in the shower… Singing is primal in that way. And I really enjoy the physical feeling it gives me. And when I’m performing with other people I enjoy the communication part of it too. I enjoy being able to see an immediate effect in people’s eyes as I am telling a story, or whatever it is I happen to be doing.

What inspires you?
I’m inspired, I think, by fantastic music – of course one is bombarded with music all the time. Whether I’m in rehearsals or just driving in the car with the radio on, there’s always music coming at me and I find a great deal of it inspiring. I find also less good music inspiring, because that makes me want to compose. I hear something and I think “Oh I could do better than that, or I’ll have a go at that”! And equally I find performing and listening to masterworks a little intimidating and I wonder how I could ever follow in the steps of such masterworks… But at least I try!

What are your feelings about new music and what we’re trying to do with Musically Gifted?
I perform a great deal of new music. Some of it I find very exciting, some of it has a reaction with an audience that I hadn’t imagined. Sometimes I can underestimate a piece or a composer’s power. This is the composer’s part of me, with my composer’s hat on - I can sometimes look at a piece and think it doesn’t amount to much and be unaware than when it comes to the performance, it really has muscle. So I’ve learned quite a bit from that.

As for the Musically Gifted scheme, having performed so many premieres, either of songs or maybe even taking part in operas, it’s always exciting for me to have my name as the first performer on the score. It’s a little moment of pride for me there, having my name written down. In the same way that I perform some masterworks from the last fifty to a hundred years, I see the names of previous baritones and I love to think that I’m part of that line. And so it is with dedications, you see a piece that’s been commissioned by a huge symphony orchestra paid for by some huge corporation and then there’s a dedication at the top of the score that might be something very special and personal, and maybe isn’t immediately apparent when you first look at the score. They all have stories and that’s quite intriguing. And you often see in programme notes the story explained of who “Bill” happens to be… There’s something quite romantic about dedications, and when I get a chance to dedicate my own pieces I also send little messages to people; little votes of thanks here and there.

Is composing something that you want to be more recognised for?
It’s a little difficult because I think a lot of composers have an eye on immortality and I wouldn’t begin to imagine that my music would be anything more than functional in a way. And if it achieves anything beyond my time that’s all well and good, but I’ve got my eyes on the moment, as a performer. I like my music to get an airing rather than writing huge numbers of string quartets and symphonies that I store in a cupboard to be discovered on my death and then for me to reign supreme. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen! So I’m very interested in the way performers shape pieces, and part of the way I write now is I allow a performer a great deal of input into my music and how it should go, in the hope that each performance is different and in the hope that performers can take my music and make it their own. So I don’t prescribe utterly how it should go, with exact markings on how every millisecond should sound because I think you might as well present people with a definite recording and say “that is it, set in stone”. I think that’s a shame.
It would be lovely to be known as anything actually! My mum knows who I am…

What was your reaction when Britten Sinfonia commissioned you?
Commissions are always very exciting because it shows that someone somewhere has really listened and enjoyed something that I’ve done, and found it worthy. With my singing career, I’m happy to take criticism, good or bad, I feel reasonably confident that I know what I’m doing. Now, in composition it’s entirely separate, and it’s much more like my own baby, my own child, and I am much more worried about reaction to it and people’s perception of it - desperate for encouragement. So just the fact that, not just anybody but an orchestra that has as much pedigree in modern music as Britten Sinfonia, should want to commission me, I find terribly exciting.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
I love harmony. Harmony really inspires me, I particularly love jazz harmonies. I enjoy jazz and pop. I love having the radio on and just not knowing what’s going to come up next. And I’m as likely to be moved to tears by a bit of Marvin Gay as I am by a bit of Mahler. So I don’t know if that’s guilt or not but whatever sort of music it is, if it speaks to me, it goes deep.

How do you relax?
The thing that helps me relax a lot is walking. The tricky thing for me is that there’s always going to be some sort of music playing in my head. This German idea of the Ohrwurm – the piece of music that just keeps going round and round. The worst thing is that it’s quite likely to be a really naff tune that gets stuck in there. This is why I often have the radio on. Radio 4 so that people can talk to me, or music that I’m not in control of; someone else’s playlist going round. But the idea of getting outside and walking in nature, I love that! That’s how I relax. Wherever I am in the world, if I can, I get the chance to get out of my hotel, out of the arts centre, and get out into the hills – that’s what I love doing.

If you hadn’t been a musician, what might have happened?
That’s a very difficult question to answer because in a previous life I was a music teacher before I started my career as a singer, but it still has the word music in it. So if I’d just been a teacher I don’t know what I would have taught.

Any other passions?
That I could turn into a job?! You see the problem with that is that everything I do at the moment I do because I really enjoy it, and the fact that people are happy to pay me for it is a wonderful bonus. But if you ask me what I’d be doing if it wasn’t for music and it was a profession, then I’m a bit stuck! No – when my career is over I’ll come back to you and answer that one!

Is there anything else you want to share with the world? About you, music, politics or anything?
What’s in my heart that I’d like the world to know? That is tricky. I think the easiest way to answer that is sort of an advert, because the best way to get an answer to that is to listen to my music, or if not that you should listen to me singing other people’s music. Because I can’t give an answer to that question without sounding glib. The only way I can do that is musically, that’s the only realm where I’m comfortable to answer that question!

You can help commission Roderick William’s new work through the Musically Gifted campaign. Click here for more information.

Roderick Williams’ new work will be performed in the following At Lunch 2 concerts in 2014:

NORWICH – Assembly House - 31 January
LONDON – Wigmore Hall - 5 February at Wigmore Hall
SAFFRON WALDEN – Saffron Hall - 9 February
CAMBRIDGE – West Road Concert Hall - 11 February

Click here for more information, and keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages for an announcement of the name of the new work.

This blog is a transcript of an interview by Gabrielle Deschamps (Britten Sinfonia Development Assitant) with Roderick Williams

Sally Beamish on composition

The Britten Sinfonia At Lunch series begins in December with At Lunch 1 and in addition to works by Mozart, Lutosławski and Fauré, we will hear a new work from Sally Beamish, co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall. We talk to Sally about what it’s like to be a composer and where she gets her inspiration from.


Please describe yourself in one sentence.
I’m a composer living in Scotland and I was a viola player for ten years in London but have always composed since I was 4 years old.

You were a performing musician and became a composer, tell us more…
I’ve always written music, since before I learned to read and write. My mother taught me to read and write music when I was 4 and in fact when I started piano lessons a year later I was quite indignant to have someone else’s music put in front of me so I wrote my own piano book ‘How to play the piano’. I felt that playing was terribly important as well and I studied the viola and managed to get into playing contemporary music in London. By doing that, I met a lot of composers who were working for groups like the London Sinfonietta and they helped me with scores which was fantastic. I think that’s something that’s always informed my music; I’m very aware of how it feels to play a new piece and the first reaction on seeing the notes on the page. Writing for strings is something that I understand from the inside so I’m very excited to be doing this piece.

What can you tell us about the piece you are writing for Britten Sinfonia?
Writing a piece for string trio is the bare bones of string writing. Like three legs is the minimum for a chair to stand up. You need those three parts, the top, middle and bottom. What tends to happen is that the viola player ends up almost playing two parts. If you look at Beethoven’s string trio, for instance, the viola part is really quite complex, holding it together from the inside.

As you are a violist yourself, do you find you write differently for that instrument?
I don’t think I’m consciously aware of writing differently for the viola, but I often do find that at significant points in the score I’ve given a solo to the viola, or I’ve written something for the viola section, I might open a piece with the viola. I’m not actually conscious of doing that but I think it is a special voice for me.

What inspires you?
I’m often inspired by extra-musical ideas so for instance landscape, words or maybe a poem. My violin concerto is based on ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, a First World War novel and often paintings and dance have come into my music. Also, what I find very inspiring is other types of music, and living in Scotland has very often influenced my music because the culture of Scottish music is so strong and you’re so aware of it all the time.

Please tell us more about music in Scotland.
The first thing I noticed when I moved to Scotland is how strong the culture is, you’re surrounded by Scottish music in a way that I was never aware of in England. It’s a living form in Scotland. It’s quite cool for a teenager to go to a ceilidh for instance. Everyone’s there and it’s not something that defines your age at all. The forms of Scottish music are very strong as well and instantly recognisable and a very good basis. The variation form pibroch with the Scottish bagpipes is something I’ve used a lot in my work.

Does knowing the musician who will perform your piece affect your writing at all?
It’s great to know the players beforehand because then I immediately have their individual sound in my head. For instance, I’ve known Jackie Shave’s playing for years and years and years, and immediately I start to hear her playing when I start thinking about the piece I think of Jackie playing the piece. So that’s very exciting and very inspiring.

If you hadn’t been a musician and composer, what would you have been?
I don’t remember a time when composing wasn’t what I was going to do, but I do a lot of other things as well. I write short stories and poems and I’ve learned a lot from going to writers groups. Showing a poem to a group of people immediately generates lots of ideas because everyone feels comfortable with words. Whereas as a composer it’s much more difficult because you can’t really show your work to anyone in the same way until it’s in front of the players and then it’s too late to change it. So it’s quite an isolated way to work. I paint as well, and when I’m starting a new piece of music I very often think in terms of making a pencil sketch or an architect’s drawing of the shape of the piece before I start to colour it. Those sort of parallels are quite helpful.

What is your musical guilty pleasure?
I’m interested in all sorts of music, my sons are both involved in rock and pop music and we’ve done some projects together. I have huge admiration for those genres because the creators of it use their ears so much and everything is so immediate. That’s helped me a lot in my own workings out because as a classical composer you spend a lot of time looking at a page and working your systems out and actually just to let go of that and to improvise is a wonderful feeling.

Who would you like to work with?
I’ve been working a lot with Brandford Marsalis, a jazz saxophone player, and I’ve learned a lot from him and his way of working. And he also works with my classical music, so he’s played two of my saxophone concertos, which he calls songs, which I think is lovely!

What do you want to achieve within the next five years?
The thing that I’ve always wanted to do is to write for dance, and that’s something that hasn’t really happened until just recently. I was commissioned to write a ballet for the Birmingham Royal Ballet so that’s something I’ll be doing in 2016 and I’m looking forward to that hugely. I think all the music I write up to then is likely to be related to that feeling of dance. So I think the string trio will definitely be something that links in with that beginning to think about movement and drama as well.

On Commissioning
I think it’s fantastic that Britten Sinfonia has such a lively approach to commissioning new music through it's Musically Gifted programme. Of course, new music has to be part of the musical spectrum; the composers of today are the classics of tomorrow. As a composer, the more that you’re given to work with, the less scary it is. If a commissioner comes to you with an idea that’s a real challenge it’s very inspiring.

On New Music
It’s always nice when there’s something new in a concert, I’d always be more inclined to go to a concert if there’s a new piece. After all, 200 years ago people more or less only heard new music. They would go to concerts and hear the latest thing that had been written. Maybe it was The Magic Flute, and that would be the pantomime to take the kids to. We go to the latest music theatre piece, but with classical music there’s a little reticence from audiences that they may not understand. But actually I think that you can hugely engage with a new piece of music. Young people in particular seem to engage more readily with new music than perhaps they might do with Eine Kleine Nacht Musik where it doesn’t speak to them directly.

At Lunch 1 takes place on 11 December at Wigmore Hall, on 13 December at the Assembly House, Norwich and on 17 December in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge. For more information and to book tickets, click here.

For more information on Britten Sinfonia's Musically Gifted campaign click here

This blog is a transcript of an interview by Gabrielle Deschamps (Britten Sinfonia Development Assitant) with Sally Beamish.

Celebrating Chopin

2010 is Chopin year – to be precise the 200th anniversary of his birth.With nearly 9 months of 2010 gone, Britten Sinfonia have so far not performed any of Chopin’s music in celebration of this significant event. And in actual fact we had not planned to do so, not as a snub to Chopin and his wonderful music, but just couldn’t be fitted into our schedules or programming.

Then a couple of days ago Peter Maxwell Davies sent us his new work which we had co-commissioned with Wigmore Hall for our award-winning At Lunch series. His new work is entitled Nocturne No. 1 and is his immediate ‘hats off’ reaction to Chopin’s piano works, songs and cello music.

Many of Chopin’s works involve the piano and all demand considerable technical expertise and expressive depth. I’m sure Max’s piece, which is scored for Piano Quartet will be no different and our players Huw Watkins (piano), Jacqueline Shave (violin), Martin Outram (viola) and Caroline Dearnley (cello) are looking forward to discovering the nuances of this new piece.

So in typical Britten Sinfonia style the orchestra will be celebrating Chopin’s anniversary with music inspired by him. You can come and enjoy these concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall on 6 October, Norwich’s Assembly House on 8 October, Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall on Tuesday 12 October and Birmingham’s Town Hall on Friday 15 October.
The programme will also include Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet which is acknowledged as a masterpiece and probably his best known chamber work alongside a set of miniatures from James MacMillan, each dedicated to important figures in his life. You can find out more about this concert here