Meet Emma Feilding

This February Britten Sinfonia oboist, Emma Feilding  performs alongside the orchestras wind players and regular collaborator, Imogen Cooper in a concert featuring Mozart's towering masterpiece, the Gran Partita and Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds in E flat. She took some time out from her busy schedule to answer a few questions;

What has been the highlight of your career so far?
There have been so many Britten Sinfonia concerts that have been highlights for me but I remember the first time I played at the Wigmore Hall with the Guildhall strings and Nicholas Daniel as being particularly memorable as my beloved granny was there waving her handkerchief at me. Working with the theatre company Punch Drunk and performing Mozart’s wind serenade with the Haffners are also favourite highlights.

When are you happiest?
Pure happiness can strike at any time and with anyone but giggling in the bath with my 5 year old daughter never fails to bring it on.

What is your greatest fear?
Heights

What is your earliest musical memory?
Spinning around on my granny’s piano stool aged about 5.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
My daughter, for her ability to live so completely in the moment, and her carefree passionate nature.

What was your most embarrassing moment?
Fainting during a recital at the Royal Academy of Music!

What is your most treasured possession?
Two pictures- one of my grandmother’s house in Norfolk where I was so happy as a child, and another painted by a good friend.

If you were an animal what would you be?
I Like to think it would be a tiger or something dynamic,but think a sloth is probably more realistic.

What is your most unappealing habit?
Interrupting people when they are speaking.

What is your favourite book?
I love reading and could never choose a favourite but J.D Salinger’s short stories, For Esme – with love and squalor,  are just heartbreaking.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
My tendency to watch rubbish television, is a bit embarrassing but I don’t think I
feel guilty about any pleasure.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Me, Woody Allen and Gerard Depardieu would be fun for me, oh and someone to
cook!

If you could go back in time, where would you go?
A particularly glorious childhood summer in Norfolk in the 1970s spent riding and sailing.

How do you relax away from the concert platform?
Like most people I imagine, laughing with friends, watching films, playing with my daughter, reading and practising yoga.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Returning to playing the oboe after nearly 9 years not playing at all and producing my gorgeous daughter.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
The bad times never last.

In a nutshell, what is your philosophy?
You are never too old to dance and ‘a messy house is better than a life unlived’.

You can catch Emma performing with Britten Sinfonia on Thursday 13th February at Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall and on Friday 14th February at London's Milton Court Concert Hall. Click here for more info.



 

A View from a SinfoniaStudent on Work Experience

I was lucky enough to spend the first week of April away from my dissertation on a week of work experience with the Britten Sinfonia team. We had both brilliant sunshine and heavy rain in the same week, and the tasks I’ve helped with this week have been equally wide-ranging! The team here are all exceptionally helpful and friendly and told me about their different roles in the organisation in detail, Will Harris (Development Director) explained where the money comes from and who supports Britten Sinfonia; and Hannah Donat (Concerts Director) showed me where the money goes in her meticulous concert and recording budgets.

The internet is an incredibly important tool for all arts organisations these days, especially for an organisation like the Britten Sinfonia, which has regular concert series in three different cities and frequently tours the UK and abroad. The website is full of information about the orchestra and its concerts, as well as some interesting things like videos and, of course, this blog (which I’ve read several times on Facebook). On Tuesday I created web-friendly versions of the brilliant new publicity photos mentioned in the last blog entry. I then used these when updating the concerts page for the 2010/11 season.

Wednesday involved a lot of photocopying, as I helped Pippa (Concerts Administrator) with the library. We checked that there were no missing parts in the sets of hired music from this season’s concerts, and also took a record of the bowings in the front desk of the strings in case the same music was hired again. I then updated the OPAS database with all of this past season’s music. In the afternoon I sat in on the weekly Marketing meeting where Claire (Marketing Director) explained about the designs for the new season’s publicity material.

Thursday was the big day of the Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony concert in Trinity College Chapel with Carolyn Sampson. It was certainly a challenge loading the van with all of the music stands, lighting, staging, programmes, CDs and, of course, tea and biscuits for the performers’ rehearsal break. Hannah Perks (Marketing and Development Assistant) and I had to pack, unpack and repack a couple of times to make everything fit! Trinity Chapel was built in the sixteenth century and, as a soprano in Trinity Chapel Choir, I know how beautiful the building and its acoustic are. However, I’d never appreciated the effort it takes to set up all of those chairs! Brute strength is a definite requirement of this job, although Hannah Tucker (Orchestra Management) tells me that most of the venues already have seating in place…

The concert itself was fantastic and the audience clearly enjoyed the new works by Latvian composer Erik Essenvalds, who also gave an entertaining pre-performance interview. Carolyn Sampson was amazingly clear and forceful in Esenvalds Passion and Resurrection, and the percussion in Arvo Pärt was so atmospheric that we didn’t know if the concert had started or if it was chapel bells, but I have to say that my favourite item was Miranda Dale, Tom Gould and the Britten Sinfonia’s beautiful performance of the Bach double violin concerto. I joined the team of volunteer stewards to sell programmes, help people to their seats, and sell Britten Sinfonia CDs in the interval, and then helped put all of those chairs away again once the audience had left.

Because the new season will soon be on sale in Norwich, on Friday I wrote a letter to our regular subscribers there to let them know about the coming season’s concerts and the 20% discount and other offers that subscribers get. I helped to mail a letter to the Cambridge subscribers, inviting them to an interval drinks reception at the forthcoming Imogen Cooper concert at West Road, Cambridge. Finally, I helped Sophie (Creative Learning Director) come up with some Halloween names for all the events at the Family Music Day. Make sure you you ‘Come and Cackle’ with your ‘Little Spooks’ in October.

For the meantime it’s back to exams for me – but I’m looking forward to the At Lunch concert on 27th April where the Ravel Piano Trio will be perfect revision for my paper on Ravel!

Joanna Harries

All of us at Britten Sinfonia are extremely grateful to Joanna for all her hardwork during her work experience. Joanna is part of Britten Sinfonia's Sinfonia Student scheme - find out more about the scheme here.

Who needs a baton?

You can listen to our Webern/Haydn/Beethoven concert on BBC Radio 3 this evening at 19.00 GMT. Hilary Finch in today's Times: 'Who needs a baton? Who even needs a conductor? The thought often occurs in performances in which a conductor's ego and body language become a distraction. Or, indeed, in performances in which an orchestra clearly knows what it's playing so intimately that all it needs to do is to listen and re-energise itself. It depends on size and repertoire, of course. But the Britten Sinfonia, led by Jacqueline Shave, showed that it could handle Webern, Haydn and Beethoven convincingly without the pantomime on the podium.

The raison d'être of Imogen Cooper directs Beethoven was the Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor. There were no frilly hand gestures; no lungeing of the body towards the orchestra; no coy nods and winks. What transfixed the audience was the palpable energy that coursed from player to player: from keyboard to leader's bow, from violins to woodwind and brass, and back again.

The organic power and economy of Beethoven's writing felt more dynamic than ever. Cooper's own rhythmic regeneration of theme and counter- theme, her sense of direction, and her ability to let the music yield and breathe, led to a fearless cadenza with a movingly hushed exit. A veiled inwardness hung over the slow movement. And the finale was measured, tense with concentrated energy, and with wonderfully tapered phrases of harp-like passagework.

This was the grand finale of an evening that had begun, courageously, with an impassioned performance of Webern's Five Movements - miniatures of finely-tuned sensibility and raw nerve endings, each one dazzlingly democratic in its re-creation. The presence of a conductor could have added nothing here, and little in Haydn's Symphony No 88.'

Cold weather, warm reception

The weather did not deter a large and enthusiastic audience from attending our concert last night in Norwich: Webern, Haydn and Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 3 with Imogen Cooper. We entertained our growing band of subscribers during the interval, when they were given a sneak preview of our plans for 2009-10 (our blog fans will have to wait a little longer!).
Tickets for Monday's performance in London can be booked online.

Imogen Cooper wins RPS Award

We were delighted that Imogen Cooper was the Instrumentalist Award winner at the RPS Music Awards, presented last Thursday evening at the Dorchester. The citation sums up why we enjoy working with her so much: 'Imogen Cooper's distinction as one of the most formidable musicians of her time is widely recognised. But the intellect, musicality and programming skills that she has demonstrated in her music-making in 2007 have, we feel, taken her to new levels. This award celebrates her achievements as a deeply thoughtful soloist, an inspirational keyboard director and a fastidiously accomplished chamber musician.' Britten Sinfonia next performs with her in February 2009 when we continue our Beethoven concerto cycle with no. 3. The concerts are in London, Cambridge and Norwich. Stephen Moss' article in the Guardian last week about Imogen makes fascinating reading. You might also enjoy Mark Padmore's discussion of Schubert's song cycles in the same paper: more of our next project with Mark later.

Birtwistle's Bach Measures

Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Bach Measures opens our concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight. Described by Andrew Clements in the programme book as 'More Bach than Birtwistle', it's an intriguingly textured treatment. Jacqueline Shave directs. Prokofiev's Classical Symphony follows, before Imogen Cooper joins us for Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4.
Tickets for tonight can be booked online.
Tonight's concert is the end of a tour which has taken in the Wiltshire Music Centre, Dartington, Norwich and Cambridge.
Britten Sinfonia's next project starts in Krakow next weekend on the 16th at noon, with a new work by Richard Causton, who will be contributing to our blog later in the week.

Imogen Cooper

Imogen Cooper is one the UK's most distinguished pianists, and our players love working with her. Following last year’s acclaimed performances of Beethoven’s first two keyboard concerti, we are now mid-tour with performances of the tranquil and serene fourth, coupled with works by Prokoviev and Birtwistle.

In the words of Prokofiev, his Classical Symphony offers us an intriguing vision of a symphony ‘as Haydn might have written it, had he lived in our day’. Using 18th-century orchestral forces and borrowing Haydn’s formal structures (as well as his clarity and wit), Prokofiev produces a gem of a work that both charms and entertains. Completing this programme is Harrison Birtwistle’s tribute to the great J.S. Bach, Bach Measures.

The first concert at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon last Friday was sold out. There are further performances in Dartington on Wednesday 5th, Norwich on Friday 7th, Cambridge on Saturday 8th, and at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Monday 10th December.