Jacqueline Shave - celebrating 10 years as Britten Sinfonia Leader

This April we celebrate Jacqueline Shave's first ten years as Britten Sinfonia's Leader. A unique and inspiring musician, we talked to some of our principal musicians and others about what makes her so special...

Jackie taking her bow after directing Strauss' Metamorphosen in Wiltshire in April 2016.

Clare & Jackie in Norwich in Jan 2016

She is a wonderful musician and a natural, gifted leader. She directs with passion and commitment. Every rehearsal is injected with her enthusiasm and positivity - and this is shared amongst the players. Jackie's attitude in rehearsals is serious and fun. She skilfully and respectfully handles all our different personalities - things can get very heated when we are under pressure preparing for a performance with limited rehearsal time. She will steer everything in the right direction, often with humour, taking everybody on board. The culminating concerts, the success of which she is utterly committed to, always feel like a real collaboration of our work and ideas.  Jackie is a special person. We are lucky to have her!
Clare Finnimore, Principal Viola 

David & Jackie collecting an RPS award in 2013

Jacqueline's musical credentials and spirit embody the artistic ethos of Britten Sinfonia; a collaborative chamber musician of pure class and quality, hungry to embrace a wide range of music and collaborations from across the musical spectrum. It must be palpable to audiences watching and listening, how much she is adored by the orchestra and the many collaborators we’ve worked with over these years, and there’s no doubt that her artistry, inspiration and pure unfettered love of the music we play, has had so much to do with the orchestra’s happy success over these years.
David Butcher, Chief Executive

Jackie Shave is a musical force of nature. She has led and directed Britten Sinfonia over the last ten years with a magical combination of warmth, passion and inspirational music making. She ignites every project she undertakes. Her direction of Bach's St. John Passion was a triumph of unashamed emotional commitment combined with technical mastery. It was a highlight of my musical career and a privilege to participate.
Caroline Dearnley, Principal Cello 

Jacqueline Shave is simply one the most inspiring musicians I have had the privilege of sharing a stage with. Britten Sinfonia is deeply collaborative but in the end we would follow her anywhere without question. The Bach St. John Passion she directed was a deeply moving experience for us all and a 3-year journey for her. I will simply never forget it. She led the same piece for me at Dartington last summer with amateur forces and was equally as inspiring.
Nicholas Daniel, Principal Oboe

Thomas & Jackie in 2011

I've learned so much from sharing a desk with Jackie over the years in Britten Sinfonia - her unfussy leadership style, flamboyant musicality, and her special ability to deal with stressful situations by relaxing everybody around her. With leaders as good as Jackie, who needs conductors?
Thomas Gould, Associate Leader

Miranda & Jackie rehearsing in 2012

As ever this season, Jackie has been a real inspiration through her fabulous musicianship and unparalleled ability to encourage each member of an ensemble to give of their best. Britten Sinfonia is propelled by her into meteoric flight in any given genre or period of music, taking the audience with her.
Miranda Dale, Principal Second Violin



She’s such a fantastic leader – she’s very charismatic. You can tell that she’s thinking about so much more than just the notes.
Elena Langer, composer


This April and May Britten Sinfonia tours a programme specially curated by Jacqueline to celebrate her ten years at the helm of the orchestra. With performances in Wiltshire, Cambridge, Norwich and London the concerts feature a Bartok string quartet movement, a Mozart piano concerto with soloist Benjamin Grosvenor, Strauss' Metamorphosen and the world premiere of a new work by Elena Langer, commissioned and written especially for Jackie. Find out more here.

In both Norwich and London, Jacqueline will discuss her role as leader/director with Fiona Maddocks in a special pre-concert talk.

Sinfonia Student review: At Lunch Two

At Lunch Two: West Road Concert Hall, Tuesday 19 January

Stephen Wilkinson

Although this programme, the second in this season’s At Lunch concerts, was created as a celebration of texture, thanks to the musicians’ skill and sensitivity it became a showcase of artful balance and ensemble. The 250-year timespan of the pieces, stretching from Bach to a new composition by Anna Clyne, showcased similar techniques and sound worlds which formed parallels between temporally- and geographically-distanced composers’ works, which was hinted at by the title of Ligeti’s Continuum. The result was a varied programme, which attested to the richness and intertextuality of the Western classical tradition.

Despite the spacious dimensions of the 500-seat concert hall, the musicians created an intimate atmosphere from the very beginning of the programme, which began with the welcome addition of the sinfonia from Bach’s BWV21. The instrumental movement set the tone for the rest of the concert, drawing the audience into the fine textural world of J.S. Bach’s 1714 cantata in its stately pace, which was maintained by the whole ensemble, despite the absence of a conductor and with no perceptible intervention from Jacqueline Shave. At the outset of the concert, the ensemble’s disposition outlined a key element of the concert. The soprano, Julia Doyle, was seated by the harpsichord at the rear of the ensemble, allowing her colleagues to take centre stage. This was a programme in which no divide was felt between the vocalist and the instrumental group, instead promoting a sense of unity, which added to the overall impression of balance.  

Julia Doyle’s silvery soprano was a perfect fit for the ensemble from which her first soft sighs of ‘Seufer, Tränen, Kummer, Not’ seemed to issue in the aria from BWV21. Doyle’s expressive singing never compromised the intimacy created by the ensemble’s sparse accompaniment in this movement, establishing a mood which was carried on into ‘Chi m’addita, per pietà’, the first of two arias from Scarlatti’s Due arie notturne dal campo, arranged by Sciarrino in 2001. Whilst Doyle afforded a slightly more indulgent, warmer tone to this Italian aria, she once again appeared to work with the string players who, even in monophony, achieved a beautifully subtle balance, which supported the soprano perfectly.  Doyle’s repeat was adorned with understated decorations and never detracted from the searching, internalised mood that was shared by both the first Bach and Scarlatti arias.

Sciarrino’s layered string texture, particularly in the use of harmonics, found an interesting parallel in Pärt’s Fratres for string quartet (played today by Jacqueline Shave, Miranda Dale, Clare Finnimore and Caroline Dearnley). An example of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabuli’, a neologism of his own coinage, the success of this piece was testament to the instrumentalists’ superb grasp of balance. The four voices were so unified that the impression was of one instrumentalist rather than a quartet. The steady unfolding of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabular’ variations was effected so skilfully that the entire audience was completely motionless, including four rows of schoolchildren, as the piece’s sense of expansive timelessness stretched out, a notable achievement in a lunchtime programme of only one hour.

The ensemble found a new, more expansive, positive tone in the second Scarlatti arr. Sciarrino aria, ‘Non to curo, o libertà’. The imploring, internalised vocal tone Doyle had found up to this point was replaced with an enriched, confident warmth as the piece swung onwards. Doyle’s postural change here, opening up to the audience and allowing herself more movement, also marked this shift whilst her vocal performance always remained as restrained as the elegant strings. In the absence of oboist Marios Argiros, this all-female outfit was reunited in Bach’s soprano aria ‘Tief gebückt und voller Reue’ from Cantata BWV199, in which the pious timidity of his earlier work is replaced by a more self-assured tone. In response to this shift, the ensemble’s accompaniment was generous yet never overpowering. In return, Doyle’s attention to the soaring, more expansive soprano lines, although allowed to blossom from the instrumental texture, never detracted from her colleagues’ sensitive playing. Bach’s BWV187 aria ‘Gott versorget alles Leben’ saw the whole ensemble united in this warmer, fuller sound which accompanied Doyle’s more lavish tone in her declaration of ‘Weicht, ihr Sorgen’ (‘Worries, be gone!’), with the soprano and oboe lines joyfully interweaving above an accompaniment which glittered with harpsichordist Maggie Cole’s rich spread chords.

Cole’s performance of Ligeti’s Continuum saw the harpsichord’s capabilities span from its role in Bach’s cantatas to a more modern setting. Ligeti’s piece is at once reminiscent of Bach’s keyboard works and of twentieth-century minimalist techniques. The piece’s gradual changes and sense of steady crescendo created a sense of Cole taking a Baroque invention in all its intricacy of form and demarcation of individual notes, and slowly melting it down until smaller elements are lost in a blurred and blended sound world in which only broad changes can be perceived. As the piece moved towards the higher registers of the instrument, the percussive sound of the plectrums falling back onto vibrating strings suggested other more recent realisations of the harpsichord’s capabilities with a hint of musique concrète. Cole’s flair and sensitive playing were rewarded with applause worthy of this accomplished performance.

The nocturnal theme from Scarlatti’s Due arie notturne dal campo was echoed in Anna Clyne’s new work, This Lunar Beauty, co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and  Wigmore Hall. As W.H. Auden (whose poem Clyne sets for soprano, oboe, string quartet and harpsichord) and Benjamin Britten were collaborators as well as close personal friends, there was a sense of reuniting the two as the Sinfonia that bears Britten’s name played Clyne’s setting of Auden’s poem. The piece neatly encapsulated many of the programme’s explorations, mixing suggestions of British folksong with a more modern, avant-garde sound world. The setting of the poem’s second stanza sees rising scalic melismatic patterns in the soprano, echoed in the instrumental lines, suggesting a raising of the eyes and voice to the lunar object of the persona’s meditation. These more expressive, confident voices then surrender to a once again personal, introspective mood.

This programme showcased the capability of a small group of musicians to work together in order to create a diversity of moods and to highlight unobvious intertextual and intertemporal links between a range of pieces. Given the amount that this programme achieved, it is surprising that it lasted only an hour. It is testament to the quality of the musicianship and the diligence of the programming that the lunchtime concert was not only intellectually appealing but also contained many moments in which a weekday’s inevitable busyness seemed to melt away. All of the musicians are to be congratulated for today’s subtle yet no less powerful, varied or transporting performance. 

Stephen Wilkinson (Sinfonia Student 2015-16)

Edward Nesbit - our OPUS2015 winner's story

I have had the pleasure of working with Britten Sinfonia for almost twelve months.  Back in December, the twelve composers who had been shortlisted for Britten Sinfonia’s OPUS2015 scheme enjoyed a workshop with the horn player Richard Watkins, where we discussed every aspect of the horn, from extended techniques to, if I remember correctly, the treatment of the horn in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  

Most of us were at that stage in the middle of composing extracts of music for horn trio, all of which were workshopped by Jackie Shave, Huw Watkins and Carys Evans in January this year.  Over the course of an intense weekend, we heard what everyone had produced – which amounted to the best part of an hour of music.  It was a very interesting – and very diverse – selection of pieces, and made for a lively and fascinating couple of days.

I was delighted to be chosen as the winner, and as a result have extended my original three-minute miniature into a full-length piece.  The resulting work, Lifesize Gods, was workshopped again more recently, and following that workshop I have given it a final few tweaks in advance of the premiere.  From here on in it will be the most exciting part of the process, and, for me at least, the easiest: I can now more or less simply sit and listen to the results.

One of the interesting challenges of writing a horn trio is the small number of previously written horn trios which have entered the repertoire.  While I have come across a number of very fine horn trios while writing my own, there are only two works which have firmly entered the repertoire: those by Brahms and Ligeti.  As a composer this situation brings both advantages and disadvantages.  There are fewer models to which I might turn for inspiration – but, on the other hand, there is not the weight of history that one has to deal with when writing, say, a string quartet.

It is interesting, then, that I will be sharing a programme with another new horn trio, by Huw Watkins.  I was, as it happens, at the premiere of Huw’s Horn Trio in 2009, and vividly remember the impression it made on me then; it will be a great pleasure to have the chance to hear it again live – three times, no less!  It really is a fantastic piece, and is an important addition to the repertoire which will doubtless continue to be performed for many years to come.   Huw and I are very different composers, however, which is probably no bad thing, given that we will be appearing in the same programme.  While Huw’s piece is lyrical, contrapuntal and full of contrast, my new work is, for the most part, transparent, almost obsessively single-minded, and extremely quick.

Britten Sinfonia have generously invited me to continue my involvement in the scheme, and next week I will be working with Julian Philips to choose the ten composers who will be shortlisted for OPUS2016.  This is something very new to me, but something that I am looking forward to immensely.  A total of 287 composers have submitted applications.  It’s a daunting number, but is testament to the fantastic nature of the opportunity that Britten Sinfonia are offering – and I’m sure it will be much harder to leave people out than to find people to shortlist.

Another aspect of my involvement with  Britten Sinfonia has been being a part of Musically Gifted.  Musically Gifted is a scheme which facilitates philanthropic donations to help fund commissions.  People can donate anything from £10 to £1,000, and all donors receive rewards, from thank you cards all the way up to invitations to rehearsals and social events with performers and composer.  The issue of how to fund contemporary music is a complex one, and many composers are unable to earn anything like a living from their composition work.  Musically Gifted is an imaginative and valuable contribution towards improving this difficult situation.

Lifesize Gods is being performed at Britten Sinfonia’s At Lunch Series in St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, on 27 November; West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on 1 December; and Wigmore Hall, London, on 2 December.  It promises to be a fantastic concert! 

Edward Nesbit - OPUS2015 winner

Click here for more details and booking for At Lunch One, which features Edward's new work, Lifesize Gods.

P-bones and Stravinsky

Britten Sinfonia and Norfolk Music Hub’s Wider Opportunities Celebration Day 

Wednesday 8 July 2015

“I didn’t like to ask in front of the children but, what on earth is a ‘P-bone’?”  

It is early on a bright, Norfolk Wednesday morning and St Andrew’s hall, rescued some 550 years ago from the destructive orders of Henry VIII, is decked out from stage to wall in a sea of stack-able chairs in the monarch’s favourite crimson. These are carefully and laboriously divided into sections each of which is identified with colourful laminated signs:

“Reserved for violins x 60”

“Cellos x 10 (plus some violas)”

“Clarinets x 68”

“P-bones x 60”

This is Britten Sinfonia’s Wider Opportunities Music Celebration Day fuelled by the unflagging good cheer and excellent organisation (and funding) of the Norfolk Music Hub. It is the lull before the storm as we are expecting 60 ukuleles, 15 flutes and 30 xylophones and miscellaneous brass in staggering numbers to join those already marked out to make up a total of just over 300 primary school children and their teachers. They will join 11 of Britten Sinfonia’s musicians for a celebration of instrumental learning. Today we’ll play, sing, compose and perform together under the creative guidance of workshop leader and composer Fraser Trainer.

Britten Sinfonia’s leader Jackie Shave is mustering her troops before the children arrive. In addition to playing alongside the young musicians, Britten Sinfonia have prepared a special performance, a little taster of where they might one day be if they continue the hard work they’ve been putting in at their instruments. “Remember”, she reminds fellow strings Miranda Dale, Kate Musker and Billy Cole, wind players David Cuthbert and Joy Farrall, brassers Alex Wide, Tom Rainer and Chris Smith, pianist Simon  Lane and percussionist Jeremy Cornes, “make everything big, do what you are doing but even more so. We’re playing for children remember and this should be the most exciting thing they’ve ever heard or seen.”

She might have been describing the whole day which is big and more so! The children arrive, colour co-ordinated armies, musical weaponry in hand, under arm, or casually slung across a shoulder. Positions are jostled for, a ukulele tumbles to the floor and a violin loses a string. Fraser wields a microphone over the cacophony of noodling and hissing “shushes” from vigilant teachers. He begins to sing, a call and then, a breathless moment of sudden quiet before the sweetness and power of 300 young voices raised in melodic response and the day has begun.

The end of project sharing is indeed celebratory, and one of the highlights for everyone is the chance to put down their instruments and perch at the edges of their seats for Britten Sinfonia’s performance. Anyone familiar with the orchestra’s concerts will know that one of the highlights is the compelling physicality of Jackie and her colleagues’ performances. Today is no different and three hundred young faces light up when the first notes of Stravinsky’s Ragtime ring jauntily out through the hall. The final drum beat is met with spontaneous whoops of appreciation and much bouncing in seats. Even the most seasoned of the professionals on stage cannot help but crack a smile at such genuine enthusiasm.

Afterwards the musicians - older and young - cluster in groups to exclaim over new instruments they’ve not seen before, ask questions “how do you make that sound?” or make suggestions “you should play loud all the time”. The relative merits of one instrument’s tone over another’s and Stravinsky’s compositional technique compared to the day’s other creative ventures are discussed in depth. The gaps in ages and experience melt away simply leaving 311 musicians sharing their art.

At the centre of one group, our question is answered: A ‘P-bone’, it is loudly explained, “… is like a trombone, only cooler, way cooler, ‘cos you see, get this right, you can get all different colours! Mine plays the best because it’s blue. The blue ones are the best and I can play really loud! Listen to this …” He waves his instrument enthusiastically, narrowly missing the opportunity to decapitate a classmate. “Nah don’t worry” he says soothingly when we gasp at his willful disregard of the fragility of a musical instrument handled with such enthusiasm, “its plastic, right, so we can’t smash it, see.” He thumps the bell as though greeting an old friend. P-bone – plastic trombone – but clearly here is the next generation of brass player through and through! 

Jen House

Creative Learning Director

Find out more about our Creative Learning team and their work here.

A Development Director in Amsterdam

It’s not often that the Development team gets to travel with the orchestra for a concert overseas, so when the chance came to hear Britten Sinfonia in the world-famous Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, our Development Director, Will Harriss, jumped at the chance.

Midday, Friday 27 February 2015: Off to Kings Cross to catch the Eurostar with the rest of the orchestra. Everyone’s on time, our Orchestra Manager is busy handing out boarding passes for the train. The group is a mixture of chatting musicians, guarding their instruments carefully – afterall, a musician without an instrument won’t get very far on stage. Of course, some instruments can also be hugely valuable. It can all make touring with an entire orchestra reasonably tricky for orchestra managers – does an instrument need a separate seat? Can any instruments be hired at the destination, and how will that affect the performance? What instruments are required for which works in which concert programmes?

This is all a new side of the orchestra to me. My role is to raise the funds for the orchestra, to allow it to reach the highest of world-class standards in concert halls across the world. But even complicated funding applications seem to have nothing on the touring logistics of a chamber orchestra. I’m busy pondering all this when we are allowed to check-in and find some much-needed lunch and coffee.

3pm: Our concerts team are calm and organised, despite newly-bought coffee being dispatched over the floor. It also turns out that lunch needn’t have been bought – an unexpected upgrade for the entire orchestra and soloists means that lunch – and some half-decent wine – is served at 150mph on the way to Brussels. I’m told that this isn’t standard on orchestral tours (!) but I think everyone’s in agreement that this is a pleasant way to travel across the continent…

6pm: We arrive in Brussels, and tickets for the final stage of the journey are given out. I go for a coffee with one of the soloists and begin pondering again the sheer scale of touring an orchestra. For this one concert date we are taking roughly 30 musicians on tour, with four soloists, 28 singers from the excellent Polyphony, and their conductor Stephen Layton. That’s over sixty people, and we are joined by our Orchestra Manager – the unflappable Annabel – and Concert Director, the equally unflappable James. Polyphony have a tour manager too – hello Fran – and Britten Sinfonia’s CEO David Butcher and Artistic Planning Director, Nikola White are already in the Netherlands for meetings, as they plan the orchestra’s future seasons through to 2018 and beyond. The choir, too, are already on tour for a prior concert. If you totalled up the annual ‘musician mileage’ by the UK’s professional choirs and orchestras, it must be into the many millions.

It’s quite astonishing by any standards, but it also reinforces the need for our environmental planning; for shorter European tours we aim to minimise our impact through catching the train (as we did today) rather than flying, for instance.

10.30pm: We’re all checked into our hotel. The final leg of the journey was uneventful, and the hotel is a short walk from the Concertgebouw, which will make tomorrow morning a bit easier to manage for the players. Off for some food and a beer, in the excellent company of composer Joey Roukens, for whom Amsterdam is his home. We talk about his forthcoming commission for our ‘At Lunch’ series, and it’s fascinating to hear about his recent and future works. Afterwards it’s back to the hotel, and reassuringly the choir have all booked in, fresh from their concert that evening.

Morning, Saturday 28 February 2015: It’s confession time for me – from looking at the management schedule for the tour, I knew that about 58 musicians and singers would all be trying to get breakfast at the same time, and I also knew that the breakfast room in the hotel didn’t have 58 seats. So I decided to have a bit of a lie-in, a late breakfast, and aimed to get to the Concertgebouw just after the start of the rehearsal. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to walk down Amsterdam’s leafy streets to get to the hall, which rises majestically in front of you.

What’s that? Britten Sinfonia’s name is in lights on the front of the building? And on the posters outside? It’s a real thrill to see, and also knowing that we’re playing in the hall’s ‘Saturday Matinee’ series – one of Europe’s most prestigious concert series.

Inside the hall, I strolled down the corridors, and before I knew it I was listening to Haydn’s gorgeous Nelson Mass. The hall itself is unique and beautiful, and rightly has a place as one of the world’s finest acoustics. Built in the late 1880s, it is richly decorated, with the names of composers dotted around the hall in celebration. Some 900 concerts a year take place in the main hall and its associated recital hall, to an audience of over 700,000 people. It’s hugely exciting for Britten Sinfonia – which 20-odd years ago was just starting out – to be on stage.

A bit later the players are getting to grips with Shostakovitch’s tricky Chamber Symphony, which is being directed by Jacqueline Shave, the orchestra’s Leader. It has a vitality about it – an urgency and directness that is completely mesmerising. It’s just as well, given that it’s also going out live on Dutch national radio, but I’m reminded again just how special this band is.

2.15pm: Before we know it, it’s time for the concert to begin. The hall is packed; matinee concerts here are apparently always really well attended, and the audience is both young and old, of all backgrounds. It’s lovely to see such a mix of enthusiastic people, who simply want to come and hear interesting repertoire, played really well. Polyphony are on triumphant form, too – they give an encore (an unaccompanied work by Arvo Pärt, since you ask) at the close of the concert, after which everyone is on their feet applauding.

4.15pm: Backstage after the concert, there’s a palpable buzz about the concert. Everyone knows it went well, and there’s a chance for the concerts team to catch up with some of the players afterwards.

5.15pm: No rest for our indefatigable Orchestra Manager. She’s still got to ship an entire orchestra, instruments and choir back to the UK. So it’s into buses for the journey to the airport. The concert was utterly thrilling – I’m biased but also confident any of the other thousand or so people present would say the same – but for the players there’s no hanging around. It’s back to Blighty to start learning the repertoire for the next concerts. In fact, on the final leg of the journey I asked one if the violinists what the following day had in store.

“Well…” she said. “It’s fairly relaxing. Leisurely breakfast, then a few hours of practice, then I’m doing a recording session in the evening in London…”

Sinfonia Student review - At Lunch 2

Sinfonia Student David Roche shares his experience of our At Lunch 2 programme, which was performed on Tuesday 13 January 2015 in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, and featured a new work by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho...

***

Kaija Saariaho’s instrumental writing is incredibly exciting and sophisticated, Nocturne is especially so and it proved to be an awesome opener. The rhythmically-loose, choppy, folk-style music moves into and out of broad musical gestures concomitant with spectral music: diaphanous trills between open strings and harmonics at a pace that prevents the lower pitches from ‘speaking’ properly; playing extremely close to the bridge in order to coax out a shimmering, unpredictable range of overtones (violist Garth Knox* calls this ‘irising’); looking to the sounds themselves to find an organising principle– all completely mesmerising in performance. The very strong hints of Scandinavian folk music were almost as striking, check out Benedicte Maurseth’s latest release Overtones to hear what I mean - similar soundworlds! Violinist Jacqueline Shave brought the work to life: a moving interpretation of a hefty composition.

Light and Matter was the second of two Saariaho pieces on the programme. The composer notes the influence of ‘the changing light and colour of Morningside Park’, especially ‘the continuous transformation of light on the glinting leaves’. The beautifully intricate, delicate instrumental writing and its evolution into dense, nebulous music certainly invites the listener make comparisons between the programme note and the composition - the hidden complexity of musical sound being used as a metaphor for light. The looming, resonating piano made me much more aware of the temporal nature of timbral sound: the attack and decay of its’ sounds drawing attention to one of the central precepts of the composition – gradual transformation. The trio gave a superbly assured performance of a difficult composition, the same being the case with the remaining works.

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho

The Debussy suffered from a slight tuning issue with the cello’s low C but this did nothing to detract from the performance as a whole. I was particularly fortunate as I heard the sonata performed in rehearsal prior to the concert where there was no such problem, it was played impeccably on the first attempt and I was the only audience member at the time… which was nice (no iPhones or whispering). Caroline Dearnly’s vivacious performance and Huw Watkins’s perfectly-matched pianism cut through the bricky tone of the concert hall with ease, an extremely secure, visually-engaging performance that, along with the final piece, served to concretize the concert as a success. 

Fauré

The Fauré was, along with Nocturne, the best performance of the concert.  Well-paced, gorgeously subtle rubato in the strings; crystal-clear, perfectly appropriate accompaniment from the piano; the visual presence and fantastically lyrical performance from the cellist, especially in the first movement, really brought the piece to life. The interplay of the cello and violin gave the work a wonderful narrative drive, the performers responded to each other’s phraseological nuances, a dialogue that set their parts away from the piano – refreshingly liberal.

As excellent as the performances were, I was far less concerned with the Debussy and Fauré. To my mind there’s something considerably more interesting in the compositions created by living, working artists: they are able to defend and discuss their works, contribute to new depths of expression, new ways of making, and new ways of thinking. There is so much music one can engage with and the major, most frequently performed repertoire constitutes a very, very small piece of an outrageously tasty, terrifyingly large, yet-to-be-fully-discovered pie. 

It is extremely reassuring to see a successful professional ensemble commission works and dedicate so much to contemporary classical music. It was particularly pleasing to hear, firstly, a living composer’s music as the centerpiece of a concert and, secondly, a female composer’s music as the centerpiece of a concert – living composers and women are woefully underrepresented in classical music** (see Bachtrack’s most recent survey). It seems outrageous that the two things are uncommon enough to be worthy of notice. Also, having lived in a few other cities I can say with some certainty that new music does not get its deserved share of performances, especially performances by musicians as committed and excellent as those in Britten Sinfonia. The people of Cambridge are very lucky to have this music available and should endeavor to make the most of it, however demanding it may seem on first hearing!

*Explore Garth Knox's Viola Spaces here.
**Click here to read an article from The Guardian exploring our current male-dominated classical music industry.

David Roche (Sinfonia Student 2014-15)

Tour of India - Part Two

The second installment of our India tour blog by orchestra manager, Annabel:

We had a slow start to our general rehearsal on the afternoon of our first performance, with sound and lighting crew working around us, many people passing through the performance space, and the ever-efficient housekeepers still trying to vacuum the stage!  We experiment with three different stage layouts before settling on one that suits everyone best, ensuring sight-lines between all are good.  No sooner had we settled on this and the rehearsal begun properly, the waiting staff brought in cups of tea and biscuits – it was the earliest rehearsal break I’ve known.  Amjad Ali Khan and his sons joined us a little later for a full soundcheck – we are performing with amplification, in order to balance the three sarods and tabla against the Britten Sinfonia line-up satisfactorily.

The evenings performance went smoothly, with Jacqueline Shave and Adam Mackenzie (bassoon) introducing the Western pieces from stage. Our audience were enthusiastic, and were keen to chat to all involved in the performance at a reception following the show.  It was, as always, a relief to have finished the first performance in the run.

A free day followed, and a chance to explore Delhi.  Journeys were made to various temples, Karims (of Rough Guide to India fame) for lunch, and even a flute shop.  It was, however, Indian Independence Day, so many shops and roads were closed.  At the hotel, flowers in the foyer had been arranged in the shape and colours of the Indian flag, and uniformed men manned an Indian flag positioned on the lawn.

Jacqueline Shave and Kathy Shave

The following day we were to travel to Coimbatore during the early afternoon.  Seizing a short window of opportunity in the schedule, the majority of the group set off in the early hours for the 3 hour drive to Agra, to visit the Taj Mahal. A slightly lengthier journey than anticipated meant that it really was a whistle-stop tour before the journey back to Delhi for our plane to the most southerly part of India we shall be visiting.  Despite the early start and much travel, a spontaneous rehearsal was held in the evening as it felt like much had happened since everyone played.

A further free day followed, and another early start for the enthusiastically-exploring players – this time to visit nearby mountains and scenic railway, with a chance to explore a local town and various temples. An early night was then called for, ahead of our second performance today and beginning of intense travel tomorrow.  It has been an unusually-luxurious start to the tour, but from now on we travel and perform almost every day; our next stops on consecutive days are Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Annabel
Orchestra Manager

For full details of Britten Sinfonia's tour to India click here

Tour of India - Part One

Britten Sinfonia's orchestra manager, Annabel is currently on tour in India with the ensemble. In the first of a series of posts she talks about the first couple of days of the trip;

Arriving at our hotel in the early hours of Tuesday morning I breathe a sigh of relief – both flight and entry into India are uneventful, other than a short dash around Delhi airport to find somewhat elusive immigration forms.  Nice to know that instruments and visas were both accepted by airline and immigration respectively.  After a sweltering wait at the airport and hectic car-journey the hotel is peaceful, and we are warmly welcomed.

Eight hours later and I’m being briefed about a press conference that is to happen later the same day.  From Britten Sinfonia, Jaqueline Shave (Leader) and David Butcher (Chief Executive) are to take part, along with soloist Amjad Ali Khan and personnel from our promoters. All goes well, and both interesting and unusual questions are posed. We are told later that an unusually large-contingent of press attended – there were certainly many photographers!

Soon after, I am hunting for straight-backed chairs (for our string players) and music stands. A breakdown in communication means that music stands don’t arrive until half way through our rehearsal, so we fashion make-shift stands from chairs, folders and i-pads.  This first rehearsal is intense, with time being taken to discover the best way of rehearsing Sarod Concerto Samaaga, which features the Britten Sinfonia line-up of string quartet, flute and bassoon, together with a tabla player and three sarod players including composer and soloist Amjad Ali Khan. Helpfully, arranger David Murphy is on hand to assist.  The work was originally conceived and premiered with Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but David has made this new chamber arrangement for us and we’re delighted to be giving the world premiere in Delhi.

A film of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Samaaga

Within the programme we are also to perform a solo-set of Western works – including Purcell, Mozart, Philippe Hersant, and Machair to Myrrh, a composition from our very own Jaqueline Shave, for string trio and tabla which takes the listener on a journey from Machair (on the Isle of Harris), to Morocco!  We soon discover that the tabla tuned to A, which is required for the work, is going to be impossible to source in Southern India, as tablas tend to be more common in the North of the country.  Thankfully, Anubrata Chatterjee, our tabla player, makes a few adaptions and he and Jackie are soon finding their way around the piece, with Anubrata learning the work by ear.

A lengthy rehearsal calls for a well-deserved evening of relaxation, and the orchestra are therefore delighted to be invited to dinner with Khan Saheb and his family.  A fabulous evening was had by all, with wonderful food and warm company.

Annabel
Orchestra Manager

For full details of Britten Sinfonia's tour to India click here

Jacqueline Shave on Bach's St John Passion

This April, Britten Sinfonia's leader Jacqueline Shave directs unconducted performances of Bach's St John Passion. In this blog post she describes how she has immersed herself in the work and how she is preparing for the performances.

Capture
Betrayal
Denial
Interrogation
Flagellation
Condemnation
Crucifixion
Death
Burial

Having spent a great deal of time over the past year immersed in this great work, I am wondering if it should perhaps be presented with an X certificate rating, so extreme are the range of human emotions and behaviour found within it.

I first experienced the St John Passion as a mature student at the Britten Pears School in Snape, where Nicholas Daniel and I worked intensively on many of the arias with Peter Pears and a group of young singers and instrumentalists from around the world. It made a deep and everlasting impression on me, and it is particularly moving to be here thirty years on, again with Nick, shaping this work together.

It is of course a great privilege and responsibility to be at the helm, making decisions, as performances of Bach can vary enormously. I have spent many hours listening and feeling and I have come to the conclusion that there is no definitive way of performing Bach's music. Bach himself was always experimenting and making changes. He offers us a palette of many colours.

I have decided to use a harpsichord with the voice of the Evangelist throughout, as it seems to bring a human and expressive dimension for the listener, in contrast to the halo of the organ sound surrounding the voice of Christus. Britten does the same in his 1971 recording, but these days it is often performed with organ and no harpsichord. We are also using a lute, which brings an exquisite ancient timbre, and of course the plaintive gamba for "Es ist Vollbracht", one of the most unconventional and original arias that Bach ever wrote.

As soon as the music begins there is the pulsing human heartbeat of the bass line, the painfully beautiful dissonance of oboes and flutes, and the turmoil of the string semi quavers. Bach leaves us in no doubt that this is serious, strong and passionate. There is no gentle ' warm up'. He throws us directly into the emotion. Imagine hearing this at the first performance nearly three hundred years ago! I find it hard to listen to this opening without feeling greatly disturbed, almost angry, at this vision of a vast stirring soup of mankind. It is as if everything is revealed; the tragedy and beauty of the entire Passion.

It is masterful how Bach frames the work with the two great Choruses; the harrowing first, and the moving, loving "Ruht Wohl" at the end. We are also given the communal ‘commenting’ element of the exquisitely beautiful chorales and the vivid depiction of Christ's trial with the chorus almost shouting with hysterical intensity.

Amongst all this Bach gives us the ' freeze frame' emotions of the arias, when all action stops, and we have time to explore and reflect on what is happening. Time seems to stand still in "Betrachte Meine Seel", the intensely moving soul searching Bass aria where one hardly dares breathe for disturbing this precious place that Bach has created for us. In the next aria "Erwage", we have time to ponder on the battered, bruised and blood-stained back of Jesus. It is truly miraculous how, in the midst of the piece, Bach is able to evoke such introspection in the listener by this change of pace.

Ultimately we want to create a powerful shared experience by performing this work unconducted, and to show the directness, the unbridled immediacy, and the raw power contained in Bach's music.

Jacqueline Shave
Britten Sinfonia, Leader

Britten Sinfonia perform Bach's St John Passion on Wednesday 16 April at Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall, Thursday 17 April at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Friday 18 April at London's Barbican, Saturday 19 April at Saffron Walden's Saffron Hall and Sunday 20 April at Norwich's Theatre Royal. For more info click here

You can also hear Jacqueline Shave and Stephen Williams (Principal Double Bass) talk abuot the St John Passion in a previous podcast, SinfoniaCast 21

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.