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 Students review - At Lunch 1

Sinfonia Students Carl and Simone share their perspectives on our At Lunch 1 programme (in rehearsal and in concert), performed in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 2 December 2014.

Britten Sinfonia Wind Quintet At Lunch: A behind the scenes experience

I enjoy the concert experience - sitting down and watching one or more musicians perform with polish and flair. It is well known that performers spend enormous amounts of time in the practice room, yet the audience will never know any of that build up; a concept conveyed perfectly by this picture of an iceberg. As a performer myself, I have always been intrigued with knowing what went on before the concert. How do professional musicians prepare their performances?

I recently had a rare opportunity to listen in on a pre-concert rehearsal by the Britten Sinfonia wind quintet. Sitting very quietly in the top seats of the West Road Concert Hall, I listened for an hour.

The first thing to strike me was the different seating formation of the quintet. Compared to a string quartet, wind quintets allow more flexibility in regards to where the players sit. In my own experience, the following arrangement was common: (from left to right) flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, clarinet. The Britten Sinfonia players sat: bassoon, clarinet, flute, oboe, horn. Never experiencing such a formation, I was unsure how effective the overall sound would be. I was quickly won over. The bassoon and horn created a ‘surround sound’ bass line coming from left and right, of which the block of three treble instruments projected over the top. By the time the sound reached the audience, it was a perfect blend.

The quintet members did not rehearse every single piece from beginning to end - which I assume was simply not necessary, and they wanted to preserve energy for the concert. Their playing was interspersed with lively, humorous chatter and old stories of concert disasters. The group was clearly more than just five musicians performing a quintet recital; they seemed genuine friends. The issue of leadership in chamber music can often be a challenge, however the members all took turns at directing the flow of the rehearsal.

The four recurring focuses of their repertoire during the rehearsal were: communication (particularly who was showing the beat and leading in the other players), tuning chords, keeping a consistent tempo, and negotiating more effective places to breathe. As a student, it is reassuring to know that professional musicians also have to continue developing these challenging areas of chamber music.

My ‘behind the scenes’ experience ended as I quietly exited the rehearsal while the quintet had a break between pieces. I began to wonder how hearing the rehearsal would affect my experience of the concert. Though, as soon as the quintet sat down to perform, the events of the rehearsal moved to the back of my mind and I was overtaken by the wonderful blend of timbres. 

Simone Maurer (Sinfonia Student 2014-15)

Spectacular Jones, Graceful Nielsen

The wind quintet comprised from leading members of the Britten Sinfonia dazzled Cambridge with its virtuosity and musicianship, in bringing to life three contemporary works, and one more staple piece of repertoire.

Berkeley’s Re-Inventions and Seeger’s Suite for wind quintet were both lively, with the former offering a contemplative approach to the well known Bach repertoire, and Seeger’s exciting work showing the full breadth of wind quintet capabilities.

However, the lunchtime concert really came to life with the OPUS2014 winner, Patrick John Jones’s Uncanny Vale, a new work for wind quintet, which explored harmonic and timbral possibilities in a pioneering way. Creating a strange, eerie atmosphere, the work was altogether more expressive than Berkeley or Seeger, and really captured the audience’s imagination, exploring ideas of fantasy and the mind.

Nielsen’s famed wind quintet is a more familiar work in this size of ensemble, and offered the composer’s unique sonority and handling of tonality. The players from Britten Sinfonia worked well to produce a clean sound, resulting in a poised, elegant but nonetheless vivacious account of the Danish composer’s great work.

Carl Wikeley (Sinfonia Student 2014-15)

Tavener's Kaleidoscopes - memories of the premiere

Britten Sinfonia Chief Executive describes the premiere and rehearsals of John Tavener's Kaleidoscopes back in 2006 which we once again perform in the coming weeks;

Over its relatively short history, Britten Sinfonia was fortunate to maintain a warm and productive partnership with John Tavener, one of this country’s most original and celebrated composers who so sadly died late last year.  Alongside performing his last major concert work, Flood of Beauty, at the Barbican on Sunday 28 September we were hugely honoured to take part in his memorial service at Westminster Abbey in June which was such an evocative and uplifting occasion.  These two events remind me that it was back in in 1994 - only the orchestra’s second year - that we first worked with John Tavener.   We premiered his large orchestral work Let’s Begin Again in Norwich Cathedral and from this point regularly commissioned and performed a good number of works over the years, including his oboe concerto Kaleidoscopes.  It’s one of my favourite pieces of John’s and written for our very own Nicholas Daniel, who is the inspiration and (literal) centre of the piece.  The premiere was back in 2007, and I recall the rehearsal well for a number of reasons: sitting next to John following the score with his publisher and close friend Gill Graham; hearing  the music for the first time (so obviously a special piece) with the opening transparent harmonies of the four quartets, so beautifully calibrated with the oboe rising to ever higher registers… and also being plunged into darkness towards the end of the piece, with Gill and I pooling our respective Nokias to shed light on the score, much to the amusement of the composer.

Kaleidoscopes is a piece which makes effective use of staging and movement to enhance the music, with the oboist circling around the four quartets placed like attendant planets at the far edges of the stage.  We’ve tried to continue these antiphonal, spatial and chamber music themes throughout the rest of the programme: The Mozart quartet, also a nod to Tavener’s musical inspiration; the thrilling Adams Shaker Loops in its original sextet form, but perhaps most notably in Kurtag’s two miniatures,  which has the musicians placed around the hall and the audience at the centre.  Many thanks to Georgy Kurtag and Thomas Adès who have allowed us to perform Tom’s arrangement tonight, originally written for a one-off private performance in Dartington, and is heard tonight for the first time in public.  

David Butcher

Chief Executive, Britten Sinfonia

Kaleidoscopes will be performed in London's Milton Court on Monday 29th September, Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall on Friday 3 October and Norwich's Theatre Royal on Sunday 5 October. Click here for full details.

In the words of John Tavener...

John Tavener has been renowned for his spiritual outlook and beliefs, which held great influence over his musical compositions. With a roster of around 300 works to his name (most of which are included in the graphic above), deep-held spirituality and religious devotion are clearly-manifest themes that recur in virtually all of Tavener’s output. In the months following his death press articles celebrating and remembering this great British composer abounded and his impact upon our musical history remains considerable.

Britten Sinfonia is delighted to be part of the Barbican’s Celebrating John Tavener series this autumn where we will be performing two concerts, the first will be the premiere of Tavener’s last completed orchestral work Flood of Beauty (taking place on Sunday 28 September 2014), followed by a performance of Kaleidoscopes with soloist Nicholas Daniel (Monday 29 September – Sunday 5 October 2014, London, Cambridge and Norwich). The latter performance is a particularly special one for us as Tavener’s oboe concerto Kaleidoscopes was originally written for Britten Sinfonia and Nicholas Daniel back in 2006 and it will be an opportunity for us to remember our personal connection with this great composer. For more information about these concerts please visit our website.

We hope that our performances will express our tribute to this great composer so rather than say any more here is Tavener in his own words with a selection of our favourite quotes...

On Beethoven

“I discovered the late quartets of Beethoven. I never liked them much before, they seemed forced. But now I could see how they arose out of the transcendence of such huge personal suffering. They’re such wonderful pieces, somehow beyond any style. They could have been written at any time.” 

(Telegraph interview 2013)

On Stockhausen

"Stockhausen was a searcher after truth, too. I know there are inane things in his music, but in his later works he was really on to something.” 

(Telegraph Interview 2013)

On Stravinsky

"Canticum Sacrum is wonderfully archaic [...] What Stravinsky does is extraordinary. It takes you on a journey from Gregorian chant right through to the modernism of Webern – and all in 17 minutes." 

(The Guardian 2013)

On popular music artists

"I had whatsername? ... Bjork. Bjork round to dinner the other night," he said, "and I want to write something for her. I don't see why not. She's far more intelligent than most classical singers." 

(The Guardian 1999)

"I don't hate pop music," he says. "I liked the Beatles, but then I knew them." John Lennon was his favourite. 

(The Guardian 1999)

On Schoenberg

"I was recently moved to tears by the beautiful pain of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. And I think suffering has got something to do with that. Suffering is a kind of ecstasy, in a way. Having pain all the time makes me terribly, terribly grateful for every moment I've got." 

(The Guardian 2013)

On Mozart

"I have always regarded Mozart as the most sacred and also the most inexplicable of all composers. Sacred, because more than any other composer that I know, he celebrates the act of Being; inexplicable, because the music contains a rapturous beauty and a childlike wonder that can only be compared to Hindu and Persian miniatures, or Coptic ikons." 

(Composer's programme notes: Kaleidoscopes)

On Handel

"Little Reliquary for G. F. H. is a humble tribute to Handel based on a misremembered quote from Solomon and scored for oboe, strings and countertenor. Solomon has always been my favourite work by Handel, and the aria, which I have albeit slightly misremembered, stems from my early years when I played it repeatedly on a 78 recording of Beecham’s orchestration of the music." 

(Composer's programme notes: Little Reliquary for G. F. H.)

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

A 'Wacky' Piece - A Review from a SinfoniaStudent

Last week one of our Cambridge SinfoniaStudents, Rosie Ward, came along to our opening 2013-14 season concert in Cambridge and kindly wrote the following review;

‘What a wacky piece!’ I heard one audience member exclaim after Britten Sinfonia’s concert in Cambridge on Wednesday. The work we had just heard was not an avant-garde new commission; in fact, Haydn’s Symphony no. 60, ‘Il Distratto’, dates from 1774, making it the oldest piece in a programme that also included works by Stravinsky, Anna Clyne, Mozart and Nicholas Maw. This was a diverse selection not only in terms of chronology and style, but also because each work called for a different ensemble, from string quartet to full orchestra. The common thread running through the evening was the musicians’ chameleon-like flexibility, which made both the ensemble and the concert more than the sum of their parts.

Stravinsky’s Three pieces for string quartet (1914), which opened the programme, are just as worthy of the word ‘wacky’ as is the Haydn symphony. These brief, terse little pieces do not correspond in the slightest to the string quartet genre’s connotations of civilised Viennese classicism: as Paul Griffiths puts it, they are ‘determinedly not a “string quartet” but a set of pieces to be played by four strings.’ Rather than working either together or in opposition to one another, in the first two pieces the instruments seem to operate on completely separate rhythmic or harmonic planes.

In terms of tempo and texture, if not in terms of emotional atmosphere, the third and final piece in Stravinsky’s set provided something of a bridge to the next piece on the programme. Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms (2008/9) is an elegy for fifteen stringed instruments written following the death of her mother. The wide spectrum of subtly changing sound qualities that Clyne creates, particularly enhanced by the centrally positioned double basses, was what made both the composition and this performance special. The instruments’ lines interweave and combine in a hypnotic rise and fall, so that the piece hovers in a fragile balance between an atmosphere of still contemplation and fluid movement.

The ensemble on stage grew again for the final piece of the first half, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 12 in A major, K414, with soloist Paul Lewis. The subtle phrasing and timing (there were some perfectly judged, or instinctively allowed, moments of silence), and the balanced interaction both between orchestra and soloist and within the orchestra, combined to make this a beautifully integrated, smooth, but nevertheless dramatic performance. As if the strength of this collaboration was not clear enough from the music itself, it was highlighted during the applause by a light-hearted disagreement between Paul Lewis and leader Jacqueline Shave, each of whom seemed to think the other more deserving of the audience’s enthusiastic response.

The second half began with oboist Nicholas Daniel taking centre stage in Nicholas Maw’s Little Concert (1988), accompanied by the string section and two horns. According to the composer, a defining characteristic of the work is its ‘concentration on line – the presentation and development of melody, the acceptance of the primacy of song,’ and Nicholas Daniel certainly did sing. This was captivating playing from the slow bloom of his first note to the elegantly light, virtuosic ending.

The musicians visibly delighted in performing their final party piece – the ‘wacky’ Haydn symphony. Whilst they relished the work’s quirks and surprises of form, this did not come at the expense of beautiful balance and texture: in the presto fourth movement, for example, although much of it is marked forte, the whole orchestra played with the lightness and tightness of a small chamber group, and the finale was no less joyous, whether for the orchestra or the audience: a high-spirited send-off to an exciting and diverse but always excellent concert.

Rosie Ward

There is still a chance to hear this programme in the opening concert of our Norwich 2013-14 season (with pianist soloist Dejan Lazic) - further details.

If you're interested in becoming a SinfoniaStudent check out our website for details.

MacMillan's Oboe Concerto - A Personal View

On Friday 15th October oboist Nicholas Daniel will give the premiere James MacMillan's new oboe concerto at Birmingham Town Hall before performances at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Norwich's Theatre Royal, West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge and Chelmsford's Civic Theatre. Here Nicholas Daniel gives a personnel view of the piece and how it was developed.

Sometimes important new pieces emerge after a long 'courtship' with a composer, sometimes they come out of the blue. With the James MacMillan Oboe Concerto it has been born out of a long, happy and fruitful working relationship and friendship between both James and myself and between the Britten Sinfonia and this great man.

It is quite clear from his writing that in this time he has come to understand my playing profoundly both as conductor and composer, and, very importantly for the new piece, he understands the important relationship between me and my colleagues in of the Britten Sinfonia. This, after all, is the orchestra I am a founder member of, who I adore more than any other, and keep a watchful eye on at all times, and for whom, uniquely, my wind ensemble, Haffner Winds, is the wind section.

Luckily for us the Concerto has come at a time when he seems to have found terrific ease and confidence, and even fun in his music. One instruction in the music is 'laughing', for instance, over a cascade of trilled notes!

I was lucky enough to perform 'The World's Ransoming', part of his massive and impressive Easter work- Triune, for Cor Anglais and large orchestra with Jimmy in my favourite Polish city, Wroclaw, 2 years ago. It was in one of the astounding churches on an island in the city centre where there are several of them- a very special calm and serenity descends on one there.

At one moment in the piece where the Cor Anglais enters on a high D# adorned with what sounds like a glitter of starlight in the percussion and I just remember looking up at Jimmy at that point and being so inspired to see the music so visible in his face that the high D# just floated out exactly as I wanted it to. Its a great gift he has to make it so easy to understand his music just by his manner and physical expression, as well as by what he says.

On that visit to Poland we discussed some general points about the Concerto, and I believe I may have made the slight mistake of asking him not to limit in any way what he wanted to write! I say mistake but I don't mean it, of course, but the piece is really quite hard! Its arguably the most technical concerto in an oboistic sense that has been written since Elliot Carter's. In fact I have found it harder to learn than the Carter.

When I got the music a short while ago it looked to me rather like Nielson's Clarinet Concerto in terms of the Oboe writing, by which I mean flowingly virtuosic and needing an effortlessness to the technique. It also has a very exciting soloistic and supportive role for the wind, brass and timps inside the orchestra. There is no operatic aspect of this in terms of peripatitetic requirements, but the calling across the orchestra of various groups of instruments will be a stand out feature of the work, as is palindromic writing.

The slow movement is a total re-write of a solo Oboe piece Jimmy wrote after the 9/11 atrocity in America, In Angustiis ii. The original piece is desolate, lost, post-nuclear, horrifying, but the concerto to me seems to have more companionship in it and more hope, and maybe more beauty. In a way its hard to write about it because I haven't heard it all yet and haven't put it with the audience, and that changes everything.

I'm finishing this little insight for you on the train on the way to the first rehearsal, and I am so excited and nervous, and honoured to have such a fine, confident piece written for me.

For more information on each of performances click here

James MacMillan's Oboe Concerto is co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Birmingham Town Hall.

Next up: the Lyrical Oboe in Leeds

Our co-leader Thomas Gould joins Nicholas Daniel in Bach's Concerto in D minor for Oboe, Violin and String Orchestra in Leeds on Saturday, the climax to our Lyrical Oboe programme.

Thomas is busy: in 2008/9 he makes his Barbican and Bridgewater Hall debuts as soloist in Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, returns to the Wigmore Hall for a third lunchtime recital, gives recitals at Perth Concert Hall and Birmingham Town Hall, and guest leads the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal. Thomas also maintains a strong profile in London’s orchestral life as leader of Aurora Orchestra and Manning Camerata, as well as being our co-leader.

Born in London in 1983, Thomas Gould began violin lessons at the age of three with Sheila Nelson. At eighteen Thomas entered the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship where his principal teacher was György Pauk. During this time he was a member of the Artea String Quartet and also founded a duo with the pianist John Reid. Thomas and John continue to perform regularly together in recitals across the UK at venues including the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall, St. George's Bristol and the Wigmore Hall.

Since making his concerto debut with Kammerphilharmonie Graz in 2004, Thomas has appeared frequently as soloist with orchestras including the Gävle Symfoniorkester, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra da Camera, Bath Philharmonia and the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra. In 2008 Thomas premiered Seeing Is Believing, a concerto for electric violin by Nico Muhly, with Aurora Orchestra, and also performed Thomas Ades’s violin concerto in LSO St. Luke’s with London Contemporary Orchestra.