Thames Concerts

Thames Concerts 2012 season revealed

2012-01-28T08:41:00.000-08:00

Thames Concerts' series of classical music is given by some of the finest performers in the country in the atmospheric setting and superb acoustic of All Saints’ Church Kingston (Kingston Parish Church).

The repertoire ranges from Bach to Turnage and from the classical string quartet to the unique sounds of the tango, played by world-class artists including David Juritz, Robert Quinney, Quatuor Mosaïques and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge.

This year, we welcome David Juritz as Artist-in-Residence, who opens the season by bringing his London Tango Quintet to Kingston on Saturday 25^th February. Including the brilliant accordionist Milos Milivojevic (described by the Times as 'a hurricane of imaginative invention'), the programme includes Piazzolla’s popular Four Seasons from Buenos Aires, as well as music by Rachmaninov, Scarlatti, Pärt and Lindberg.

Soon after this, David Juritz presents Bach’s sonatas and partitas in two Thursday evening shoppers’ concerts on Thursday 1^st March and Thursday 22^nd March. These last an hour and are by candlelight, finishing with a Bach violin concerto accompanied by the Tiffin Chamber Orchestra. On the second of these evenings, Thursday 22^nd March, we form the very first Thames Concerts Community Orchestra – open to all string players of all ages – to play Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring under David Juritz’s leadership. You may like to play in this yourself, or know others who would be interested: details will be appearing on this site on February 1^st.

A very special evening will be the visit of the French period-instrument string quartet Quatuor Mosaïques on Monday 12^th March. Tickets for the quartet’s last Wigmore Hall series sold out fast, and we are delighted to be able to host them as part of their UK tour. Their recordings have received unanimous critical acclaim, as did the BBC broadcasts of their most recent London concerts, and their programme for Thames Concerts features three well-loved quartets by Haydn and Mozart. Formed in 1985, the group is comprised of Austrians Erich Höbarth (violin), Andrea Bischof, (violin), Anita Mitterer (viola), and the French cellist Christophe Coin. Quatuor Mosaïques has an extraordinarily extensive discography which includes works of Haydn, Mozart, Arriaga, Boccherini, Jadin, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn as well as modern composers. Of the group's latest release, Schubert's Der Tod und das Mädchen, The Times writes, "their performance of Death and the Maiden is music-making of a high order, felt and carried out by players animated as though by a single mind and impulse, yet each of them seeming to respond afresh at every moment." Recordings of the Wiener Klassik repertoire (Haydn string quartets: Op.20, 33, 77 and the quartets of Mozart dedicated to Haydn) have been awarded numerous prizes such as the Diapason d'or, the Choc du Monde de la Musique, and a Gramophone Award. Regular performers at the leading venues of the world, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonie, tickets for their concerts sell out quickly – be sure to get hold of yours in time!

Following on from the recent visits of King’s College and St John’s College Choirs in Cambridge, we welcome the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, under its inspirational Director of Music Stephen Layton on Saturday 28^th April. Acknowledged by Gramophone Magazine as one of the fifth best choir in the world, this will be their first visit to Kingston Parish Church. They have put together a stunning programme for us, with well-known choral music by Tallis, Purcell, Bach, Stanford and Elgar juxtaposed with some of the composers they have championed in recent recordings, such as Praulins, Stucky and Esenvalds.

The season closes with the final Frobenius organ recital before the renovation of the church, and is given by the sub-organist of Westminster Abbey, Robert Quinney on Saturday 16^th June. As organist for the Royal Wedding, his exceptional playing gained a worldwide audience, and his recent recording of Bach Trio Sonatas was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine (“Quinney delivers finger-and foot-perfect performances”) and praised in The Times as “a pure unfolding of pleasure”.

Reflecting the unusual location of the instrument within All Saints’ Church, the seating plan for this concert is adjusted so that all seats have a face-on view of the organ and organist. This is the last chance to hear the Frobenius organ in concert before All Saints’ Church is refurbished – don’t miss it!

I hope you are as excited by the season as we are. It takes on a slightly different look this year – some of the concerts are on weekday evenings and last for different lengths, and the pricing structure reflects this. We are able to use our grant from the Royal Borough of Kingston to offer significantly reduced ticket prices for all the concerts, as well as half-price tickets for those in full-time education.

In addition, we are delighted that the Rose Theatre has offered to administer the Box Office for all of our concerts, and we hope that you find the opportunity to book tickets online and by manned phone of benefit. Please note that there is no booking fee if you buy tickets in person at the Rose Theatre. On the day of the concert, tickets can only be booked at the door, and this will be run, as ever, by volunteers.

TICKETS FOR ALL THE CONCERTS ARE AVAILABLE BY CLICKING HERE

Connected to this, for the full-length tickets there are two ticket areas, of £20 and £10 per ticket. All the performers will be on a raised platform, and we are able to guarantee the £20 ticket holders a full view of the performers, by adopting a different seating plan from in previous years. Tickets are unreserved, because the arrangement of seats varies according to the performing forces, but you will be able to see and hear perfectly.

Members of the Inner Circle in previous seasons have made a substantial difference to our ability to present a series of concerts, all the more so in these straightened economic times. You may renew your Inner Circle membership online through the Rose Box Office (www.rosetheatrekingston.org/thames-concerts); you do not need to sign an additional Gift Aid form if you have completed one in the last two seasons. Further details of Inner Circle membership can be found on this site by clicking this link. On purchasing an Inner Circle membership, should a discount on ticket prices be applicable (as it is for supporters and benefactors), a special code will appear on your online application, which you should input on your online ticket application.

Download the 2012 season brochure by clicking here

Looking ahead to 2012 - your views

2011-05-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

With this season's programme almost at a close, our thoughts turn now to next years events. Sadly, we no longer have the same auspicious circumstances as before.

As for many organisations like ours across the country, the next few years present a very uncertain time. The well-publicised government spending cuts, which have hit all parts of the public sector, have also affected us this year, and so, in order to make next year's concert series as successful as possible, we'd like to open up the floor to any comments or feedback you may have, so that we can tailor our events more around you, the concertgoers.
This is in the form of a simple internet survey, which can be accessed via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/thamesconcerts - it takes all of 5 minutes to complete, and if you choose to leave your name and contact details at the bottom, you'll be entered into a prize draw to win two free tickets to one of next season's concerts. We would very much like to hear what you have to say, and to identify any areas that we can improve to make your concertgoing experience even better. The survey will be taken offline on Sunday 12th June, so that we have enough time to read through your responses before proceeding with next year's season.

We've felt very priveleged over the last few years to be able to bring high-calibre artists to Kingston Parish Church, but now that the goalposts have shifted, we need your feedback and support to ensure that we can continue to provide this opportunity. Please find a spare 5 minutes and fill in our survey - as concertgoers, you have a voice too.

Thames Youth Orchestra plays Ballet Russes

2011-05-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

In the last concert of Thames Concerts' 2011, we welcome our associated youth ensemble Thames Youth Orchestra, fresh from a performance in London's Cadogan Hall, for a appropriately summery programme to send everyone off into the holidays.

The pieces in this term's programme have a common theme in being pieces commissioned by Serge Diaghilev at the Ballet Russes in Paris in the 1910s/1920s. A hotbed of artistic expression and ideas in the early twentieth century, Paris was the destination of choice for thousands of up-and-coming artists, writers and composers, and the world-renowned Ballet Russes troupe made stars of previously unknown composers such as Igor Stravinsky.

First up is Erik Satie's surreal and energised Parade, a cavalcade of various circus acts and stunt performers, including a Chinese magician, acrobats, and an American dancing girl, scored for an orchestra with a percussion section including air raid sirens, typewriters, tuned glass bottles and "sonorous puddles".

Next is Poulenc's light and frothy suite from his ballet Les biches, inspired by Watteau's drawings of the courtly life of Louis XV. In contrast to the more atonal modernist pieces of the day, Poulenc's score makes use of conventional orchestral forces and a conventional diatonic harmony "with a twist", incorporating added intervals which, while not quite dissonant, still give it something of a modern edge. Poulenc himself described the scenario as a "contemporary drawing room party suffused with an atmosphere of wantonness, which you sense if you are corrupted, but of which an innocent-minded girl would not be conscious".

Finally, the evening concludes with Ottorino Respighi's La boutique fantasque or "The Magic Toy Shop", based on a collection of piano pieces by Rossini. The piece consists of a set of dances of varying moods and flavours, including a French can-can, a Russian cossack dance and an Italian tarantella, all danced by magical dancing dolls (sadly absent from tonight's performance).

ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH
MARKET PLACE, KINGSTON KT1 1JP
TICKETS: (all seating unreserved) £10 adults, £5 children/students, £20 family ticket (2 adults + 2 children)
Hands Music, Kingston
www.ticketweb.co.uk
07984 417 278 (automated ticket hotline)

Toccata and Fugue with Simon Preston

2011-04-04T04:41:00.000-07:00

Thames Concerts is thrilled to welcome world-renowned organist Simon Preston to Kingston Parish Church for an evening of scintillating music from across the organ repertory, all performed on the church's magnificent Frobenius organ. Tonight's programme will feature works by two of the most celebrated writers for the instrument, Johann Sebastian Bach and Oliver Messiaen (including Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor), as well as Franz Liszt's expressive and all-encompassing Fantasia and Fugue on 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam'.

Simon Preston has been a major presence on the organ recital scene for nearly 50 years. Alongside posts at Westminster Abbey, where he was sub-organist from 1962-1967 and then organist from 1981-1987, he has conducted numerous concert tours around the world, travelling to Europe, the United States, the Far East, South Africa and Australia, and has a richly-deserved reputation as one of the most in-demand organ soloists in the world today. As a soloist he has played with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic (with James Levine) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (with Seiji Ozawa). He is the founder and current Artistic Director of the Calgary International Organ Festival in Canada, as well as Artistic Director of the International Summer School at Mount Royal College Conservatory’s Calgary Organ Academy. Simon also arranged music for the 1986 royal wedding and large portions of the music for the 1984 film Amadeus.

BACH Toccata and Fugue in D minor
BACH Chorale Prelude Vater Unser in Himmelreich
BACH Chorale Prelude Aus Tiefer Not
BACH Prelude and Fugue in A minor
MESSIAEN Transports de Joie (from L’Ascension)
MESSIAEN Le banquet celeste
LISZT Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, salutarem undam’

ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH
MARKET PLACE, KINGSTON KT1 1JP
TICKETS: £15 (numbered) / £10 (unreserved)
Hands Music, Kingston
www.ticketweb.co.uk
07984 417278 (automated ticket hotline)

English Chamber Orchestra

2011-02-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

The English Chamber Orchestra, the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world and undoubtedly one of its finest, take the stage at Kingston Parish Church to perform a stirring selection of French Romantic music.

The ECO have toured and played concert venues all over the world, with this year's season encompassing tours to Egypt and the Far East, and worked with many of the preeminent musicians of our time, including Sir Colin Davis, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Howard Shelley, Paul Watkins. Over the years, the orchestra has had a very fruitful relationship with the Aldeburgh Festival, having played in the premiéres of many of Britten's later works. The orchestra has also been very active in recording film soundtracks, including music for Pride and Prejudice and Atonement.

Ofer Falk is already highly regarded in the chamber music world as a member of the Allegri String Quartet, and has worked regularly with the ECO as soloist and leader since 2003, as well as appearing with top orchestras in his native Israel. Alongside his numerous playing commitments, Ofer currently teaches both at Trinity College of Music and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

ECO director Stephanie Gonley studied under David Takeno at the Guildhall and Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard, and has had an extremely successful professional career both as a conductor/director and as a soloist, having performed with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony and the Hallé Orchestras. Currently she is also Professor of Violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

RAMEAU Suite from Dardanus
MASSENET 'Meditation' from Thaïs
MASSENET Last Sleep of the Virgin
CHAUSSON Poème
PURCELL (orch. Britten) Chacony
FAURÈ Elegy (arr. for cello and strings)
FAURÈ Aprés un rêve (arr. for cello and strings)
HONEGGER Concerto da camera

Saturday 26th February 2011, 7.30pm
Kingston Parish Church, Market Place, Kingston KT1 1JP, 19.30
Please ring 07984 417278 or see our website for booking information - tickets are priced at £20, £15, £10 and £5.
http://www.thamesconcerts.org.uk/
http://www.englishchamberorchestra.co.uk/
http://www.allegriquartet.org.uk/ofer.htm

Michael Collins and Friends

2011-01-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

Continuing apace with our French season, Thames Concerts and Kingston Parish Church welcome you to an evening of French chamber music featuring four outstanding soloists. Debussy's Cello Sonata, a piece by turns energetic and tranquil, but filled throughout with beautiful lyricism, kicks off our evening's programme. Although Stravinsky was Russian, much of his work composed during a particularly fertile period in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s lent a distinctly French tone to music that was otherwise very much characterised by the sounds of his homeland; his L'histoire du soldat, a Faustian tale of a soldier who sells his fiddle to the Devil, is presented here tonight in an abridged form for violin, clarinet and piano. The concert will conclude with our soloists coming together for Messiaen's seminal Quartet for the End of Time; composed for Messiaen himself and fellow musicians in a German POW camp, the Quartet is signature Messiaen, combining virtuosic instrumental writing and modernist harmony with a transcendent beauty and mysticism, and is without doubt one of the key works of 20th century classical music.

Michael Collins (clarinet) was the winner of the Woodwind category in the first BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, and since then has gone on to perform with orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia, under conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin and Esa-Pekka Salonen. More recently Michael has also received acclaim for his work as a conductor, with (among others) the City of London Sinfonia and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Michael McHale (piano) was born in Belfast and achieved a double first-class honours degree in music from Cambridge University. For the last few years, he has been earmarked as a rising talent, having performed throughout Europe and on television in the UK, Ireland, the USA and Germany, giving renditions of piano concerti by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Gershwin and Rachmaninov. Numbering among his collaborators are Sir James Galway, Michael Collins, Ensemble Avalon and Arvo Pärt.

Jack Liebeck (violin) has been performing concerti and giving recitals since the age of 11, attending the Purcell School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and has played with top orchestras all over the world. His debut recording on Quartz Records received substantial critical praise, and his concert repertoire includes performances of concerti by Mendelssohn and Magnus Lindberg. Jack is also highly active in chamber music, having appeared at classical music festivals at Bath, Montreux and Spoleto (to name but a few).

Guy Johnston (cello) was the winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2000, and his engagements as a soloist have given him opportunities to work with some of the UK's and Europe's finest orchestras, including the London and BBC Philharmonic, CBSO, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Guy is a founder member of the Aronowitz Ensemble, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as Steven Isserlis, and currently has a residence at Aldeburgh Music.

Saturday 5th February 2011, 7.30pm
Kingston Parish Church, Market Place, Kingston KT1 1JP, 19.30
Please ring 07984 417278 or see our website for booking information - tickets are priced at £20, £15, £10 and £5.
http://www.thamesconcerts.org.uk/
http://www.michael-collins.co.uk/
http://www.michaelmchale.com/
http://jackliebeck.com/
http://www.guy-johnston.com/

First concert of 2011 season confirmed - London Mozart Players

2010-12-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

Thames Concerts is proud to welcome the London Mozart Players, one of the foremost chamber orchestras in the country, to open this year's French season. Since its foundation in 1949, the orchestra has established a considerable reputation which has seen it play concerts all over Europe, including a recent concert tour of Germany, release a number of recordings, and premiere new works from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Roxanna Panufnik and Tarik O'Regan.

Joining them will be the Tiffin Boys' Choir, who over the last 30 years have become one of the leading ensembles of its kind. The choir trebles have had regular engagements at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, singing in performances of Tosca, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Palestrina, Billy Budd and the ROH's current staging of Tannhäuser, and the ensemble as a whole have been on tours to Western and Eastern Europe, Canada and the United States, China and New Zealand, with a tour to Australia in the pipeline for summer 2011.

Also appearing is organist Stephen Disley, who was an organ scholar at Liverpool Cathedral and at the Royal College of Music, and is now Sub-Organist at Southwark Cathedral. Stephen has made a significant name for himself as a solo recitalist and accompanist, performing in Westminster Abbey, Westminster and St Paul's cathedrals, the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, and with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

All this will be taking place under the auspices of our musical director Simon Toyne, who will be taking up the baton for a programme including:

Fauré Cantique de Jean Racine
Debussy Trois chansons de Charles d'Orléans
Poulenc Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani
Duruflé Requiem

Saturday 29th January 2011, 7.30pm
Kingston Parish Church, Market Place, Kingston KT1 1JP, 19.30
Please ring 07984 417278 or see our website for booking information - tickets are priced at £20, £15, £10 and £5.
http://www.thamesconcerts.org.uk/
http://www.lmp.org/
http://www.tiffinboyschoir.com/
http://www.allsaintskingston.co.uk/%20

Welcome!

2010-12-16T02:19:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the official blog for Thames Concerts, an organisation that presents a series of high quality classical music in and around Kingston. Among the high calibre artists who have worked with us in the wonderful acoustics of Kingston Parish Church are the London Mozart Players, the Nash Ensemble, Michael Collins and Howard Shelley.

This year's season revolves around a French theme, including performances of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and L'Ascension, Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, Durufle's Requiem and Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani.

For more details on this season's programme or for booking tickets, please visit our website, http://www.thamesconcerts.org.uk/, or our supplier at Ticketweb.

Thank you, and happy listening!