One of the more exciting pieces in the programme by the Linos Piano Trio on 18 June will be a rather exceptional performance of Debussy’s ‘La Mer’. Those of you who know Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece will be only too aware that this is a piece for huge orchestral forces. So what is this all about? Nicholas Keyworth has been investigating…

British composer Sally Beamish has written much successful chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. She has also worked in the field of music theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.

In 2012, Trio Apaches were performing Sally’s The Seafarer at the Lincoln International Chamber Music Festival. They asked her to consider creating an arrangement of Debussy’s La Mer for piano trio, as a companion piece to The Seafarer.

Sally Beamish

Her initial reaction was an unequivocal NO. Sally had already arranged some early Debussy pieces for cello and orchestra, for Steven Isserlis a few years earlier describing it as:

‘one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – and it took me twice as long as it would have done to write an original concerto!’

However, after a good deal of pursuasion, she agreed despite being a daunting prospect. Watch this fascinating discussion about creating this arrangement with Sally Beamish and Trio Apaches pianist, Ashley Wass:

And it wasn’t a simple case of giving all the tunes to the violin, the base line to the cello and the accompaniment to the piano. Very often, Beamish had to give Debussy’s string lines to the piano, so that the violin and cello could sustain the wind melodies. At other times she used the cello to sustain a bass resonance, and gave a cello solo to the violin.

‘It reminded me of a particularly tricky game of Sudoku – you changed one instrumentation, and another no longer worked.

It turned out to be an illuminating and stimulating journey, and made her think about instrumentation in a new and more creative way.

I’m profoundly glad I said ‘yes’ in the end!’

“a magical rethink that unashamedly shrinks Debussy’s grand evocations down to a more intimate scale, but loses nothing of La Mer’s power and detail” – The Scotsman

Linos Piano Trio

“Sally Beamish has produced a colossal, creative masterpiece” – The Herald

Sally Beamish’s arrangement of La Mer was first performed in 2013 and recorded in 2014. You can hear it alongside Schubert’s mighty Piano trio in Eb and  the Sorceror’s Apprentice by Dukas on Sunday 18 June at the glorious Pump Room.

Music and poetry from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I

Saturday 6 May, 7.30pm
Old Theatre Royal, Bath

The next concert in the 2017 Bath Recitals series is a glorious programme celebrating the composers and writers who flourished under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. The arts were central to her long and peaceful reign when composers such as William Byrd and writer William Shakespeare both benefited from her support.

This concert features some of the finest a cappella singing in a celebration of the music and poetry of the period together with some more contemporary works inspired by the spirit of the age. A truly magical evening of top quality music.

Blenheim Singers
With their unique link to Blenheim Palace, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, the Blenheim Singers shares the vision of the Palace’s UNESCO status by building “peace into the minds of men and women” through musical performances of the highest level. Following their highly successful 2016 tours to Germany and France, audiences continue to be enthralled by the passionate and authentic musical experience presented by this group.

With the forthcoming season’s opening concert by the Ruisi Quartet, Nicholas Keyworth explores the background to this wonderful musical genre.

As British conductor, Jeffrey Tate so aptly put it: ‘The most perfect expression of human behaviour is a string quartet.’ With its musical and spiritual equality between the four string players – two violin players, a viola player and a cellist – the string quartet became the most prominent chamber ensemble from the mid 18th century onwards and possibly the most perfectly satisfying musical form both for performers and audiences alike.

The origins of the String Quartet are rather murky and connected to a large extent to the emergence of the instruments, violin, viola and cello as we would recognise them today. Baroque music relied on the security of the bass line – the ‘continuo’ of harpsichord and cello, above which the higher solo instruments would play the main melodic lines.

Chamber musicians perform trio sonata.
C18 Anon from L’Iconographie de l’Orgue et du Clavecin

There are some example for what might be termed a ‘prototype’ string quartet such as with Scarlatti’s “Sonata à Quattro per due Violini, Violetta [viola], e Violoncello senza Cembalo” (Sonata for four instruments: two violins, viola, and cello without harpsichord).

But it was down to a purely chance circumstance involving none other than the teenage Joseph Haydn in the middle of the 18th century which was to create the first ‘real’ string quartets. Haydn’s early biographer, Griesinger takes up the story:

‘The following purely chance circumstance had led him to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna, and he invited from time to time his pastor, his manager, Haydn, and Albrechtsberger in order to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old, took up this proposal, and so originated his first quartet which, immediately it appeared, received such general approval that Haydn took courage to work further in this form.’

Joseph Haydn playing quartets. 
StaatsMuseum, Vienna, unknown artist

Haydn was to go on to write 68 quarters during his lifetime and firmly establish the genre as we know it. The teenage Mozart quickly saw the opportunities presented by this new genre and was to write a further 23 string quartets. However, as the great musicologist Donald Tovey put it:

”as the development of Haydn’s quartets reaches its goal, …further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next.”

Nevertheless, string quartet composition flourished from this moment forward and continues right up to the present day with significant contributions from many of the major composers including Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák, Bartók, Shostakovich and Peter Maxwell Davies.

With kind support from the Richard Carne Trust