A day at Senate House

THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT IN PERFORMANCE:
CHAMBER ENSEMBLE CONTEXTS STUDY-DAY AT THE INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL RESEARCH
Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, 10 a.m. to 20.15 p.m. 7 December 2012

John Irving, Jane Booth and Peter Collyer Three Friends in Conversation – Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio.

CONCERT 1 Mozart Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano in E-flat K498, ‘Kegelstatt’ Ensemble DeNOTE; Rachmaninov Cello Sonata in G minor op. 19 Sebastian Comberti (cello) & Mine Doğantan-Dack (piano)

Christopher Redgate and Paul Archbold (RedArch Duo): Creating Interactive Performance;
Neil Heyde and Peter Sheppard Skærved: Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello (1922)

CONCERT 2 Ravel Sonata for violin and cello Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin) & Neil Heyde (cello);
Finnissy Âwâz-e Niyâz (world première) Christopher Redgate (Redgate/Howarth oboe doubling Lupophon) & Michael Finnissy (piano)

A remarkable day at Senate House, with a near-overwhelming plethora of diverse experiences.

Particular pleasures for me were the Mozart trio (with improvised embellishments new each time Ensemble DeNOTE performs it); RedArchDuo's demonstration of how they selected amongst over 4000 classified multiphonics available to Chris Redgate's new extended oboe for spicing Archbold's Fluxions; Neil Hyde's exposition of the unique audacity, indeed perversity, of Ravel's duo sonata, which overturns most expectations (plus Peter S S's overview of the violin/cello duo in historical terms). The Ravel was given a wondrously compelling performance in the final concert of the day (c.p. that same sonata heard at Blackheath last week !).

Hard to take in fully at the time, the whole event was filmed by Colin Still's team with four cameras, and will be published on the SAS website in due course; see presently available SAS U of L videos and podcasts at http://www.sas.ac.uk/support-research/events/videos-and-podcasts/search?keys=music&tid=All, or on YouTube at SchAdvStudy.

Peer Grahame Woolf