A concert good enough for royalty

Valeria Kurbatova is a multi-award-winning harpist who has performed for King Charles as well as rock royalty, in the shape of the Rolling Stones.

She has played in the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Palace, the Barbican and the Palace of Westminster. But on Monday, November 13, she and flautist Daniel Ephgrave will be performing in a rather more modest venue - albeit one with excellent acoustics -- Rickmansworth Baptist Church.

Daniel is also an award-winning musician and was a prize-winner in the British Flute Society competitions in both 2020 and 2021. Like Valeria, he often plays with some of the UK's leading orchestras and ensembles.

Valeria and Daniel have a particularly wide repertoire that spans classical, folk and contemporary music. At their Three Rivers Music Society concert on November 14, they also offered their audience a taste of the tango, courtesy of Argentina's Astor Piazzolla.

... In addition they showcased two works by contemporary composers - the brilliant young Slovenian pianist Blaz Pucihar, and Jeff Atmajian, an American composer who is best known as an arranger and orchestrator of film music.

Based in London, Valeria Kurbatova (harp) and Daniel Ephgrave (flute) are one of the UK's foremost Flute and Harp Duos, with a highly varied and ambitious repertoire including arrangements of works for full orchestra such as Claude Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un Faune. As well as both having busy independent freelance careers, they regularly travel across the UK together and abroad showcasing music that spans the world of Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, Folk, World and Contemporary styles in some of the country's finest venues and concert clubs.

Daniel Ephgrave is based in London and studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, learning flute with Susan Milan & Fiona Kelly. He graduated with Distinction, with one of the highest marks for performance in his year, and was a finalist in the Trinity Flute Competition, Harold Clark Woodwind Competition and a prize-winner in the British Flute Society Flute Competitions 2020 and 2021.

The programme included Florence Price who rose from cinema organist to celebrated composer

Back in 1931 Florence Price was a single mother who made ends meet by playing cinema and church organs and writing songs for radio commercials.

... But today she is celebrated as the first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra.

Her breakthrough came in 1932 when she won a prestigious music composition award - a success that led to her work being performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the following year.

How good a composer was she? Very good indeed and respecting her accomplishments, Symphonia Academica, UK's leading string chamber ensemble, included her composition in their TRMS concert in Rickmansworth on Monday, October 16.

Their programme featured an extract from Price's melodic String Quartet No.2 as well as several works by three of the greatest alltime male composers: Mozart's Flute Quartet in D major, and his overture to Don Giovanni, Bach's Orchestral Suite No.2 in B minor, and Haydn's final "London" symphony.

The six-member ensemble also performed TRMS for previous three occasions and proved extremely popular. As their artistic director Peter Bussereau explained: "Our aim is to engage with the audience in a relaxed and informative style, drawing people into the music."

David Halls, Director of Music at the Salisbury cathedral is a pianist, organist and composer of music of distinction and high reputation. His brother Dr Steven Halls is a renowned cellist performer with equally talented Daphne Moody on the violin in their third appearance for TRMS performed this exciting repertoire including compositions by Shostakovich, Bridge, Mendelssohn and David's own work.

The Programme
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
violin, cello & continuo op.5 no.7 in D minor

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Piano Trio No.1 in C minor op.8
Andante - Moderato

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Three Miniatures Set 2 H88
1. Romance: Andante; 2. Intermezzo: Allegretto; 3. Saltarello: Allegro vivo;
4. David Halls (b.1963) Passacaglia on the second set of Miniatures by Frank Bridge

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Piano Trio No.2 in C minor op.66
1. Allegro energico e con fuoco; 2. Andante espressivo;
3. Scherzo - molto allegro quasi presto; 4. Finale - allegro appassionato

Shostakovich composed his mature, second piano trio in 1944 at the age of 38 and it is a stunning and potent masterwork firmly in the repertoire. Likely less well known is his compelling first piano trio, op.8, a "student" work Shostakovich wrote in 1923 at the tender age of 16. Such was his precocity that he had already been a student at the Petrograd Conservatory for three years. A bout of tuberculosis sent the young Shostakovich to sanatorium to convalesce where, according to a letter from his sister Mariya, he got a suntan and fell in love. The object of his affections was girl named Tatyana Glivenko to whom Shostakovich eventually dedicated the piano trio, quite possibly the chief inspiration for this piece that he completed upon returning from his hiatus. One can imagine his amorous intent from the original title Poem. The trio was not published during Shostakovich's lifetime and, apparently, its current published form was assembled from multiple manuscript sources with the final missing bars of the piano part completed by composer Boris Tishchenko.

... The single movement Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, , though sometimes regarded as "student work" is a great piece by several standards but particularly so because it shows that even at the age of 16, Shostakovich was a gifted, skillful and original composer with strong evocations of his mature sensibilities summarized aptly by writer Robert Philips with "lyrical melodies colored by acerbic harmonies, sudden contrasts of pace and energy, insistent rhythms, and spare textures giving way to unashamedly romantic passages and powerful climaxes." A key trait in this early musical snapshot is what one of his professors criticized as an "obsession with the grotesque." On the surface, it is an evocative rhapsody with several recurrent themes (or motifs) featuring abrupt transitions where chromatically coloured driving momentum gives way to shimmering, lyrical repose. It has been suggested that its episodic theatricality reflects the fact that Shostakovich was then making money by playing live music for silent films where he and some friends rehearsed the trio in public. A deeper listen with the aid of a score shows that the trio's musical material is rather tightly integrated with each section arising through thematic transformation of previous materials and well as combining multiple themes into ever shifting composites. Beautifully constructed and vividly expressed, the trio is complex, passionate and, with its wild contrasts, compellingly ambiguous. As with the mature Shostakovich, sincerity mingles with irony, hope with despair, the lovely with the grotesque, the real with the surreal.
...by Kai Christiansen.

Frank Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others. He played the viola in a number of string quartets, most notably the English String Quartet, and conducted, sometimes deputising for Henry Wood, before devoting himself to composition, receiving the patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He privately tutored a number of pupils, most famously Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher's music and paid homage to him in the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), based on a theme from the second of Bridge's Three Idylls for String Quartet (1906). Bridge died in Eastbourne.

Among Bridge's works are the orchestral work The Sea (1911), Oration (1930) for cello and orchestra (recorded in 1976 by the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber) and the opera The Christmas Rose (premiered 1932), but he is perhaps most highly regarded today for his chamber music. His early works are in a late-Romantic idiom, but later pieces such as the third (1926) and fourth (1937) string quartets are harmonically advanced and very distinctive, showing some influence of the Second Viennese School. His works also show harmonic influences by Maurice Ravel and especially Alexander Scriabin. Analysis reveals techniques akin to Stravinsky through the use of the octatonic scale and many palindromic techniques. There are also five "Bridge Chords" that can be found frequenting the late idiom.

Although only two piano trios by Mendelssohn have come down to us, we know that he wrote one (which has since been lost) before he was eleven years old. Various letters also suggest that the genre interested him much more than his two contributions to it would indicate. During a visit to Paris when he was 23, he wrote to his sister Fanny of plans to compose another. But it wasn't until 1839 that he actually wrote his Trio No.1 in D minor, op.49. It was another six years before Mendelssohn dedicated his Trio no.2 in C minor, op.66 to Louis Spohr (1784-1859), one of the great violinists of his time and a prolific composer in his own right.

In late 1844, Mendelssohn had been feeling unsettled about working conditions in Berlin. In December, he decided to retire to Frankfurt for rest and recovery. By February 1845, he had begun work on the Trio No.2, completing it in the early summer. The work's premiere performance later that year at the Gewandhaus featured Spohr on violin and Mendelssohn on piano.

In his c minor Trio Mendelssohn tilted the balance of the ensemble strongly toward the role of the piano. The first movement exhibits Mendelssohn's ability to move from quiet reflection to ebullient passionate explosions and back again with consummate skill. The second movement, "andante espressivo" recalls many of the lyrical and elegant qualities of his many "Songs Without Words." In the third movement Mendelssohn provides another of his signature scherzos, this time a "perpetual motion" which in many ways resembles his famous Midsummer Night's Dream music. It is fluidity and wit at its ultimate. The final movement, with the composer's "appassionato" marking, offers the listener an energy and depth almost symphonic in scope. By the Trio's end, a listener's spirit has been uplifted in a manner few other composers could achieve.

The Trio begins with a pedal point in the cello and drama in the piano opening the Allegro energico e con fuoco, moving on to string arpeggios and vehement piano chords. The lyrical E-flat Major second theme eases the tension. After an impassioned development and a recap, the canonic coda pits an augmented version of the opening against the original. Two themes, one tender, the other thoughtful, dominate the Andante espressivo (9/8), the midsection of which modulates to the tonic minor key.

The Players
Daphne Moody first studied the violin with Alfred de Reyghere and then at the Royal Academy of Music with Sydney Humphreys and Frederick Grinke. After a brief period playing with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in Canada, she returned to England to freelance with the Halle, Bournemouth and London Festival orchestras before turning to the world of chamber music where she was a member of the Eberle Quartet for 23 years. Daphne now plays with the Edington Ensemble, she continues to lead La Folia and she returns to Western Canada annually to give chamber concerts on the Southern Gulf Islands. Daphne is part of the Superstrings team in Wiltshire which champions the study of string instruments for young people. She has been giving concerts with David for three decades and has performed sporadically with Steven over 25 years.

David Halls was taught the piano from the age of four. Whilst a pupil at Harrogate Grammar School, he was Assistant Organist at St. Wilfrid's, Harrogate, studied the organ with Adrian Selway at St. Peter's, Harrogate, with Ronald Perrin at Ripon Cathedral and later with Thomas Trotter in London. David won an Organ Scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, and graduated in 1984 with an Honours Degree in Music. He passed both the Associate and Fellowship Examinations of The Royal College of Organists in the same year, being awarded five prizes and the Silver Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He studied in Winchester for a post-graduate Certificate in Education and was Organ Scholar of Winchester Cathedral under the guidance of Martin Neary and James Lancelot. He was appointed Director of Music at Salisbury Cathedral in September 2005. A frequently published composer at home and abroad, he recently won first prize in a national competition for a composition for York Minster.

Steven Halls studied the cello with Pauline Dunn in Harrogate and Suzanne Ramon in Paris but read Modern Languages at Worcester College, Oxford, subsequently gaining a PhD in German and Music at Sheffield University. He holds an MBA from Nottingham Business School and an M.Phil. in politics from Nottingham Trent University. From 2008 2019, he was Chairman of The Elgar Society and he also still chairs the Elgar Complete Edition, set up to complete the 43-volume definitive edition of Elgar's compositions and to edit and publish the complete Elgar diaries and correspondence, and Elgar Works, a charitable organisation which provides practical support for performances of Elgar's lesser known works. He is also the Programme Director of the Three Rivers Music Society, promotes concerts in Nottinghamshire and is a Trustee of the Arcadia Music Festival Trust, a Herefordshire and Shropshire-based chamber music festival the joint music directors of which are the composer Eleanor Alberga MBE and the violin virtuoso Thomas Bowes. In a past life, he was also CEO of Three Rivers District Council for 15 years.