Works for Viola, Cello and Piano by Rebecca Clarke

Free to attend, no registration required.

Rosalind Ventris (viola), Laura van der Heijden (cello), Libby Burgess (piano), and Dr Leah Broad (pre-concert talk)

A concert of works by Rebecca Clarke, performed by Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies, Rosalind Ventris, acclaimed alumna Libby Burgess, and former BBC Young Musician of the Year, Laura van der Heijden. Junior Research Fellow & Music Faculty Member, and author of the recently published group biography of Smyth, Clarke, Howell and Carwithen 'Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World', Leah Broad, gives a pre-concert talk.

Programme:

Rhapsody for Cello and Piano
Lullaby and Grotesque for Viola and Cello
Viola Sonata (1919)

Praised for her ' gorgeously full-bodied' (The Guardian) and 'beguiling' (Gramophone) playing, violist Rosalind Ventris leads an international career as a soloist and chamber musician. As a recitalist, she has performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, Purcell Room, Bozar, Flagey, Slovak Philharmonic, Aldeburgh Festival and Het Concertgebouw. As a concerto soloist, she has worked with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, London Mozart Players, l’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie and the Belgian National Orchestra. Rosalind’s debut album, featuring music by leading women composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, was released by Delphian Records earlier this year. 

Rosalind frequently performs as part of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Associate Ensemble of the Wigmore Hall), and is the violist of flute, viola and harp ensemble Trio Anima. She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Mitsuko Uchida, Tabea Zimmermann, and Nicola Benedetti. She has been invited to perform at many prestigious festivals internationally, including the West Cork, Marlboro, Salzburg and Båstad Festivals, IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, and venues such as the Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, and the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn. Rosalind is the Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford, an Associate Member of Trinity College, and a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College. 

Laura van der Heijden has already made a name for herself as a very special emerging talent, captivating audiences and critics alike with the sensitivity of her sound and interpretations. This soulful and evocative artist can already look back on a number of exceptional achievements, among them being the winner – at the age of just 15 - of the BBC Young Musician competition. Her 2018 debut album “1948”, featuring Russian music for cello and piano with pianist Petr Limonov, won the 2018 Edison Klassiek Award (broadcast live on Dutch television), and the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Newcomer Award. The CD has been hailed as a “dazzling, imaginative and impressive” debut recording. In 2019, Laura graduated from Cambridge University, and is currently in the middle of a busy 2019/20 season, which sees her perform with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Aldeburgh, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Moscow, the Prague Symphony in the UK, the London Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras in the UK, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the US.Other highlights include performing the Saint-Saëns Concerto in the opening concert of the inaugural BBC Proms Australia with Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; recitals at Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, and Musashino Cultural Foundation in Japan; as well as her participation in the music festivals of West Cork, OCM Prussia Cove, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Krzyzowa Music.

Pianist Libby Burgess is well-known on concert stages across Britain, playing in the country’s major halls and festivals, on Radio 3, and on numerous recordings. She is known for her ‘warm, sensitive pianism’ (The Observer), her musical intelligence, and her generosity of collaborative spirit. As the founding Artistic Director of New Paths Music she has quickly been recognised for the striking, enticing tone of her programming, reflecting her own twin interests of song and chamber music. Libby is also Co-Artistic Director with Martin Roscoe of the Beverley Chamber Music Festival. She is highly regarded as a vocal coach, speaker and writer, and was previously Head of Keyboard at Eton College. She is currently undertaking a nationwide Bach marathon, ‘Project 48’: during the space of a year she will perform the whole of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (‘The 48’) in every one of England’s 48 counties (too good a coincidence to miss!), raising money for musical charities.

Dr Leah Broad is an historical musicologist who teaches music history, music analysis, and musical thought and scholarship at the Faculty of Music. Currently, her research is focused on women composers in twentieth century Britain, in particular Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. The project establishes their relative significance in their lifetimes, explores how this changes our narratives about British music of this period, and looks at how their music has been received since their death. She is currently writing a group biography of Smyth, Clarke, Howell and Carwithen for Faber & Faber, and was a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and winner of the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism.

Images by Oxford Atelier, Stephane Crayton & Monika Tomiczek.