Buy tickets

Programme:

Engelbert Humperdinck – Hänsel & Gretel Overture
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto in D Major for Flute & Orchestra, K.314
Peter Warlock – Capriol Suite for Full Orchestra
Georges Bizet – Carmen Suite No.1; Danse Bohème from Carmen Suite No.2

For the concerto, we are delighted to have engaged Daniel Shao. Daniel is a British-Chinese flautist raised in London. Having graduated from Oxford University and the Royal Academy, he has won many prizes including the British Flute Society Young Artist competition, and he was a televised woodwind finalist in BBC Young Musician 2024.
Daniel’s playing has been described as “shapely and silvery” (Classical Source) and possessing “virtuosity, charm, and charisma in abundance” (The Telegraph). He enjoys chamber music and outreach work, such as for Live Music Now with the Coriolis Quintet, and loves performing and creating new repertoire as a member of the contemporary collective Tangram, who explore cross-cultural Chinese existence. In his spare time, he likes guzzling coffee, sleeping, art galleries, and yoga.

Daniel has appeared on Jess Gillam’s BBC Radio 3 programme ‘This Classical Life’, available on BBC Sounds here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001t2xv

You can see an extract from Daniel’s Buxton Festival recital earlier in the summer here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMhzAcso6gd/?hl=en

On a more lighthearted note, you can hear him playing in St Pancras railway station here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CtjvzELII98/?hl=en

Find out more about Daniel at his website:
https://danielshaoflute.com/

Engelbert Humperdinck was a German composer best known for his fairytale opera, Hänsel and Gretel, which he wrote in the early 1890s. The enchanting “fairytale play” was originally a labour of love, setting to music his sister’s writing of some verses based on the Grimm brothers’ fairytale of the same name. Humperdink later enlarged it to 16 songs with piano accompaniment, and then to a fully-fledged three-act opera.
Humperdinck himself considered the overture to be a prelude, and as with many overtures, it makes references to songs and dances in the opera including the Witch’s spell “Hocus pocus” and the final scene “The witch is dead”. It opens with the gentle hymn “Evening Prayer”, a beautiful French horn chorale, and the theme later returns in the “Prayer and dream” scene in the opera. A trumpet fanfare then starts serenely and builds to a faster section. Towards the end of the overture, all the major themes are interwoven in an elegant counterpoint that leads to a stirring climax, after which the opening horn chorale once again establishes the dreamy mood with which the opera begins.

In 1777 Mozart was 21 years old on one of his job-hunting tours in Mannheim, the base for one of Europe’s great orchestras. While there, Mozart was commissioned by the physician and amateur musician Ferdinand De Jean to compose a set of works with prominent solo flute parts: three flute concertos and six flute quartets.
Mozart bristled at the notion of producing so much for an amateur musician who, regardless of generosity, was limited technically. This attitude may account for the fact that not only did Mozart produce only two concertos and three quartets, but he also did a bit of borrowing for the second of the two concertos. The K.314 Flute Concerto was actually a reworking of an Oboe Concerto he had written in 1877 for the Salzburg court oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis. To Mozart’s credit, and the benefit of the flute repertoire, the Flute Concerto was not simply a note for note transcription of the oboe original. It is an excellent showpiece for even today’s most virtuosic soloists. De Jean must have had his hands full!

Peter Warlock (1894-1930), though largely self-taught as a composer, was a friend of Frederick Delius and Bernard van Dieren, who helped him early in his career. As an editor and writer, using his real name Philip Heseltine, he was a respected authority on neglected Elizabethan and Jacobean music, and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of English poetry from medieval times onwards, which helps to explain the charm and sensitive word-settings of his many songs.
Capriol Suite, Warlock’s most popular and celebrated work, first appeared in 1925 for piano duet, and following its great success, was quickly followed by versions for string orchestra in 1926 and full orchestra in 1928. The Suite takes its melodic material from a fascinating and highly original manual of Renaissance dances, Orchésographie by Thoinot Arbeau, published in 1588, which explains, in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil, the complexities of sixteenth century dance steps and music. The pupil’s name was Capriol.
For a brief explanation of the Suite’s six movements, or dances, (and in case anyone should wish to demonstrate), please see below.

Bizet’s opera Carmen is one of the most famous and widely performed operas today, and as was common practice in the nineteenth century, composers would produce orchestral suites from their operas; often these orchestral suites did not attempt to follow the story of the opera at all, but instead conveyed some of the atmospheres created in the opera, as well as musically being introduced to some of the main characters. Tragically Bizet died during the 31st performance of Carmen in France, so he never saw the international success it gained around the world, and also therefore it fell to his close friend Ernest Guiraud to compile posthumously the Orchestral Suites, No.1 in 1882, and No.2 in 1887. They adhere very closely to Bizet’s original orchestration.
Suite No.1 contains probably the opera’s most memorable melodies. It is top and tailed by the opera’s overture, with most of the other movements representing the opera’s three Entractes, albeit in reverse order. Suite No.2 is a much longer composition; here the gypsy-style Danse Bohème opens with a rousing flute duet, then slowly and quietly the music builds until the ultimate climax where all the voices unite for an exciting finish.

Capriol Suite Dances – a brief explanation:
1. The Basse-Danse, (together with the Tordion), is a stately dance in which the feet were not raised (pieds-en-l’air), but were kept low (en basse) and glided over the floor in a dignified striding motion.
2. The Pavane was an Italian court dance of the 16th and early 17th century, originally called Padovana, from its roots in the city of Padua. It was traditionally slow and solemn in character.
3. The Tordion was mostly commonly a brisk triple metre dance, like the Galliard, with a pattern of five steps (cinque pas) fitted to six beats, a jump on the last beat.
4. The Bransles was originally a rustic ‘chain’ or ‘round’ dance involving several couples in a circle or a line. The music was often provided by the singing of the dancers, and its popularity continued well into the 17th century.
5. Pieds-en-l’air, the most lyrical movement of the whole suite, is a dance step found in all manner of energetic dances, such as the Galliard and Bransles, usually with more specific instructions like pieds-en-l’air gauche or droit.
6. Mattachins, also known as the buffens or boufons, is a brisk duple-time sword dance, traditionally performed by young men clashing their swords and shields in time with the music.

Buy tickets for this and our other concerts here: www.ticketsource.co.uk/coco

Adult £10
Concessions £5 (full time students / income support / disability benefit only)
Under 19 £2
Under 5 free

Kindly supported by Making Music’s Philip & Dorothy Green Young Artists scheme.

This concert is generously sponsored by Natural Generation – Solar Energy for the Future.