York Chamber Music Festival 2024: the full programme. Who’s playing, what, where and when from September 13 to 15

Tim Lowe: York Chamber Music Festival artistic director and cellist. Picture: York Chamber Music Festival

THE centenary of the death of French composer Gabriel Fauré will be marked by the York Chamber Music Festival from September 13 to 15.

“For the 2024 festival I have gathered together another crop of the best string players in the country, all playing at the top of their game,” says artistic director and cellist Tim Lowe. “The 2006 Leeds International Piano Competition second prize winner, American pianist Andrew Brownell, returns to us after a long absence too.

Lowe has assembled a festival line-up of pianist Brownell; violinists Ben Hancox and Magnus Johnston; viola players Gary Pomeroy and Simone van der Giessen; cellist Marie Bitlloch and flautist Sam Coles.

“Spotlighting the Fauré centenary, we will play his beautiful Piano Quartet No. 1 Op.15 – a piece that after the French defeat in 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War led the renaissance of French musical culture and defined its distinctive sound-world,” says Tim.

“In his older age, his Second Cello Sonata is an amazingly youthful and life-affirming work for a composer in his late seventies and by then, sharing with Beethoven a composer’s worst nightmare, unable to hear, arguably, their greatest music.”

Lowe and Brownell will open the festival with a French-themed lunchtime cello recital at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, on September 13 at 1pm, featuring Nadia Boulanger’s Trois Pièces for ‘Cello and Piano, Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano and Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 117.

Flautist Sam Coles. Picture: York Chamber Music Festival

“As the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe in 1914, Debussy was seriously ill with cancer but feeling it was his patriotic duty to compose,” says Tim. “The sonata is infused with progressive, 20th century harmonic language, which often ventures into exotic modes and the dreamy, time-altering magic of the pentatonic and whole tone scales. Yet under the surface lies a nostalgic classicism.

“Fauré, like Debussy, was physically frail. He was totally deaf when he wrote his last major works. He was 76 but what grips us immediately about this cello sonata is its youthfulness and exuberance. For anyone less spiritually centred than Fauré, these final years would have been a time of frustration but from his silent world he shares with us moments of transcendence.”

Hancox, Johnston, Pomeroy, van der Giessen, Bitlloch and Lowe will gather at the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, for the Friday evening concert: a 7.30pm programme of Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major Op. 33 No. 3 (The Bird), Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No 1 in D Major Op. 11 and Dvořák’s String Quintet in E flat major, Op. 97.

“After a break of ten years, Haydn returned with renewed enthusiasm to writing string quartets,” says Tim.  “The six new Op. 33 quartets toy with convention, surprise and delight us. He uses the title ‘Scherzo’ – Italian word meaning ‘joke’ – and there is indeed a lot of humour in these quartets. Op. 33 No. 3 Is known as ‘The Bird’ for good reasons!

“In 1871 Tchaikovsky decided to supplement his modest income from teaching and journalism by staging a concert of his own works in Moscow including this new String Quartet No.1 in D major; a youthful work and maybe his greatest chamber music. It was an unqualified success, showing the composer’s gift for melodic invention.

​“While in America, Dvořák took his family on summer vacations into the countryside in Iowa. It was here, at Spillville, that he wrote masterpieces, among his finest works, embodying his intense love of chamber music, his mastery of the intricacies of the classical form and above all his revolutionary commitment to folk melody, which gives his music such a passionate emotional impact; joy unbounded.”

Pianist Andrew Brownell. Picture: York Chamber Music Festival

Lowe will team up with Coles and Brownell for From Classical To Romantic, the Saturday lunchtime concert of Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Euryanthe (arr. Hummel), Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Adagio, Variations and Rondo on a Russian Theme, Op 78 and Weber’s Trio in G minor, Op 63, at the Unitarian Chapel at 1pm on September 14.

“The genius composer Hummel was a contemporary of Beethoven and Mozart,” says Tim. “Apart from his own brilliant music, he enjoyed arranging large works for small groups to meet the market for amateur players.

“For the Overture to Weber’s opera Euryanthe, Weber’s original brilliant orchestration is served surprisingly well by this arrangement; full of operatic character and tuneful.

“Writing variations based on a well-known tune has always been a familiar form of composition and Hummel’s facility for improvisation plays to this in the Adagio, Variations and Rondo. Here he uses a folk song and creates a series of wonderfully tuneful composition highlighting each instrument’s singing qualities.”

Tim continues: “The Weber trio sound to me more like an opera; full of arias and drama! The operatic master completed this masterly trio in 1819. In it we sense the Romantic era in the air. There is here a preference for composing display pieces for soloists, like operatic divas singing their hearts out in this wonderfully varied, joyful and above all tuneful piece!”

Hancox, Johnston, Pomeroy, van der Giessen, Bitlloch, Lowe and Brownell will focus on quartets on September 14 at 7.30pm at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, once the evening programme has opened with Debussy’s Prélude to the cantata La Damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel).

Viola player Gary Pomeroy. Picture: York Chamber Music Festival

“Debussy read Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem The Blessed Damozel(1850) and had an idea to compose a short cantata,” says Tim. “The synopsis is simple: ‘From the heights of paradise, leaning on a golden barrier, a young girl laments the absence of her lover. On Earth, the latter believes he feels her presence’. 

“Debussy shows us his wonderful gift for fleeting moments of sensuality. The Prélude to the cantata is brilliant realised in this arrangement for piano and strings by John Lenehan.”

Next comes Fauré’s beautiful early work, the optimistic Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 15. “Joining the search for a renaissance of French musical culture, especially after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1871), Fauré defined some of the core elements of this new distinctively French ‘voice’ in his Piano Quartet,” says Tim.

“The use of piano arpeggios and other broken figures to establish a sort of fluid counterpoint on which the music seems to float; resourcefulness in unexpected harmonic changes and Fauré’s genius for melodic invention – subtle, filigree melodies that seem to grow sinuously out of his harmonic scheme.”

The concert will climax with Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25, noted for its joyous gypsy finale. “The Piano Quartet in G Minor is one of the first works of Brahms’s unique flowering, freed from the shadow of Beethoven,” says Tim. “It is a work of huge proportions and despite its quite congenial surface has an inner story with everything constructed on thematic material that is without precedent in chamber music.

“Schoenberg describes this method of composition as preparing the way for atonality. Brahms’s epic Piano Quintet covers a musical canvas with a clarity and newness that had not been heard before.”

Hancox, Johnston, Pomeroy, van der Giessen, Bitlloch and Lowe will be the players for the festival closing Sunday afternoon concert of Mozart’s String Quintet in C minor, K 406, and Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18 on September 15 at 3pm at St Olave’s Church, Marygate Lane.

Viola player Simone van der Giessen. Picture: York Chamber Music Festival

“Mozart in the final years of his short life struggled with money,” says Tim. “The String Quintet in C minor, K 406 is the composer’s own arrangement of a Wind Serenade, K. 388, for two oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoon designed to be advertised alongside two original quintets with the aim of repaying some of his debts.

“Such is Mozart’s finesse with the transcription that, without knowing the back story, it would not be apparent that the quintet was not in its original form. It is a somewhat moody piece, but its inner complexity comes to a joyful open-air ending.”

Tim continues: “The dominance of Beethoven in virtually every genre was so complete that no composer could escape comparison to the departed master. The young Johannes Brahms felt this very acutely; he destroyed three quarters of his chamber music until he found this own voice, which he knew lay within.

“One solution was to use instrumental groups Beethoven didn’t touch. When Clara Schumann heard it she remarked, it was even more beautiful than I had anticipated, and my expectations were already high’.

“Spared the burden of Beethoven’s ghost, the new sextet – and its young creator – scored a success. It is one of his most glorious works; tuneful, colourful and inventive. Above all using the six voices with creativeness and melding them into a wonderful ochre acoustic – a wash of sunset sound.”

​Summing up the festival, Tim says: “Come and hear duos, trios, quartets and quintets, finishing up on the Sunday afternoon with the wonderfully life-affirming Brahms String Sextet, Op.18, one of his greatest works and a turning point in his career.”

Visit ycmf.co.uk for the full festival details and to book tickets.

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on York Chamber Music Festival 2023

Tim Lowe: Festival director and cellist

Tim Lowe and Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, September 15

YORK Chamber Music Festival’s tenth anniversary season bounced into life with this lunchtime recital centred round Brahms’s First Cello Sonata. The remainder of the programme involved some Beethoven variations, a couple of Tchaikovsky bonbons and two Schumann movements originally intended for horn. But it was a pleasing taster nonetheless.

The first of Brahms’s two sonatas for cello and piano, in E minor, is a surprisingly mature work, given that it mostly dates from his late twenties and is his first chamber piece for two instruments.

Compared to most of his contemporaries he was a late developer. The first movement, in which the major key makes futile attempts to take over from the minor, relies heavily on the cello’s lower range. Here the balance between the players was, rarely in this recital, not quite right and a little more heft in the cello might have solved the problem. But there was no faulting Tim Lowe’s upper register, which sang with heartfelt joy.

There was a jaunty opening to the minuet and an engaging return to its resumption after the halting trio. Bach’s influence on the finale was plain to hear and the ebb and flow between the duo after the central unison was riveting, before a decidedly edgy coda.

Beethoven’s variations on Handel’s aria See, The Conquering Hero Comes – nowadays often sung as an Easter hymn – shows a remarkable affinity for the cello’s spectrum of colours, which Lowe amply demonstrated. As so often as an accompanist, Katya Apekisheva was quick to adapt her tone to the work’s chameleon moods.

Two Tchaikovsky pieces originally intended for piano solo revealed the composer’s talent for a long-breathed melody, particularly one in a minor key. He loved his C sharp minor Nocturne, Op 19 No 4 so much that he orchestrated it. Lowe was richly touching in the little cadenza at its heart. Even more soulful was the Valse Sentimentale (Op 51 No 6 in F minor) with its passionate undercurrents.

Schumann wrote his Adagio and Allegro, Op 70 for horn and piano but allowed a cellist friend to transcribe it. In this guise it sounds remarkably different. Lowe delivered a beautifully calm line in the Adagio, and the duo captured the Allegro’s rapture superbly, with its second theme ideally balanced by the piano, before full-blown excitement at its close.

Festival Strings, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, September 15

STRING quartets by Haydn and Mendelssohn preceded Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen in its original form in this evening recital, which was the first at which all of the festival’s seven resident string players were present. Looked at another way, this was late Haydn, early Mendelssohn and late Strauss, a potent combination.

Jonathan Stone led the ensemble for Haydn’s Emperor quartet, Op 76 No 3 in C, backed by John Mills as second violin, Simone van der Giessen as viola and Jonathan Aasgaard as cello. There is always an element of hazard – part of the fun, if you like – when four independent souls, mainly used to solo work, link talents, particularly in a work by Haydn that requires the utmost precision.

That hazard is increased when they opt to play with very little vibrato, as here. That decision was odd given that this is a work of the late 1790s, with several toes, if not a whole foot, in the Romantic era. That may be the reason why this combo never quite settled.

Intonation was slightly awry in the nervous first movement and even the Emperor adagio (variations on Haydn’s hymn for the Kaiser, now the German national anthem) lacked real character, virtually vibrato-less.

The minuet was much more relaxed, even chirpy, with nice shading in its trio, but the finale was a touch too fast for its semiquavers to enjoy real clarity. The overall effect was intimate where we needed to hear more of Haydn’s heart on his sleeve.

Mills took over from Stone to lead Mendelssohn’s Second Quartet, Op 13 in A minor, with Hélène Clément as the new viola. Although only 30 years separate this piece from the Haydn, the players’ difference in approach was tangible.

Right from the start, there was a new commitment. After a rich opening Adagio, inner voices shone through commendably in the turbulent Allegro. After the slow movement’s central fugato, Mills’s little recitative to return to the opening was exquisite.

The central scherzo in the Intermezzo was light and delicate, returning to the movement’s opening with a delicate rallentando, before almost no break into the restless finale. Among so much incident here, the viola’s recall of the fugato theme was a pivotal moment, briefly changing the mood, before another outbreak of violence, stilled in its turn by the violin’s pacifying cadenza, supremely executed.

Thereafter, the recall of the very opening Adagio brought comfort and calm. It had been a passionate narrative, probably inspired by the teenage Mendelssohn’s unrequited infatuation at the time.

For nearly half a century, Strauss’s Metamorphosen was known only as a piece for 23 solo strings. Then the original version, for string septet with double bass foundation, came to light in 1990. It is writing of great intensity, which grew from a lament on the bombing of Munich in 1943.

The ensemble, led again by John Mills, brought great clarity to the score’s complex tapestry. From the dark opening on lower strings, its eventual emergence into major key territory brought a gradual quickening of rhythmic life, with all the players becoming as fervent as the ‘engine-room’ of violas.

When this had subsided back into grief, the cry of pain from the top three voices was answered by a vivid tutti, after which resignation slowly took over, with Strauss’s dotted figure assuming the characteristics of a recurring sob. It had seemed to subsume remorse, regret and elegy – for all mankind.

Katya Apekisheva: All-Schubert recital

Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, September 16

KATYA Apekisheva is one of a very rare breed of pianists, one who is equally accomplished as a soloist and as a supportive player (otherwise known as an accompanist). She changed her originally published lunchtime programme into an all-Schubert recital, combining works written in the last year of his life, 1828.

Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces), D.946, of May 1828 together equal the breadth of a full-scale sonata, although their keys are not related. They are better considered as impromptus, which implies sudden inspiration, even if they are all essentially in three parts.

Apekisheva took time to adjust her tone down to the size of the venue and began quite stridently, blurring the first statement in No 1 in E flat minor with over-pedalling, an oversight that she handsomely corrected on its repeat. Still, the central melody was too loud to be much of a contrast with the opening.

No 2 in E flat major enjoyed a more tender start, although it quickly boiled into something like anger when Apekisheva produced a trombone in the left hand where a gentler bassoon would have done the trick. Then we began to sense a Viennese flavour emerging at the move to the minor key, before a beautifully smooth transition back to the calm of the opening. This was more like it.

No 3 in C major was a real crackerjack, crisp and crunchy. The central trio was trimly smooth, right down to its stormy ending, and the syncopation in the returning scherzo injected exactly the wit we had been waiting for. She was back in the groove.

September 1828, a mere two months before Schubert’s death, saw him produce no less than three full-scale piano sonatas, which together may be said to crystallise his musical philosophy. The last of these, D.960 in B flat major, has a serenity largely missing from its two predecessors, which are more volatile. Apekisheva underlined this with some of her finest playing, growing more luminous with each movement.

Her opening was very spacious, a touch slower than is traditional, but right in keeping with the composer’s marking ‘Molto moderato’. The second theme was quicker, but its melodic flow was several times impeded by a little too much rubato. There was real nobility in the slow movement’s second melody, where the trombone returned, quite justifiably this time, to her left hand. But its overall mood was deeply ruminative, even doleful.

The scherzo was flickering and fairy-light, just what the doctor ordered, with fierce accents in its trio. Apekisheva’s contrasting moods throughout the finale were testimony to her deft touch, which enabled her to convey her ideas in the subtlest ways, tiny inflexions that reflected her intelligence.

By the end she had the sunlight bursting through the detached notes in the left hand, with the movement’s magical octave opening reduced to a pianissimo before the final burst of enthusiasm. This was Apekisheva at her radiant best.

Festival Strings and Piano, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, September 16

THREE works written by English composers in the first two decades of the 20th century made an extremely satisfying combination on the festival’s second evening. Vaughan Williams’s rarely heard Piano Quintet was the centrepiece, framed by Bridge’s Three Idylls and Elgar’s Piano Quintet after the interval.

Bridge’s Three Idylls of 1906 come right out of the Edwardian playbook, those balmy years before Europe turned to war. They speak of a more Arcadian time infused with innocence. Bridge opens and closes the first, which is in C sharp minor, with a viola solo, the instrument reflecting his own professional career as a player.

Simone van der Giessen brought to it the dark colouring it demands. But with Jonathan Stone as leader the ensemble dissolved neatly into its quicker, major key section, before muting back into something calmer.

The Allegretto, No 2 in E minor, was notable for its springy rhythms, before breaking off into greater restraint. No 3 in C major, an Allegro con moto, has a catchy tune, with more than a sniff of Morris dancing; its snippets were jovially exchanged between the voices. The unexpected chorale that follows did not deter a snappy ending.

Vaughan Williams did not encourage, nor expect, his Piano Quintet in C minor (1903-5) to be played, regarding it as backward-looking. But his widow Ursula succumbed to pressure and allowed its performance only as recently as 1990. It reveals much about the composer’s early influences, as well as his likely direction of travel; we can now see it as a pivotal work, in other words.

The work is unusual in using a double bass and dispensing with a second violin. This give its bass line a firmer foundation and, with pizzicato, a more percussive impact. Its broad Brahmsian sweep at the start shows Vaughan Williams’s Romantic inclinations, before folk-song notions had grabbed his imagination. Even here, however, the second theme, with strings alone, begins to sound English and the use of the coda to give each player, including the double bass, a brief solo is a distinctive touch.

The chorale-like start to the Andante, heard in the piano and commented upon by the strings, was handled eloquently here before becoming more animated. On its return, the piano accompaniment sounded as if cribbed from his song Silent Noon, which was written the same year as this work was begun: a hazy, calming effect.

Strings and piano faced off against each other in the final Fantasia, but after Katya Apekisheva’s piano had furiously escaped the fray, they all came together in a staccato reconciliation, led by John Mills’s violin.

A wistful reminiscence, with pianistic bells tolling across the landscape, was followed by a grand build-up broken only by the piano’s return to the chorale and a quiet close that the ensemble controlled beautifully. It was hard to imagine a more revealing account of this superb work.

Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor of 1918, by contrast, was written in the wake of a searing war. Its hesitant introduction breaks into anger in its second theme, from which the ensemble, with Jonathan Stone back in the leader’s chair, did not recoil. The little three-note rhythm, a drumbeat of war, permeated the whole first movement, and the ensemble made the most of it, even in the deeply rueful ending.

The immense climax at the centre of the slow movement subsided as quickly as it arrived, and the extended coda resumed the telling harmonic stasis with which the movement had opened. The ensemble was unflaggingly insistent throughout Elgar’s heavily accented finale, building to a coda that was thrillingly optimistic.

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on ‘Waking’, North York Moors Chamber Music Festival, Welburn Manor Marquee, 26/9/23

Cellist Alice Neary: Festival trio with violinist Benjamin Baker and pianist Daniel Lebhardt

WHEN standards are already so high, it is hard to imagine that the best wine has been kept till last. Yet this final afternoon devoted to Schubert surpassed everything else I had experienced at this year’s North York Moors Chamber Music Festival. It was nothing short of sensational.

The ‘Trout’ Piano Quintet, D.667, was preceded by the B flat Piano Trio, D.898. The performers in the latter were violinist Benjamin Baker, cellist Alice Neary and pianist Daniel Lebhardt. Their ensemble was so taut, so larded with deep understanding and leavened with the utmost sensitivity to each other, that it seemed certain that they had collaborated before.

Within this delightfully Viennese pastry the ensemble gently drew attention to any number of Schubertian subtleties, teasing our tastebuds with the smallest of details, so that the total confection was constantly riveting.

When the breezy first movement’s second theme arrived, beautifully enunciated by Neary, it was impeccably emulated by Baker; they were in perfect agreement. The pause in the recapitulation was tantalisingly elongated, thanks to Lebhardt.

The slow movement was a lovely contrast, ruminative, thoughtful, even subdued. Its very intimacy drew us in, so that when the piano thinned down to a single line near the end, it was riveting in its simplicity.

Violinist Benjamin Baker: Hosting At The World’s Edge festival next month

The crisp Scherzo was balanced by an extremely smooth, legato Trio, while the frisky final Rondo was light on its feet, positively balletic. I do not expect to hear this account bettered. Equalled, perhaps, but never bettered. I would not be surprised if this threesome were to perform regularly outside this festival. It was no surprise to learn that Neary is to join Baker as a special guest at his New Zealand festival, At The World’s Edge, in October.

A completely new team took over for the ‘Trout’. It did not quite live up to its predecessor in the programme but was nevertheless extremely satisfying. Schubert wrote it while enjoying a holiday in the glorious countryside around Steyr, about 100 miles west of Vienna. So it was fitting that we should enjoy the piece in a rural setting.

The quintet, led by violinist Charlotte Scott, got off to an engaging start, with ensemble always taut. Her fellow string players were violist Simone van der Giessen, cellist Jamie Walton and bassist Siret Lust, with Christian Chamorel the eloquent pianist. But it was not until the second movement Andante that colours really began to emerge, highlighted by the close-knit duet between viola and cello, as also leavened by the rare streak of melancholy here.

After a brilliant scherzo, the variations that give the work its nick-name were slightly under-characterised, the song theme needing a touch more emphasis. Throughout I felt we required a little more from the double bass, which carries less well than the higher voices in this marquee. The finale was given its superb rhythmic impetus by Chamorel’s intelligent pianism.

This concert underlined the magic ingredient of the whole festival: spontaneity. Chamber music, at least outside London, is so often experienced at the hands of groups who repeat the same programme while touring. Many are extremely proficient. But they may lack the freshness that is always on display here, and the calibre of performers is unrivalled by any similar festival. Long may it thrive.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Violinist Charlotte Scott: Leading the quintet

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on ‘Which Dreamed It?’, North York Moors Chamber Music Festival

Ben Goldscheider: “Immaculate”

North York Moors Chamber Music Festival: ‘Which Dreamed It?’, St Mary’s, Lastingham, August 25

THIS was one of the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival’s more adventurous programmes, but that did not deter the punters: it was a full house.

There were two pieces each from Schumann and Debussy, balanced by four much more contemporary works by two Brits and two Germans. It made for a stimulating mix, not least because the performers were so utterly committed.

Ben Goldscheider began out of sight in the Saxon crypt, the church otherwise darkened, with Bernhard Krol’s Laudatio for solo horn (1966). Inspired by the ancient Christian hymn Te Deum Laudamus, it could hardly have been more appropriate as a scene-setter, journeying from plainsong into more modern, questing territory. Goldscheider was immaculate.

He also closed the evening, with Jörg Widmann’s Air (2006). The music conveys something of the atmosphere of alphornists signalling to each other between mountain-tops, so that there are constant echoes and imitations, given a third dimension by the piano strings being wedged open and resonating eerily. It is a favourite competition piece. Goldscheider was more than equal to its taxing variations and drew sustained applause.

He had been soloist in Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro, with Daniel Lebhardt offering tenacious piano support. After nicely sustained legato in the Adagio, he cantered through the succeeding rondo with immense panache, testing his rapid tonguing even further by speeding up in the coda.

In Mark Simpson’s Nachtstück (2021), he did not hold back from the work’s more nightmarish contrasts, varying his tone in the darkness, but becoming more triumphal after Lebhardt’s keyboard climax. He is a riveting performer.

Debussy’s Rhapsody (named ‘First’ but in fact the only one) for clarinet and piano (1910) saw the first appearances of Robert Plane and Christian Chamorel respectively. Plane captured the composer’s will-o’-the-wisp aura, much helped by Chamorel’s early restraint. They brought terrific verve to the work’s later stages.

They were joined by viola player Simone van der Giessen for Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (Fairy-tale narrations). Three of the four tales are marked ‘lively’ and they got off to an effervescent start.

There were pleasing contrasts, though, both in the lovely central section of the second tale and in the martial, dotted rhythms of the last, which were crisp and to the point. The exception was the third, where a peaceful, rocking movement in the piano featherbedded a soaring line in the viola, not quite matched here by the clarinet.

The four berceuses from Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel are not the stuff of sweet dreams, indeed the title is ironic. With Lebhardt returning to the piano, viola and clarinet brought an elegiac feel to the opening lullaby, followed by something altogether bolder with a terrifying ending in the second. Only the finale seemed likely to produce a soporific effect – and it was touchingly shaped.

Review by Martin Dreyer

York Chamber Music Festival marks tenth anniversary with three days of concerts

York Chamber Music Festival artistic director Tim Lowe

YORK Chamber Music Festival returns for its tenth anniversary season from September 15 to 17, once more under the artistic directorship of Tim Lowe.

Since its founding in 2013, the festival has gone from strength to strength and will celebrate its first decade by inviting six supreme string players in Europe and the British-based Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva to participate alongside cellist Lowe.

He will be joined by John Mills and Jonathan Stone, violins; Hélene Clément and Simone van der Giessen, violas; Jonathan Aasgaard, cello, and Billy Cole, double bass.    

Described by York music critic Martin Dreyer as “a mouth-watering prospect”,the full programme can be found at www.ycmf.co.uk/2023-programme.

Picking out highlights: Mendelssohn’s joyous String Quartet Op. 13 was his first mature chamber music, written at the age of 18, and Dvořák’s String Sextet was his first great success in chamber music, a smash hit that was soon played all over Europe.

At the other end of their careers, Elgar’s response to the First World War included his late Piano Quintet, contemporary with his famous Cello Concerto, while the string septet version of Strauss’s Metamorphosen is a moving elegy for the cultural destruction caused by the Second World War. 

In a concert of cello and piano music Lowe is joined by Katya Apekisheva in Brahms’s golden, glowing First Cello Sonata, and Apekisheva performs a solo concert to include Schubert’s great last Piano Sonata in B flat major. 

Lowe says: “In our time, Europe is once again at war and as Strauss said when he re-read his Goethe, anger is never the last word. I hope that beauty and truth will shine through during the tenth anniversary of York Chamber Music Festival. We will certainly do our best. I look forward to greeting you all in September.”

Tickets are available from the National Centre for Early Music box office, in Walmgate, at ycmf.co.uk or on 01904 658338 in office hours. A Festival Saver ticket offers extra value to those wanting to attend multiple concerts. Young people aged 18 and under can attend all the events free of charge.

Pianist Katya Apekisheva

York Chamber Music Festival: the programme

Event 1: September 15, 1pm to 2pm, Cello Recital by Tim Lowe (cello) and Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York.

Beethoven: 12 Variations on See The Conqu’ring Hero Comes from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus; Brahms: Cello Sonata No.1 in E Minor, Op. 38; Tchaikovsky: Nocturne for Cello and Piano, No. 4 from 6 pieces Op. 19 and Valse Sentimentale No. 6 from Six Morceaux, Op. 51; Schumann: Adagio and AllegroOp. 70.

Event 2: September 15, 7.30pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément,Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe, Jonathan Aasgaard and Billy Cole, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York.

Haydn: String Quartet Op. 76 No. 3; Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor Op. 13; Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen, version for String Septet.  

Event 3: September 16, 1pm to 2pm, Piano Recital, Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York.

Schubert: Three Piano Pieces, D946; Schubert: Piano Sonata in B flat major, D960.

Event 4: September 16, 7.30pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément, Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe, Jonathan Aasgaard, Billy Cole and Katya Apekisheva, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York.

Frank Bridge: Three Idylls H.67; Vaughan Williams: Piano Quintet in C Minor; Elgar: Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84.

Event 5: September 17, 3pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément, Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe and Jonathan Aasgaard, St Olave’s Church, Marygate, York.

Boccherini: String Sextet No.1 in E flat Major, Op. 23 G454; Dvořák: String Sextet in A Major, Op. 48.