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REVIEW: Amabile/Savva Zverev & Sid Ramchander, York Late Music, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, April 6

Savva Zverev: Russian-born violinist and graduate of Royal Northern Collge of Music. Picture: York Late Music

LATE Music has been changing gradually over the years. It now encompasses two concerts on the first Saturday of every month between October and June, one at lunchtime and one in the evening.

Amabile, a clarinet trio, drew the lunchtime slot this month, with Farrenc and Brahms sandwiching a premiere by Steve Crowther.

In the welcome wave of rediscovery of female composers through the ages, the name of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) regularly recurs. She mainly wrote for her own instrument, the piano, but chamber music – always with piano – engaged her frequently.

Her Trio in E flat, Op 44 (1861), partners clarinet (or violin) with cello and piano. It shows craftsmanship rather than inspiration, and is a throwback to Mendelssohn with a touch of Mozartian finesse.

Amabile, with the seasoned clarinet of Lesley Schatzberger to the fore, treated it with considerable respect. Balance was awry at first, with prominent piano and self-effacing cello, but Farrenc’s imitative tendencies soon emerged politely enough.

A slithery little figure in the minuet heralded a finale that showed flashes of imagination; it was taken at an exciting pace. There is probably more to the composer than this but it was good to hear.

Crowther’s Transcriptions from Morris Dances are nothing to do with the well-known dances but five cameos inspired by the composer’s friendship with Philip Morris, presumably originally for piano.

They are delightful vignettes, spiced with wit and insight, ranging from the light and airy in the opening homage to friendship to the thoughtfully elegiac in the final Love Song, with its quizzical ending. They were lovingly played.

Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, Op 114 in A minor (1891), has all the autumnal warmth we associate with the composer’s twilight years. The opening Allegro had a lovely flow here and a delicate ending.

In the heat haze conjured by the Adagio, the cello of Nicola Tait Baxter came into its own, entwined closely with Schatzberger’s idiomatic clarinet. Paul Nicholson’s piano neatly underpinned the lilting Viennese waltz that preceded a finale of crisp rhythms tinged with a touch of aggression. It was good to see Nicholson back in musical harness after his retirement from the Anglican ministry. He has lost none of his previous finesse on all types of keyboard.

The evening brought a surprise. There have been countless expert exponents of contemporary music in this series over the years, but never, I would guess, a virtuoso of quite the calibre of violinist Savva Zverev.

His nonchalant dispatch of a variety of works from Bach to Bartók and beyond was breathtaking. Sid Ramchander was his nimble-fingered piano partner.

Zverev opened his first half with Bach’s first solo violin sonata, BWV 1001 in G minor. He made it sound, as Bach undoubtedly intended, as if there were several instruments involved, not just counterpoint in three or even four parts but, with double and treble-stopping, remarkable harmony as well. This was cutting-edge stuff in Bach’s day. It still is – and very much belonged here.

By way of balance, Zverev’s second half began with Bartók’s unaccompanied Violin Sonata of 1944, the year before he died. It takes several leaves out of Bach’s book and is equally challenging.

Not that it held any terrors for Zverev. His top-string brilliance was not balanced by much dynamic shading in the opening chaconne, but his handling of the four-voice fugue, with its alternate plucking and bowing, was masterly. So too was the zig-zagging Melodia and bravura reached a new peak in the headlong finale.

After that, there was bound to be anti-climax. Pärt’s slow, minimalist Spiegel im Spiegel could not hold attention in this company. Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, taken from his soundtrack to the 1946 film Humoresque, inevitably came across as relatively empty display, virtuosity for its own sake. Perhaps we had simply had enough by then.

Earlier, Zverev had shown a different side to his musical personality in the delicate traceries of Webern’s Four Pieces, Op 7 and discovered genuine drama in Lutoslawski’s rondo Subito, especially in the episode on the G-string. Ramchander was with him every step of the way here, no mean feat in itself.

In five extracts from Debussy’s Préludes for piano his melody lines were not always evenly voiced, but his minimal use of pedal contributed to admirable clarity. This is certainly a duo to watch.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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Late Music celebrates the work of Anthony Gilbert and York composer Janet Owen Thomas in Saturday night concert

The late York composer Janet Owen Thomas, remembered in Anthony Gilbert’s work Monsoon Toccata

ANTHONY Gilbert’s Monsoon Toccata: In Memoriam Janet Owen Thomas (1961-2002) will be performed by pianist Kate Ledger at Saturday night’s Late Music concert in York.

“This concert will be a celebration of composer Anthony Gilbert who died in July this year, aged 89,” says Late Music administrator Steve Crowther. “The programme includes his memorial piece written for Janet Owen Thomas, the York composer, who died tragically young.”

Performed by violinist Nina Kumin, clarinet player Jonathan Sage and pianist Ledger at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, the 7.30pm programme features three more Gilbert works, plus music by Nicola LeFanu and David Lumsdaine, who both knew him well.

Here Steve Crowther pays tribute to Jane Owen Thomas and her contribution to York Late Music.

“I never met Janet, even though she lived near me in Holgate, York. I did speak with her on the phone however, inviting Janet to compose a short piece for a small ensemble,” he recalls.

“It was the early days of Late Music and I worked with director David Power. It was then called the Late Music Festival with a strapline: The Cutting Edge, and the following year, The Cutting Edge Gets Sharper.

“The concerts were a niche market, and quite often the niche didn’t bother turning up. Low audiences with marginal box office revenue did not appeal to grant-funding bodies and so there was, as Kwasi Kwarteng discovered many years later, little in the way of inward investment.

“So we decided to change our marketing strategy, or rather, develop one. Living Composers, performed Live. This really sounded unique and, apart from the Go West Festival in Wales, it was.

Nina Kumin, left, Jonathan Sage and Kate Ledger: Playing Anthony Gilbert works at Saturday night’s Late Music concert at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York

“The main issue here was that quite a few of the living composers we programmed were no longer with us after we had gone to print. We then went nuts and threw the kitchen sink at the programming.

“The concerts now included jazz, Indian music, gamelan, crossover, loads of fusions; we even dug up Beethoven. Anyway, this long and winding road led us to where we are today. So back to Janet.

“OK, so this next bit isn’t going to sound professional or cool; not that I have ever been professional or cool. Janet said she would be interested and then caught me off guard with: ‘What will the commission fee be?’ I started laughing and said: ‘you’re kidding?’. She wasn’t.

“I have often thought Late Music should host a memorial concert of Janet’s music. And we will. I thought this programme note written by Anthony Gilbert – for a short piano piece called Monsoon Toccata, was very touching, very moving. It feels so right and so fitting to include this in Anthony’s own Late Music memorial concert.”

Anthony Gilbert wrote: “In 1988, Janet Owen Thomas met up with me in Sydney at the end of a short organ recital tour – possibly her last before devoting herself entirely to composing.

“We returned to England together, doing a rapid circular tour of Northern India on the way. Alighting from the plane at Delhi, we were hit by the whirling wind and torrential rain of the seasonal monsoon, and early the following morning there was also a minor earthquake.

“This experience determined the spirit of the music, and Northern Indian Raga determines the purely technical approach, with the quasi-improvisatory toccata-like textures acting as decoration to a slow-moving, widely spaced modal top line, which almost loses control of the overall shape at the mid-point – a reflection of the impact of those natural phenomena.”

Janet Owen Thomas, composer, writer, teacher and organist: the back story, from British Music Collection

Born: Merseyside, to Welsh and German parents.

Education: Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School, Liverpool; read music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, taught by Jane Glover and Robert Saxton (composition).

Further studies: After premiere of her choral  work New And Better Days, commissioned to mark the opening of Liverpool’s Tate Gallery, read for degree in Music Technology at University of York, then took advanced composition studies with Anthony Gilbert at Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

Works included: UK premiere of Rosaces at 1991 BBC Proms (youngest composer featured that year). Concerto Grosso Cantus for Bang-on-a-Can, 1992, performed in Goldberg Ensemble’s Contemporary series at RNCM, broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Under The Skin, BBC commission for 1999 Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music. Preludes for Piano, premiered in London in 2000.

Commissioned or performed by: BBC; Goldberg Ensemble; Park Lane Group; Allegri and Bingham Quartets; Gemini; Boccherini String Trio; Stephen De Pledge; Mary Wiegold; Lontano; Kevin Bowyer; the Option Band and others.

Lived and worked in: York, dividing her time between teaching, writing and composition.

York composer Nicola LeFanu


IN her obituary for Janet Owen Thomas, fellow York composer Nicola LeFanu wrote of her musical style: “The hallmark of her style is linear counterpoint; the music is carefully constructed to allow for self-similarity in its proportions, both in the large and in the detail.

“In speaking of her work, Thomas acknowledged the influence of the 17th and 18th-century music which she played so much in her days as an organist. Her contrapuntal textures are transformed, though, by the ‘shimmer and glitter’ which she loved.”

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Ian Pace, York Late Music, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, November 4

Ian Pace: “Monarch of the keyboard”

THE Late Music concert series, aka Living Music, Live, has made a habit of inviting pianist Ian Pace over the years. It is easy to see why. He is a monarch of the keyboard, not least in repertory of the last two centuries.

He brought his full powers to bear on a programme that began and ended with Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven, with Gershwin and Kern transcriptions by Michael Finnissy and Steve Crowther’s Fourth Piano Sonata in between.

This was the opening concert in what is planned to be an annual series, The Beethoven Project, curated by Crowther and focused around all of Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies.

Liszt was an indefatigable transcriber of works by others, especially where they could be incorporated into his own virtuoso recitals. They also provided him with a more or less regular income.

His version of Beethoven’s Fifth is masterly, seemingly leaving nothing out and taxing the pianist to the very limit. But Pace was equal to his every demand. No-one could claim that this was a note-perfect account – how could it be? – but it was dazzling nonetheless.

He started with the three opening quavers so rapid that they were almost indistinguishable. The whole first movement, complete with repeat of the exposition, was adrenalin-fuelled, with the left hand in constant motion.

The Andante was richly voiced, with strong accents. All the statements of its rondo theme were insistent, although some of the diversions were taken more gently. Some of the humour of the third movement – effectively a scherzo and trio – was lost to heavy treatment, so that Beethoven’s subtle instrumentation in the fugato became too distant a memory.

But one could only gasp in admiration at the orchestral tone that Pace generated in the finale, with his left hand again moving at frightening speed. The work as a whole inevitably emerged more percussively than the original. But Liszt’s achievement was never in doubt.

Pace had opened with Liszt’s version of the first song-cycle in history, Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte (To The Distant Beloved), six songs given without a break. Pace took great pains to highlight the vocal melodies, while opting for measured tempos larded with considerable rubato, probably more than a singer would countenance.

As the cycle progressed Pace made his upper register twinkle several times, not least with the trilling of birds in the unheard text.

Michael Finnissy’s ‘transcriptions’ from songs by Gershwin and Kern were much less literal than the Liszt and much more like arrangements, preferring to conjure atmosphere and doodle over harmonies.

In Love Is Here To Stay (from the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies), the tune was held back until near the end, although in Embraceable You (from Girl Crazy) it was the jazz element that took control. Best of all was his version of Kern’s Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man (from Show Boat) where the melody was disguised but always detectable. Pace had them well organised.

So also in Steve Crowther’s Fourth Sonata, which sounded not unconnected with the Gershwin that preceded it, although sparer harmonically. Pace sustained excellent momentum and a staccato touch through the rapid opening movement, which was awash with syncopation and sounded like a rondo.

The slow movement was more ruminative, although tastily decorated with roulades. Decorations during the finale tended to occur in the right hand while the left carried the main theme. But both hands flitted lightly around the keyboard – and I swear I could hear traces of Kern here; perhaps they were just left over in my aural memory. But the work was never less than intriguing and often much more.

Pace had once again proved a mighty champion of the new and the little-known.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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Ian Pace to begin Late Music York’s Beethoven Project of Liszt symphonic transcriptions to piano on Saturday

Ian Pace: Launching The Beethoven Project for Late Music York on Saturday

VIRTUOSO pianist Ian Pace will perform Late Music York’s first recital of The Beethoven Project at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, on Saturday night.

Devised by Pace and Late Music administrator Steve Crowther, the project involves programming the whole cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt in an annual series of piano recitals.

“Playing all nine transcribd Beethoven symphonies, the project should take Ian seven to eight years!” says Steve. “It’s incredibly demanding and it’ll be a real event.”

The opening 7.30pm concert features the heroic Symphony No. 5 and Liszt’s sublime transcription of the radical An die Ferne Geliebte, Beethoven’s only song cycle.

“But why did Liszt undertake such an enormous artistic challenge?” asks Steve. “To be sure, he loved the music deeply; he loved the challenge; he also loved the idea of the intimacy of performing these orchestral works on the piano, experiencing the symphonies afresh.

“But the main reason was financial. The music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel commissioned Liszt to transcribe the work, paying him eight francs per page. Liszt completed this (and the 6th Symphony) in 1837, ten years after Beethoven’s death.”

In an interview in 1988, the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz said: “I deeply regret never having played Liszt’s arrangements of the Beethoven symphonies in public. These are the greatest works for the piano – tremendous works – every note of the symphonies is in the Liszt works.”

Steve says: “Horowitz’s comments are embedded in the score itself to help the performer realise the original work through the lens of the piano transcription. Liszt would note down the names of the orchestral instruments for the pianist to imitate and add pedal marks and fingerings for pianistic clarity.”

Late Music York’s poster for the Beethoven Project

Saturday’s full concert programme is:

Beethoven: An die Ferne Geliebte (transcribed by Franz Liszt) ;

Gershwin: Love Is Here To Stay (transcribed by Michael Finnissy);

Gershwin: Embraceable You (transcribed by Michael Finnissy);

Gershwin (maybe): Please Pay Some Attention To Me (transcribed by Michael Finnissy)

Jerome Kern: Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man (transcribed by Michael Finnissy)

 Steve Crowther: Piano Sonata No.4;

Beethoven: Symphony No.5 (transcribed by Franz Liszt).


“Now if we park the rogue Piano Sonata, the rest of the programme also reimagines original works, songs by Gershwin and Kern, for piano. This time transcribed by the wonderful composer, Michael Finnissy,” says Steve.

“I know Michael, having studied with him at the University of Sussex and continued contact with him through programming, and commissioning his highly original music. Indeed, it was Michael that introduced me and Late Music to Ian Pace. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Crowther sent Finnissy the programme blueprint, “not surprisingly receiving a corrective response with a lovely insight into Gershwin’s Please Pay Some Attention To Me”.


Finnissy wrote: “I have slightly corrected your programme attributions. Richard Rodney Bennett gave me the melody of Please Pay Some Attention To Me; he had been given it by a Swedish cabaret singer. It is (RRB told me) only attributed to George Gershwin – and does not appear in his work list.

“Jerome Kern wrote (rather than transcribed!) Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man (the original version of Show Boat had ‘dat’ instead of ’that’, but more recent editions have replaced this imitation-black-slang with ‘plain English’).”

In a pre-concert talk at 6.45pm, with a complimentary glass of wine or juice, Ian Pace will be in conversation with fellow pianist Kate Harrison-Ledger.

“We would like to discuss the Liszt and Gershwin transcriptions, and what they bring to the original compositions,” says Kate. “We will hopefully include a few anecdotes from Michael Finnissy, and, if time allows, invite questions from the audience.”

Tickets are on sale at www.latemusic.org and on the door.

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York Late Music season opens on Friday with Delta Saxophone Quartet’s Martland, McCartney and Joy Division programme

Delta Saxophone Quartet: Opening York Late Music’s 2022-2023 season on Friday

YORK Late Music’s 2022/2023 season opens on Friday with the Delta Saxophone Quartet’s evening concert, The Steve Martland Story, at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York.

The 7.30pm programme takes in Purcell/Martland’s Fantasia 6; Martland’s Remix and Principia; Joe Duddell’s Compacted Grounds and world premieres of Damon Rees’s A Hocket A Day and Stine Solbakken’s Karl Johan’s Gate.  

Further works will be Louis Andriessen’s Slow Birthday; Tom Armstrong’s Damascene Redux; Michael Nyman’s 24 Hours; Mark Anthony-Turnage’s Run Riot (1st Movement) and Paul McCartney’s Golden Slumbers/Carry The Weight, from The Beatles’ album Abbey Road.

The finale comprises David Lancaster’s arrangement of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, followed by Joe Duddell & Nick Williams’s Joy Division/Factory Records-inspired arrangements.

Looking ahead to the season as a whole, administrator Steve Crowther says: “Whether you are a devotee of new music or simply a lover of music itself, our 2022-2023 season promises to be a truly rewarding experience. We have more than 40 world premières, expressing freshness and innovation.

Jakob Fichert: Piano recital on Saturday

“The season embraces a full range of musical styles and genres. The stark immediacy of Xenakis. The hypnotic minimalism of John Adams. Authentic musical arrangements of Joy Division and David Bowie. We also include pieces by composers who deserve to be better known, for example Reginald Smith Brindle.”

This season also marks the 75th birthday of York Late Music patron and composer Nicola LeFanu, the 150th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the death in April this year of contemporary classical music and opera composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle.

Concerts largely take place at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel on the first Saturday of each month from September to December 2022, then February to June 2023. The season’s opening concert, however, falls this Friday, to be followed by lunchtime and evening concerts the next day.

Each evening concert has an informal pre-concert talk at 6.45pm, accompanied by a free glass of wine or juice, usually featuring an interview with one of the evening’s composers and an open discussion. First up, on Friday, will be saxophonist Chris Caldwell: Remembering Steve Martland.

“All of our concerts are informal and family-friendly, offering a chance to talk to composers and performers, which we strongly encourage. They don’t bite!” says Steve. “Students and young musicians are especially welcome.”

Bingham String Quartet: Playing works by Beethoven, Schnittke, LeFanu and Tippett

In Saturday’s lunchtime recital at 1pm, pianist Jakob Fichert focuses on the music of Massachusetts composer John Adams, who turned 75 on February 14 this year. His works China Gates and American Berserk will be complemented by Adolf Busch’s Variations On An Original Theme; Schönberg’s 6 Little Pieces Op. 19; Deborah Pritchard’s The Sun 
and the world premiere of Steve Crowther’s Piano Sonata No.4.

Saturday evening’s 7.30pm programme by the Bingham String Quartet comprises Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 in Bb Major (Op.18); Schnittke’s String Quartet No.3
LeFanu’s String Quartet No.2 and Tippett’s String Quartet No.2.

Further concerts will be given this year by pianist Duncan Honeybourne, November 5, 1pm; James Turnbull, oboe, and Libby Burgess, piano, November 5, 7.30pm; Micklegate Singers, And There Were Shepherds, December 3, 1pm, and Gemini, Nicola LeFanu At 75, A Portrait and Celebration, December 3, 7.30pm.

Next year’s programme opens with Music On The Edge: The Lapins, featuring Susie Holder-Williams, flute, Chris Caldwell, saxophone, and James Boyd, guitar, on February 4 at 1pm, followed by the Fitzwilliam String Quartet at 7.30pm.

Ruth Lee presents a harp recital on March 4 at 1pm; the Elysian Singers perform at 7.30pm that night.

Ruth Lee: Harp recital on March 4

On April 1, cellist Ivana Peranic and pianist Rachel Fryer unite for the lunchtime recital; York Late Music regular Ian Pace returns to the piano for the Xenakis Centenary Concert: Composers With A Side Hustle at 7.30pm.

On April 29, Tim Brooks and the York Hub steer the children and young students’ recital in a day-long project from 8am to 5pm.

Guitarist Federico Pendenza presents Reginald Smith Brindle: A Tribute on May 6 at 1pm. The tributes continue that evening when The New Matrix focus on the music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle at 7.30pm.

The Composers Competition Workshop takes place at the Unitarian Chapel from 8am to 5pm on June 2.

Baritone Stuart O’Hara sings to piano accompaniment on June 3; Nick Williams conducts the Late Music Ensemble at 7.30pm.

“We hope this whets your appetite and we look forward to seeing you soon,” says Steve. Full programme and ticket details can be found at latemusic.org. Tickets are available on the door too.

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York Late Music opens 2022 with concerts by Jakob Fichert and Jessica Summers & Jelena Makarova at Unitarian Chapel

Jakob Fichert: Lunchtime concert

YORK’S Late Music concert season resumes with its first programmes of 2022 on Saturday at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate.

In the lunchtime concert at 1pm, pianist Jacob Fichert presents The Character Piece Throughout Music History, performing music from Bach to a new work by York composer Steve Crowther.

In the evening, at 7.30pm, soprano Jessica Summers and pianist Jelena Makarova’s Living Songs: Songs Of Love And Exile combines works by Dowland and Rihm with new pieces by Patrick John Jones and Silvina Milstein.

Jelena Makarova

Opening with Bach’s serene and pastoral Prelude and Fugue in A major, Fichert explores character pieces throughout different styles. Three of Debussy’s iconic preludes are indeed the prelude to lesser known, yet exquisite pieces by Lili Boulanger (Trois Morceaux pour Piano) and Adolf Busch. The finale will be the premiere of Political Prayer, a powerful and thought-provoking piece by Late Music programmer Steve Crowther.

Summers and Makarova’s Living Songs showcases songs by living composers alongside more well-known classical song repertoire. The world premiere of Patrick John Jones’s Elsewhere 137 will be followed by John Dowland’s Flow, My Tears (from 1600) and the world premiere of Silvina Milstein’s Raise No Funeral Song…, composed this year.

Next come Wolfgang Rihm’s Zwei Gedichte von Marina Zwetajewa (2016); David Lancaster’s The Dark Gate (2016); Richard Causton’s Poems Almost Of This World (2005); Edmund Hunt’s There Is A Blue-Green Eye (2022) and Kurt Weil’s Intermezzo (1917).

Don Walls: late York poet

The penultimate composer will be Steve Crowther once more, who composed a setting of Emma And I, a poem written for his daughter Emma by the York poet Don Walls the year he died in 2017. “I admire the man and poet greatly and miss him,” says Steve.

Two Ivor Novello compositions from 1945, Love Is My Reason and We’ll Gather Lilacs, conclude the evening concert, where a collection will be made in aid of Safe Passage, an organisation that helps refugees access legal routes to safety.

Tickets for Fichert cost £5; for Summers and Makarova, £12, concessions £10, students £5, on the door or at latemusic.org/.

Summers’ evening: Soprano Jessica Summers
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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on The Elysian Singers, Late Music, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York, November 6

The Elysian Singers: “Intelligent programme linked settings by different composers of the same or similar texts”

ALTHOUGH unable to welcome back Late Music last month due to an unfortunate clash, I do so now with open arms.

Steve Crowther has had to work miracles to keep Late Music afloat and bring it back into action, and he will doubtless feel amply rewarded by the appearance of the London-based Elysian Singers and the excellent turnout they elicited.

Their intelligent programme, directed by Sam Laughton, linked settings by different composers of the same or similar texts. The result stretched back as far as the 13th century, but was brought right up to date with three new commissions.

Part of Psalm 95, taken from Rachmaninov’s Russian orthodox treatment of the All-Night Vigil, inspired Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s effective Bogoroditse Devo (Rejoice, O Virgin), which was essentially tonal and included a gently rolling alto line underpinning a soprano melody. Both were sung in Russian.

The anonymous mediaeval setting of Edi Beo Thu, Hevene Quene (Blessed Are You, Queen Of Heaven) was picked up in Kerry Andrew’s setting, which she additionally framed with the words ‘O virgo splendens’. Her spare harmonies, although unmistakeably modern, reflected the early setting’s approach. The choir treated its triplet figures smoothly.

There were echoes of the past, too, in the next piece. Tom Armstrong’s setting of Emily Brontë’s poem No Coward Soul Is Mine, here enjoying its premiere, uses antiphons from Vespers for Whit Sunday, so that the text emerges in striking unisons, thereby gaining emphasis, an extraordinarily powerful effect.

Brontë enjoyed a strong Christian faith, fearless about death; Armstrong clearly senses this. He uses techniques of imitation and overlapping lines, sometimes giving the plainsong slow treatment in the men’s voices with contrasting momentum in soprano and alto lines. The Elysians were especially persuasive here.

Thea Musgrave’s witty juxtaposition of poems by Herrick and Edwin Morgan with the anonymous I Saw A Peacock With A Fiery Tail, in her imaginative journey On The Underground (Set 2), made a pleasingly comic interlude, the reprise of Herrick’s Dreams making a rueful postlude to the perky staccato of the other poems.

The choir was equally alive to Britten’s word-setting in his Five Flower Songs, which have deservedly become choral staples over the past 70 years.

There were two further premieres after the interval. David Power’s minimalist setting of the opening words of St John’s gospel, The Transfiguration, was cleverly built around an insistent refrain, ‘God spoke, light shone’. It does not deal directly with the transfiguration story, but suggests light at the end of any tunnel of trouble – as in present times. Those four words certainly shone through, often at the top of the spectrum.

The story of the Sirens’ search for Proserpine, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was the inspiration for David Lancaster’s Feathers, since Demeter gave them wings for the task. Opening with a very high soprano solo, suggesting soaring flight, its slow, rhythmless progress was beautifully sustained by the choir.

An interesting setting by Ivor Gurney of a Robert Bridges poem on John Milton was contrasted with a deeply elegiac prayer, Requiem, by John Duggan to words of Gurney, which was much the more touching of the two.

There was distinguished company in a James MacMillan folksong and Judith Weir’s My Guardian Angel, which involved the audience in a threefold Alleluia. And it was impossible to suppress a smile at the creamy Victorian harmonies of Bantock’s response to ‘My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose’, lovingly caressed by this superb group.

Review by Martin Dreyer

York Late Music continues with two events on December 4; full details at latemusic.org.

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Never too late for York Late Music’s cutting-edge contemporary concerts to start again

Ian Pace: Regular innovative performer on piano at York’s Late Music concert series, returning on December 4

YORK’S Late Music programme of contemporary music returns from pandemic lockdown with two concerts on Saturday at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York.

As ever, this celebration of new music in York will turn the spotlight on compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries, premiering new works and commissions aplenty on the first Saturday of each month from October to December 2021 and February to June 2022, with two concerts per day at 1pm and 7.30pm.

“We moved the programme to start in October because we’ve missed a year of concerts through the pandemic and could not re-start until now because of the small size of the chapel,” says concert administrator and York composer Steve Crowther.

In a late change to the musicians, but not to the programme, baritone Alistair Donaghue and pianist Polly Sharpe replace Robert Rice and William Vann for Saturday’s opening afternoon concert, an exploration of 21st century British songs, featuring settings from the album Songs Now: British Songs Of The 21st Century and the NMC Songbook.

“Unfortunately, Robert is ill, but we’re very grateful that Alistair and Polly have agreed to step in to do the same programme.”

In Saturday’s second concert, at 7.30pm, the Gemini ensemble give first performances of both their commission of Sadie Harrison’s Fire In Song and Morag Galloway’s It’s Getting Hot In Here, complemented by Peter Maxwell Davies’s Economies Of Scale and works by Steve Crowther and Philip Grange, including his Homage To Chagall.

Pianist Duncan Honeybourne: Lockdown compositions on November 6

On November 6, in the afternoon concert, pianist Duncan Honeybourne presents pieces from time spent productively in stay-at-home 2020: Contemporary Piano Soundbites: Composers In Lockdown 2020. The works have been featured on BBC Radio 3, greeted by presenter Tom Service as a “dazzling explosion of creativity”.

For the evening, Elysian Singers’ director Sam Laughton has devised a programme that pairs a contemporary work with an earlier piece with words from the same poet or source. For example, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Rachmaninov’s settings of All Night Vigil or James Macmillan, Thea Musgrave and Benjamin Britten’s settings of words by Herrick.

These will be complemented by new works by regular Late Music composers David Power and David Lancaster and Tom Armstrong, formerly of the University of York, and a motet by Ivor Gurney, published in 2017, fully 92 years after it was composed.  “It was just sitting in a drawer,” reveals Steve.

Nick Williams and Tim Brooks combine to present York Music Centre and the new Yorkshire ensemble Spelk’s afternoon recital on December 4. “It’s great to be working with Nick and Tim,” says Steve, looking forward to Brooks’s commissioned piece for young people, And Another Thing. In the second half, Spelk perform music by John Cage, Andriessen and Stravinsky and a new Murphy McCaleb work.

In that evening’s closing concert of 2021, stalwart Ian Pace performs his 13th, or maybe his 14th, Late Music piano recital, this one entitled The Art Of Fugue. “In 1845, Schumann discovered his passion for composing fugues,” says Pace. “This recital explores the threads that connect and resonate through a form that straddles three centuries.”

Framed by two Prelude and Fugues by J S Bach, Pace will be performing works by Shostakovich and Schumann, plus new works by Anthony Adams and Jenny Jackson. “You don’t associate Ian with playing Bach, so it will be interesting to hear his interpretation,” says Steve.

Soprano Anna Snow: 100 Second Songs on March 5

The 2022 programme opens on February 5 with pianist Jakob Fichert’s The Character Piece Throughout Music History (1pm) and Living Songs, soprano Jessica Summers and pianist Jelena Makarova’s evening of Songs of Love and Exile.

Next up, on March 5, will be clarinet player Jonathan Sage (afternoon) and soprano Anna Snow and pianist Kate Ledger’s evening of 100 Second Songs, featuring a patchwork of musical miniatures by the likes of Nicola LeFanu, Sadie Harrison, Tarik O’Regan and James Else.

Bass Stuart O’Hara and pianist Ionna Koullepou perform new settings of York and regional poetry by York composers on the afternoon of April 2. That evening, Bingham String Quartet play Beethoven, Schnittke, LeFanu and Tippett pieces.

Spelk return on May 7 with a rare chance to hear John Cage’s complete Living Room Music at 1pm, followed by Delta Saxophone Quartet’s Dedicated To You…But You Weren’t Listening, including Soft Machine interpretations.

The season ends with soprano Amanda Crawley and pianist Josephine Peach’s Sounds Of The Unexpected (1pm) and Trilogy Ensemble’s evening of Debussy, Libby Larsen, Yu-Liang Chong, William Matthias and more.

Lunchtime concerts costs £5, evening concerts, £12/concessions £10, online at latemusic.org or on the door.