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LEAMINGTON DEBUT FOR BBC NEW GENERATION ARTISTS QUARTET
The CONSONE STRING QUARTET, appointed last year as BBC New Generation Artists, will play at the Royal Pump Rooms LEAMINGTON on Friday 28 February, starting at 7.30pm, as the Leamington Music Winter Season continues.
The Consone Quartet specialises in music from the Classical and Early Romantic periods, playing on gut strings, as happened at that time. The concert starts with an early work by Haydn and ends with a late quartet by Beethoven. In the middle is a quartet written in 1812 by George Onslow, son of an English father and French mother.
Richard Phillips, Festival Director, comments, “We started the new year with an outstanding concert by the French Van Kuijk Quartet, which had also recently been members of the BBC New Generation Artists. I am particularly pleased that the Consone will play a work by Onslow, as I have wanted to programme him for years, having always enjoyed the works by him that I have heard.”
The Consone Quartet comes to Leamington having played in Belgium, in Ghent and Brugge, earlier in the week. Its members have family in Lithuania, Poland and Bulgaria, with only the cellist having a British background, although he finished his studies in Holland.
As part of the Leamington Music Education Programme, the Quartet arrives a day early to give workshops in King Edward VI School in Stratford and Nicholas Chamberlaine School in Nuneaton.
The final concert in the Investec International String Quartet series will be given by the Pražák Quartet from Prague on 20 March. The Quartet was last here for the 2018 Leamington Music Festival and gave two highly acclaimed concerts.
The other concerts in March in the Leamington Music Winter Season sees first the annual Sunday date with Ensemble 360, the Music in the Round resident group, at the Royal Spa Centre - on 15 March there will be a morning Family Concert of Sir Scallywag and the Battle of Stinky Bottom and an afternoon of three Mozart quintets. The final concert of the season is on 24 March in St Mary’s Church Warwick when the Orlando Consort sing in their programme Guillaume de Machaut: Portrait of a Genius.
Booking is already open for the 2020 Leamington Music Festival, which starts on Friday 1 May. With the title Largely Ludwig, it features a lot of Beethoven in the 250th celebrations of his birth plus works by people he met or influenced. Selling particularly well is the concert by violinist Tasmin Little on 4 May, a final opportunity to hear her in this area before she retires in the summer.
Tickets for all Leamington Music concerts are available at the Visitor Information Centre at the Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington and Visit Warwick at the Court House, Warwick. Call 01926 334418 or go online on www.royalspacentreandtownhall.co.uk.
Full details about the Leamington Music Winter Season, the Leamington Music Festival and about Leamington Music, including the Friends of Leamington Music, the Artist in Residence and Education Programme, these can be found on www.leamingtonmusic.org.