ST VALENTINE’S DAY 2018 Mansion House With Special Guest HUGH LAURIE CMF Team Dr Clare Taylor Managing Director Tabitha McGrath Artist Manager Philip Barrett Executive Assistant Trustees Sir Mark Boleat Sir Roger Gifford Sir Nicholas Kenyon Sir Andrew Parmley Advisory Board Guy Harvey Partner, Shepherd and Wedderburn Wim Hautekiet Managing Director, JP Morgan Alastair King Chairman, Naisbitt King Asset Management Kathryn McDowell CBE Managing Director, London Symphony Orchestra Lizzie Ridding Board Member, City Music Foundation Ian Ritchie Artistic Director and Music Curator, Setubal Music Festival Seb Scotney Editor, London Jazz News Philip Spencer Development Consultant Adrian Waddingham CBE Partner, Barnett Waddingham St Valentine’s Day 2018 2 WELCOME Welcome to the Mansion House and to a celebration of all that is good about life! Not least the wonderful music we are going to hear in the splendour of the greatest surviving Georgian town palace in London. The City Music Foundation – CMF – is just five years old and it was created in this house. Its mission is to turn talent into success by giving training in the “business of music” to soloists and ensembles at the start of their professional careers, as well as promoting them extensively in a modern and professional manner. Several - the Gildas Quartet, Michael Foyle, and Giacomo Smith with the Kansas Smitty’s, are playing for us this evening. This year CMF hopes to move into a more permanent home in the City at St Bartholomew the Less, within the boundaries of St Bartholomew’s Hospital – and within the City of London’s ‘Culture Mile’. This anticipates the relocation of the Museum of London to its new site in Smithfield and the creation of a new Centre for Music on the south side of the Barbican – all exciting developments in the heart of the Capital. CMF intends to play its role alongside these institutions and we look forwards to hearing from Sir Nicholas Kenyon about these plans during the evening. We are delighted that CMF Patrons the Brodsky Quartet and Iain Burnside have joined us tonight and thrilled that Hugh Laurie is here with us as a special guest, and he will be performing with Iain later this evening. And it is St Valentine’s Day – so let’s enjoy the connection between music and love, food and good living. And again, welcome. Alderman Sir Roger Gifford Founder, City Music Foundation St Valentine’s Day 2018 3 IAIN BURNSIDE Iain Burnside is a pianist who has appeared in recital with many of the world’s leading singers (“pretty much ideal” BBC Music Magazine). He is also an insightful programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition. His recordings straddle an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to the cutting edge, as in the Gramophone Award-winning NMC Songbook. Recent recordings include the complete Rachmaninov songs (Delphian Records) with seven outstanding Russian artists (“the results are electrifying” The Daily Telegraph). Iain’s passion for English Song is reflected in acclaimed CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams, many with baritone Roderick Williams. Away from the piano Iain is active as a writer and broadcaster. As presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Voices he won a Sony Radio Award. For Guildhall School of Music & Drama Iain has devised a number of singular theatre pieces. A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was performed at the Barbican Centre and the Cheltenham Festival, and later broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Armistice Day. His new project Swansong has been premiered at the Kilkenny Festival and will play in Milton Court in November. Future highlights include performances of the three Schubert songcycles with Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall. A Delphian release of songs by Nikolai Medtner launches a major series of Russian Song in the 2018 Wigmore Hall season. Other forthcoming projects feature Ailish Tynan, Rosa Feola, Andrew Watts, Robin Tritschler and Benjamin Appl. Iain is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera. St Valentine’s Day 2018 4 HUGH LAURIE The award-winning, multitalented Hugh Laurie has had an exceptional career as an actor, producer, writer, musician and composer. Hugh’s film credits include: Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, box office hitThe Man in the Iron Mask, Stuart Little, Stuart Little 2, Flight of the Phoenix, and Monster vs. Aliens, which made a staggering $198 million at the US box office alone. Hugh’s television credits include playing the infamous character of Bertie Wooster in an impressive four series of Jeeves and Wooster, which aired on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theatre” from 1990 to 1995. He has also starred in Blackadder, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, Tracey Takes On..., and Friends. He has taken part in three series of Saturday Night Live and in 2010 starred in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which he co-wrote for the BBC with Stephen Fry. Hugh is arguably best known internationally for his performance in the FOX series, House, which ran for eight seasons. Although Hugh is a predominantly self-taught pianist, he has gone on to have an incredibly successful music career. In 2011, he released a New Orleans Blues album, Let Them Talk, which was distributed worldwide by Warner Bros Records. After the huge success of his debut album, Hugh released his second album, Didn’t It Rain, in May 2013 with Warner Music Entertainment. In April 2015, Hugh returned to US television to star as vice-presidential candidate, Senator Tom James, opposite Julia Louis-Drefus in the much-anticipated fourth season of HBO’s award-winning Veep. In February 2016 Hugh played a leading role in the award-winning BBC/AMC TV series adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel The Night Manager. Hugh’s supporting role was acknowledged internationally and he received over six nominations for his performance, including an EMMY and this year he collected a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Limited Series. Hugh has led two seasons of the primetime television series Chance based on the psychological thriller of the same title by Kem Nunn. The show launched on streaming service Hulu in 2016, with a two season, 20-episode order. Hugh’s latest film Holmes and Watson is due for release later this year. A humorous take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. The title also stars Ralph Fiennes and Will Ferrell. St Valentine’s Day 2018 5 MICHAEL FOYLE Praised for “playing of compelling conviction” (The Daily Telegraph) and “full of sparkling detail, with tonal beauty and incisive rhythmic clarity, balancing wit and poetry” (The Strad), Michael Foyle won The Netherlands Violin Competition 2016. His acclaimed performance of Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No.1 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra led to an immediate invitation to give his debut recital at The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. In December 2017, he returned to the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Korngold’s Violin Concerto and in May of this year he makes his debut with the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Other London appearances this season include performances of the Beethoven, Dvorak, Elgar and Tchaikovsky concerti. In the past two seasons, Michael has made his recital debuts at Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Bridgewater Hall, Usher Hall and Buckingham Palace. Abroad, he has performed Brahms’s Violin Concerto in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and has given recitals for the Cervantino Festival in Mexico, New York Chamber Music Festival, and Evgeny Mravinsky Festival in Tallinn and St. Petersburg. This year, he records his debut CDs: the complete works for violin and piano by Lutosławski and Penderecki for Delphian Records, and a World War One centenary release for Challenge Records. Born in Ayrshire in 1991, Michael gave his concerto debut in Edinburgh Festival Theatre aged eight. He went on to win the BBC Young Musician of the Year Tabor Award 2008 and to lead the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, before studying at the Vienna Konservatorium with Pavel Vernikov and at the Royal Academy of Music in London where, upon graduation, he was awarded the Regency Prize for Excellence and the Roth Prize for the highest violin mark of the year. At the same time, Michael won the Royal Overseas League String Competition, while his acclaimed duo with pianist Maksim Štšura won the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe Competition and the Salieri-Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition. He subsequently performed as a Park Lane Group, Kirckman Concert Society and Making Music Young Concert Artist, and is currently a City Music Foundation ambassador. Michael plays a Gennaro Gagliano violin (1750) on loan from a CMF supporter, and is represented by Interartists Amsterdam. St Valentine’s Day 2018 6 BRODSKY QUARTET Daniel Rowland, violin (not playing tonight) Ian Belton, violin Paul Cassidy, viola Jacqueline Thomas, cello Since forming in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet have performed over 3,000 concerts on the major stages of the world and have released more than 60 recordings. A natural curiosity and an insatiable desire to explore has propelled the group in a number of artistic directions and continues to ensure them not only a prominent presence on the international chamber music scene, but also a rich and varied musical existence. Throughout their career of more than 40 years, the Brodsky Quartet have enjoyed a full international performing schedule, touring major festivals and venues throughout Australasia, North and South America, Asia, South Africa, and Europe, as well as in the UK, where the quartet is based.