All Saints Alive 9 Soundbites Christopher Benham

I am pleased to give details of the Summer and smaller instrumental groups. A number of season of concerts and musical events at All these works will make appearances in our Saints. I hope you found plenty to interest you Soundbites programmes. Firstly, Christine last season and during Holy Week. We invite Petch will include the five in her you to join us regularly to enjoy the current recital on the 6th June. Although written with musical programme in the lovely setting of All orchestral accompaniment these songs work Saints' Church. As usual, we are most grateful very well in the piano arrangement we will to our sponsors, Waitrose, for their very use. Martin Penny will perform the Vesper generous support. Voluntaries as part of his recital on 20th June - Elgar wrote a small body of organ music As mentioned in my last newsletter, Elgar’s having served as organist at St. George's music will feature in several concerts as we Church in Worcester. On 11th July, I will be celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth on joined by four string players in a performance 2nd June. of the Op 84, a late work, written at about the same time as the Cello began life in the small village of Concerto. As we move into the Autumn Lower Broadheath outside Worcester. He was Season the and 1st Organ the fourth of six children born to William and Sonata will each make an appearance. Ann. As a child he was surrounded by sheet music and instruments in his father's shop in Throughout this season there are also Worcester, and he would frequently take programmes devoted to the music of Bach, manuscripts into the countryside to study Beethoven, Dvorak and Mozart and. as usual, them. Thus there began for him a strong there is a mixture of familiar faces and association between music and nature. He newcomers. We are also pleased to welcome left school at fifteen and embarked on a back the Alberni who will musical career, giving piano and violin les- perform an evening concert on 12th May sons. He went on to play in the first violins at (Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel). the Worcester and Birmingham Festivals. I do hope you will be able to join us regularly During the 1890s Elgar gradually built up a to enjoy fine music, tasty food and a warm reputation as a composer, chiefly of works for welcome. the great choral festivals of the Midlands, but it was only in 1899 at the age of 42, that his Wednesday May 2nd Anything Goes – String first major orchestral work, the Enigma Quartet and Christopher Benham – Piano Variations was premièred in London and Piano Quintet Op 81 Dvorak established Elgar as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation. Wednesday May 9th John Coulton – Trumpet, David Dunnett – Organ Between 1902 and 1914 Elgar enjoyed phenomenal success - his First Symphony was Wednesday 16th May Katy Bircher – Baroque given one hundred performances in its first Flute, James Johnstone – Harpsichord year, the was commissioned Flute Sonatas J.S.Bach by the world-renowned violinist Fritz Kreisler, and in 1911, the year of the completion of his Wednesday 23rd May John Banks – Medieval Second Symphony, he had the Order of Merit Instruments bestowed upon him. He also held the post of Professor of Music at the University of Wednesday 30th May All Saints’ Choral Birmingham from 1905 to 1908. Scholars

Although Elgar's musical legacy is primarily More information can be found at our website: orchestral and choral, he did write for soloists http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/allsaintshertford