BIOGRAPHY The Primrose Piano Quartet was formed in 2004 by pianist John Thwaites and 3 of the UK’s most renowned CONWAY chamber musicians (Lindsay, Sorrel, Edinburgh, Maggini Quartets). It is named after the great Scottish violist, William Primrose, who himself played in the Festival Piano Quartet. Alongside their performances of the HALL major repertoire, the Primrose Quartet have researched widely the forgotten legacy of 20th century English SUNDAY composers, and have revived a number of remarkable and unjustly neglected piano quartets. Their award- winning recordings feature works by Dunhill, Hurlstone, Quilter, Bax, Scott, Alwyn, Howells and Frank Bridge. CONCERTS Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies wrote his Piano Quartet for the Primrose in 2008; this twenty-minute piece premièred at the Cheltenham Festival has proved very appealing, and was recorded in 2009 for the Meridian label. In 2009 an exciting commission, born out of their strong Scottish connections and timed to celebrate Robert Burns’s 250th anniversary, was the “Burns Air Variations”. The Primrose invited a number of their composer Patrons - Stephen Hough, Laura Ponsonby AGSM, Prunella Scales friends to write a short variation each on Burns’ “By Yon Castle Wa”, and the resulting 30-minute work CBE, Roderick Swanston, Hiro Takenouchi and Timothy West CBE received premières in Tunbridge Wells, at the Sound Festival, and at Kings Place. Sally Beamish, John Casken, Artistic Director - Simon Callaghan Jacques Cohen, Peter Fribbins, Francis Pott, Zoë Martlew, Piers Hellawell and Stephen Goss are among those who contributed. Two new CDs were released during 2010 on the Meridian label: Richard Strauss Piano Quartet, Violin Sonata and Cello Sonata; Maxwell Davies’ Piano Quartet, the Burns Air Variations and a previously unrecorded Piano Quintet by Dmitri Smirnov. In 2011 the Quartet recorded a CD of Fauré and Brahms piano quartets, performed Sunday October 25th 2015, 6:30pm on a piano chosen by Brahms, and their latest CD of Schubert chamber works was released in 2014. For 2014 the Primrose have been selected for the Making Music Concert Promoters’ Network for a third time, and have a busy performing season both in the UK and abroad, including an extensive tour of Denmark and a visit to Germany in 2015. They are delighted to have commissioned leading British composer, Anthony Payne, to write a piano quartet premièred in February 2015 at London’s Kings Place. This season will also see the recording of two further CDs of Elgar, Payne, Bowen and Brahms chamber works. Their own festival in the PRIMROSE Hampshire Village of West Meon is now in its fifth year. www.primrosepianoquartet.org.uk PIANO NEXT AT CONWAY HALL Sunday November 1st 2015, 6.30pm QUARTET FLORIN ENSEMBLE Join the Florin Ensemble as they present a colourful programme of string trios and duos to launch their latest recording. VIOLIN SUSANNE STANZELEIT Schubert Trio in B flat D471 VIOLA DOROTHEA VOGEL Dohnányi Serenade in C Op. 10 Kodály Intermezzo CELLO ANDREW FULLER Martinu Madrigal No. 3 PIANO JOHN THWAITES Klein String Trio Seiber Sonata da Camera Beethoven Trio in C minor Op. 9/3 Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated about concerts and news. Conway Hall Sunday Concerts are an integral part of the charitable activities of Conway Hall. Please turn off all mobile phones and electronic devices. Conway Hall’s registered charity name is Conway Hall Ethical Society (n o . 1156033). No recording and photographing allowed at any time. PROGRAMME PROGRAMME NOTES BEETHOVEN QUINTET IN E FLAT OP. 16 (1796) Beethoven’s string parts for Op. 16 were published in1801 in Vienna simultaneously with the original version for a quintet of piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. The piece for piano and winds was first performed on April 6, 1797; it is not known when the version for strings received its premiere. It is best to think of the piece as a work for piano with either strings or winds, neither version being an adaptation of the other. The original quintet, written Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) while Beethoven was pursuing a concert tour through Prague, Dresden, and Berlin, is for the same instrumentation QUINTET IN E FLAT OP. 16 (1796) [ARR. BEETHOVEN] as a work by Mozart, Quintet for keyboard, oboe, clarinet, horn & bassoon in E flat K452, prompting a comparison between the two works, unfortunately for Beethoven. The Op. 16 Quartet/Quintet is one of Beethoven’s earliest I. Grave - Allegro ma non troppo attempts at symphonic composition in a non-symphonic idiom. The result is a rather extravagant work for a small II. Andante cantabile ensemble, although it maintains the typical three-movement format of sonata-type works for chamber ensembles. III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo CHAUSSON PIANO QUARTET IN A OP. 30 (1897) Chausson’s music, at all stages, could be called psychological in its vaulting gamut of expression - from blackest melancholy to mercurially manic high spirits - traversed with startling suddenness by an unexpected modulation, a Ernest Chausson (1897) subtle nuance, a brilliant coup de théâtre. Indeed, the latter occur more often in his orchestral and chamber works than in his grand opera, Le roi Arthus, lending them a constant effect of shimmer between articulate darkness and PIANO QUARTET IN A OP. 30 (1897) blithe radiance. In the first decade of his maturity, in such things as the Poème de l’amour et de la mer (1882- I. Animé 90) and the Symphony (1889-90), this bipolar oscillation is tinged with a certain morbidity checked only by the application of formal procedures inspired by Franck. But from the mid-1890s, as Chausson entered his forties, a II. Très calme new prehension - a hectically fraught serenity (or hyper-aesthetic twist on the “serene anxiety” of his mentor, César Franck) - comes into play. Form and content, too, dovetail more deftly. The handful of works from this period are no III. Simple et sans hâte less intense, impassioned, or volatile, but suffused with a new assurance that calls to mind Yeats’ lines in his 1939 IV. Animé poem “Lapis Lazuli,” reminding all that great actors “Do not break up their lines to weep./They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; /Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.” In this sense, the works of Chausson’s last broken-off period have about them a tragic gaiety. One thinks of the Serres chaudes cycle of mélodies, the great Poème for violin and orchestra, the Quelques danses for piano, and - pre-eminently - of the sublime Piano Quartet. INTERVAL BRAHMS PIANO QUARTET IN C MINOR OP. 60 (1875) (15 mins) Brahms composed the first version of the work that would eventually become his Third Piano Quartet, Op. 60 (to which the subtitle “Werther” is often attached), in Dusseldorf in 1855-1856. The first version had emerged concurrently with first drafts for the first two piano quartets, Op. 25 and Op. 26, all received enthusiastically by his close friends, including Albert Dietrich and Joseph Joachim. At this point, No. 3 was in the key of C sharp minor. Even when (a year later) Joachim wrote to Brahms concerning the piece it still comprised three movements only, an Johannes Brahms (1833-97) opening Allegro, an Andante, and what Brahms’ termed a “concise” finale. While its two sister works were completed in 1859 and 1861, Op. 60 was put aside, since neither Brahms nor his associates were satisfied with it. By 1869, PIANO QUARTET IN C MINOR OP. 60 (1875) he returned to it again and contemplated its publication as his Op. 54. But further extensive revisions followed and I. Allegro non troppo the quartet assumed its final shape in the winter of 1873-74 in Vienna, with minor revisions the following summer. A letter from Brahms, sent with the manuscript to Theodor Billroth includes the following enigmatic comment: “the II. Scherzo: Allegro quartet has communicated itself to me only in the strangest ways...For instance, the illustration to the last chapter III. Andante of the man in the blue frock and yellow waistcoat.” This refers, somewhat obliquely, to Goethe’s Werther, which Brahms admired. Meanwhile, he remained deeply dissatisfied with the work, and wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock IV. Finale: Allegro comodo “you may attach a picture on the title page, i.e. a head with the pistol before it.” The definitive version is comprised of the 1855/6 score’s opening movement, a scherzo from 1856-61, and an Andante and finale (allegro commodo) from 1875. The work, now in the general key of C minor, reflects the turbulent and vacillating self-doubts that Brahms felt so deeply. Indeed, little more darkly oppressive movements than the first exist anywhere else in Brahms’ chamber output, while the “new” andante in E major is certainly one of the most beautiful. Above all, however, the work fully deserves its Goethe connections, for neither Brahms nor Werther Tonight’s performance will finish at approximately 8:15pm. enjoyed a contented course en route to their respective destinies..