[CCMS-mail] Fwd: Hummel concert Feb 10 - special offer for Cambridge students

[M.W.R. Doggett]

Dear all

Attached is an advert for a concert at West Road tomorrow evening.

Matt

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 03:37:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Ian Christians <ianchristians at yahoo.com>
Subject: Hummel concert Feb 10 - special offer for Cambridge students
To: mwrd2 at cam.ac.uk

Dear Matt

I would very much welcome you and your music society's assistance in supporting this unique chamber concert at West Road tomorrow night, at 19.30. Card-carrying members of your society are invited as my guests (i.e. no charge). The programme includes Hummel's arrangements of Mozart's Haffner Symphony, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and a chamber transcription of Hummel's A minor concerto - flyer attached.

Background. I was at Clare in the 60s , and now run the residential Orpheus & Bacchus music festival near Bordeaux, putting on 30 chamber concerts a year. We have many top artists - for example Dmitri Sitkovetsky has appeared at two festivals. I also lead the Hummel Project ( www.jnhummel.info ) and have an annual festival of the music of this grossly underestimated composer alongside that of his colleagues Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. I am a supporter of CUMS and Clare College Music Society.

Perhaps foolishly I have chosen to repeat a highly successful concert I put on at Kings Place London last November (see review below) and success largely depends on attracting the student body since I have no past track record.

I can promise an exceptional and unique concert of chamber music as in the 1830s, with top artists - Andrew Brownell, along with Howard Shelley is the leading Hummel pianist internationally, and the ensemble even includes on double bass Chi-chi Nwanoku, who has a regular BBC Radio 3 programme. I will be giving a pre-concert talk at 18.00 "Rediscovering Hummel" which could be revelationary.

I would be most grateful if you could let members of your society know of this invitation.

Best wishes
Ian Christians
07808 727735

Hummel, Mozart and Beethoven
Kings Place, London, 29 November 2009

This extraordinary concert showcased a slice of music history that had long been lost from sight: a series of extraordinary transcriptions for flute and piano trio that Johann Nepomuk Hummel prepared in the 1820s. Two of those symphonic arrangements - the Mozart No. 35 and Beethoven Fifth - were presented by the London Chamber Music Society in its Kings Place concert series. The skill of Hummel's handiwork was immediately apparent: the transfer of medium slips into the background as one's attention is focussed on the music itself		Hummel works his pianist hard in these arrangements, though here Andrew Brownell was the primus inter pares of the Ensemble.
Brownell stepped forward in a transcription of his own Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85, written in 1816. The piano is joined in this score by flute, string quartet and double-bass, making it an interesting hybrid, featuring both the textural clarity of chamber music and the extended display passages of a concerto - when Brownell's confident handling of the demanding solo part was a reminder of Hummel's reputation as one of the most prodigious pianists of his day. The Larghetto introduction to the rondo-finale, which has the calm dignity of middle-period Beethoven, is especially touching, and the Ensemble's sensitive handling of its delicate lines was rewarded by the quietest hall I have encountered in a long time.
 
Martin Anderson for International Piano Magazine, December, 2009 (Excerpts)

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