CITY MUSIC SOCIETY
 Lunchtime Concerts
Thursdays at 1.05 pm at St Bartholomew the Great,
West Smithfield, London EC1A 7BE

SPECIAL NOTICE

This Notice contains important information about our concerts and the Covid-related measures that will be in place.
If you intend to attend a concert, it is important that you observe and adhere to these measures.

Note: The following arrangements were in place at the time of the posting of this information but may be
subject to change according to Government regulations at the time of the concerts.

Our concerts are not ticketed but for entry you may need to demonstrate your COVID-19 status
by providing one of the following:
 
• Proof of a negative NHS Rapid Lateral Flow Test (such test to be taken within 24
hours prior to attending the event at the venue); or 

• Proof of full vaccination - both doses received (with the second at least 14 days prior
to the arrival at the venue); or

• Proof of natural immunity based upon a positive PCR test within 180 days of arrival
at the venue (and after the 10-day self-isolation period following the result).
 
Please be ready to show this when you arrive.
 
Doors open at 12.30pm.

 

We respectfully ask you NOT to attend if:
•
you or anyone in your household are experiencing any symptoms of Covid-19 (raised temperature, new persistent cough, headache, runny nose, sore throat, breathlessness or loss of/change to your sense of taste or smell)
•
 you have in the last 14 days been contacted by NHS Test and Trace as a 'close contact' to someone experiencing COVID-19
•
 you have visited any country outside the UK in the last 14 days and been required by the UK authorities to quarantine on return.
 
In addition we ask you to:
•
wear a face covering at all times in the church (unless you are exempt)
•
sanitise your hands on arrival
•
maintain social distancing from others who are not in your household
•
follow one-way signs and indications from our stewards
•
keep your belongings to a minimum and with you at all times
•
notify us by email to leslie.east1@btopenworld.com if you develop Covid-19 symptoms or test positive
within 7 days of the concert.
 
We will continue to review the situation and adapt these measures where necessary to respond to any changes in Government guidance.


Printed programmes
Printed programmes will be available at the concerts. These will not have been touched by hand before being given to you.
 

Admission to all lunchtime concerts is Free.

The City Music Society Young Artists Series celebrates the amazing talent of musicians performing and studying in the UK.

Many of our artists are major prize winners, emerging from the UK's leading conservatoires, while some of the concerts mark the role of The Worshipful Company of Musicians in supporting and encouraging outstanding young musicians as they begin their careers.

Our series includes a remarkable milestone as on 10th February we present the Society’s 2,000th lunchtime concert. The occasion is marked by the premiere of a new work for string quartet commissioned by the Society.

A collection is made at the end of each Young Artists concert to help finance future City Music Society Young Artists concerts.

Seats cannot be guaranteed after 1.00pm.

Limited standing is permitted at the discretion of the Society.

Latecomers are only admitted during a suitable pause in the programme.

All programmes are subject to change at short notice.

The City Music Society reserves the right to refuse admission.

Please note that City Music Society concerts are not suitable for children under the age of 8 and the Society reserves the right to refuse entry to children under that age.


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20th January 2022

Maurizio Arroyo Reyes piano

 
Brahms
Capriccios Op.76, Nos.1 & 2
Albéniz
El Albaicín
Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Maurizio Arroyo Reyes was the winner of The Musicians’ Company’s Carnwath Piano Scholarship in 2020. Following studies at the Real Conservatorio Superio de Musica in Madrid, Maurizio has developed his skills and experience at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He demonstrates his virtuosity and musicality in Mussorgsky’s majestic suite of vivid descriptions of paintings by Viktor Hartmann, providing a striking contrast with one of Albéniz’s gorgeous pieces from his suite Iberia.

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27th January 2022

Ben Tarlton cello
Stephen Gutman piano
Beethoven
Cello Sonata No.4 in C Op.102, No.1
Schumann
Three Romances Op.94
Messiaen
Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (from Quartet for the End of Time)
Bartók
Rhapsody No.1


Welsh-born Ben Tarlton studied at the Yehudi Menhuin School and the Guildhall School of Music. He was a finalist in the Royal Over-Seas League strings competition in 2021 and a Guildhall Gold Medal finalist in 2020. His many awards include the David Goldman Award from The Musicians’ Company and the Suggia Gift of Help Musicians UK. A specialist in French piano music, Stephen Gutman is an active player of chamber music, an author and presenter of masterclasses and lectures on Baroque and contemporary music.

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3rd February 2022

Ensemble Hesperi
Mary-Jannet Leith recorders
Magdalena Loth-Hill baroque violin
Florence Petit baroque cello
Thomas Allery harpsichord
photo: GM Isserlis
Echoes of London: Baroque Music from Europe’s musical capital

Blow
Trio Sonata in A

Bannister
Divisions on a Ground
Purcell
Sonatas of Three Parts No. 1 in G minor

Handel
Trio Sonata in F HWV 389

Oswald

Airs for Autumn; Airs for Spring
Matteis
Ground after the Scotch Humour


In 2020 Ensemble Hesperi were the joint winners of the London International Festival of Early Music Ensemble. Their programme showcases works by the most celebrated composers active in London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Rapidly becoming the musical hub of Europe during this period, London attracted French and Italian musicians who had a significant influence on home-grown composers such as Purcell and Banister while the Scot James Oswald raised the popularity of Scottish tunes even with the Italian Nicola Matteis.


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10th February 2022

Alkyona Quartet
Emma Purslow violin
Marike Kruup violin
Joseph Fisher viola
Jobine Siekman cello
 
The 2,000th City Music Society lunchtime concert
   
Adam Kornas
Paradise Lost (first performance – commissioned by City Music Society)
Shostakovich
Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor Op.108
Mendelssohn
Quartet in F minor Op.80

Formed in London in 2018, the Alkyona Quartet took the Greek name of the kingfisher to link the flash of the bird’s flight to the fleeting musical moment. Winners of the Tunnell Trust Award and selected artists on the Making Music scheme as winners of the Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists Award in 2020, the quartet undertakes the world premiere of Adam Kornas’s commission, funded by a legacy from former Honorary Secretary of the Society, Ursula Overbury.
 

The audience is invited to a post-concert wine reception in the Cloisters to celebrate City Music Society’s 2,000th lunchtime concert.
 
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17th February 2022

RCM Wind Ensemble
Simon Channing director
Joseph Horovitz
 Fantasia on a theme of Couperin
Richard Strauss
Symphony for Wind Instruments 'Fröhliche Werkstatt' for 16 wind instruments

After a year’s absence the Royal College of Music’s Wind Ensemble makes a very welcome return with one of Richard Strauss’s most significant late works his ‘Happy Workshop’ echoing the great wind serenades and partita of Mozart. Alongside it the ensemble plays one of the most popular compositions by RCM Emeritus Professor Joseph Horovitz, composer of the famous Rumpole of the Bailey TV theme.

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24th February 2022
Dramma per Musica
Rory Carver tenor
Harry Buckoke viola da gamba
Jonatan Bougt theorbo and chitarrone
photo: Robert Piwko

Metamorphoses
Marco da Gagliano
Ovidio’s prologue (from La Dafne)
Marco da Gagliano
Un guardo (from La Dafne)
Lully
Le sacrifice de Mars (from Cadmus et Hermione)
Lully
Belle Hermione (from Cadmus et Hermione)
Lully
Ah! si la liberté (from Armide)
Henry Lawes 
A tale out of Anacreon
Lawes
Slide soft, you silver floods
Lawes
A storm
Monteverdi
Rosa del ciel (from L’Orfeo)
Kapsberger
Toccata
Caccini
Non piango e non sospiro (from L’Euridice)
Purcell
O! fair Cedaria
Lawes
Orpheus’ Hymn to God
van Eyck
Doen Daphne d'over schoone Maeght
Cavalli
 Delizie contenti (from Il Giasone)
Dramma per Musica’s formal debut was part of the Brighton Early Music Festival’s young artist scheme in 2018 since when they have performed extensively throughout the UK and Europe.
Seeking ‘drama through music’ the ensemble explores the wide influence of the poet Ovid and of the characters in his masterpiece as 17th-century composers and librettists sought classical models of musical expression.

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3rd March 2022

Turadh Quartet
Abigail Young violin
Michelle Dierx violin
Theodore Chung Lei viola
Balázs Renczés cello

Beethoven

Quartet in C minor Op.18 No.4

Debussy

Quartet Op.10

Formed by four close friends who met whilst studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Turadh Quartet was awarded a Maisie Lewis Young Artist concert in the Purcell Room by the Musicians’ Company in 2019.
A truly international group, consisting of musicians from Scotland, The Netherlands, Singapore and Hungary, the quartet plays Debussy’s 1893 Quartet, described by Pierre Boulez as freeing chamber music ‘from rigid structure, frozen rhetoric and rigid aesthetics.’
 
Concert dedicated to the memory of Geoffrey Lewis, former Vice-President of City Music Society


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10th March 2022

Yuko Sano piano

Haydn
Fantasia in C HobXVII:4

J.S. Bach

French Suite No.5 in G BWV816
Schubert
Fantasie in C Op.15 D760 (Wanderer Fantasy)


Multi-award-winning pianist Yuko Sano is known for her virtuosity and magical sound. Born in Tokyo she has enjoyed an international career since the age of eight when she made her debut in Salzburg. Studies at the Tokyo University of the Arts and the Liszt Academy in Budapest were followed by a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London where she won many prizes and completed her MA. She contrasts the cool classicism of Haydn and the precision and dance-like character of Bach’s Suite with Schubert’s formidable and emotionally-charged Wanderer Fantasy..



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17th March 2022

Trinity Laban String Ensemble
Nic Pendelebury director

Vivaldi

The Four Seasons

From the bird song of Spring to the cracking of ice in Winter, Vivaldi captures the extraordinary sounds of the changing seasons in his iconic work. In this fresh interpretation, which combines music, naturalistic sounds and movement, the score is brought to life in new ways by the senior string ensemble of Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

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24th March 2022

Thomas Kelly piano
Photo: Liz Isles

Beethoven

Sonata in E Major Op.14 No.1

Brahms

4 Klavierstücke Op.119

Medtner

Skazki (Fairytales) Op.20, No.2

Glazunov/Blumenfeld

Concert Waltz Op.47, No.1 

The 22-year-old pianist Thomas Kelly achieved a remarkable success in reaching the final of the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition as one of the youngest competitors and his performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto was greeted with praise for his original approach to such a familiar work. A student at the Royal College of Music, he has already garnered success in many other competitions and in 2020 won The Musicians’ Company Beethoven Medal.
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For further information about these concerts please contact
Leslie.East1@btopenworld.com

Latest update: 29 December 2021
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