Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Final call! Plus November update

Dave & me taking a sort of bow
Final Ghost Variations Concert klaxon of the year: tomorrow, 3 November, at the Barnes Music Society, my ace and beloved duo colleagues - the dastardly David Le Page (violin) and the vivacious Viv McLean (piano) - and I are proud to be presenting our show for its final performance of 2016. It's the last one for a little while, so if you want to hear it I recommend showing up at the Old Sorting Office, Station Road, Barnes, London SW13 tomorrow evening for a 7.30pm start.

The programme includes music by Bartók, Brahms, Ravel, Mendelssohn, Hubay, FS Kelly and Schumann, all of it chosen for its relevance to the story and most of it intimately connected with Jelly d'Arányi.

All details at the Barnes Music Society website. See you there!

And meanwhile...

HUNGARIAN DANCES is back! This autumn has marked the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and we are commemorating this with two performances in the north of England, one at the Helmsley Arts Centre in North Yorkshire on 12 November and the other at The Sage, Gateshead, on 22 November. The magical Bradley Creswick is the violinist, with the equally magical Margaret Fingerhut at the piano, and the story of Mimi Rácz's journey across the 20th century - from Roma child to celebrated soloist to exiled great-grandmother - is brought to life in music including Dohnányi, Dinicu, Debussy and much more. The venues are special delights, as Helmsley was host to my play back in July with the Ryedale Festival, and The Sage was where the whole phenomenon of the novel-concerts really took off: they commissioned the Hungarian Dances project for the Fiddles on Fire Festival back in 2009, so really this is going home.

On a totally different tack, next week, on 9 November, I'm delighted to be chairing a pre-concert women composers' panel discussion at the London Festival of American Music, under the auspices of Odaline de la Martinez.

Busy month ahead, which is fine.