These once or twice monthly Friday afternoon sessions organised by Barry Millington have become seriously popular. They are at 2.30 and complimentary tea and biscuits follow. Admission is £2 for Fellowship Members and £4 for non Members. Programme details as follows:
Friday 3rd May 2.30pm
Thelma Exhumed
Stephen Anthony Brown
In demand as a tenor, choir trainer and teacher, Stephen Anthony Brown has sung at most of the UK’s major concert halls and cathedrals in roles such Bach’s Evangelists and Elgar’s Gerontius. He has also prepared choirs for some of the world’s greatest conductors including Simon Rattle, Leonard Bernstein, Lorin Maazel and Richard Hickox.
He has specialist knowledge of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an iconic figure in black British music history and was responsible for the transcription of Coleridge-Taylor’s recently discovered opera Thelma, the premiere of which he conducted in 2012.
In this session he will be introducing the music of Coleridge-Taylor and his long-lost opera.
Friday 17th May 2.30pm
A Composer in Decline?
Richard Wigmore
Robert Schumann’s final breakdown in early 1854 has long coloured perceptions of his later music. Until recently much of it was dismissed as the product of a tired, disturbed mind. Schumann’s style certainly changed over the years. But as Richard Wigmore suggests, later does not necessarily equal inferior. To illustrate his talk Richard draws on works from the darkly brooding Manfred Overture, via songs and chamber music, to the Violin Concerto which was suppressed by Schumann’s widow Clara and only ‘rediscovered’ in the 1930s.