Working with Giants

Our Education Manager Gillian, explains how music educators help students to tackle Mozart.

Many of you will have heard of the ‘Mozart effect’ – the popular belief that ‘listening to Mozart makes you smarter’. Indeed, there has been academic research which indicates as much, and this coupled with vast amounts of anecdotal evidence, has parents and teachers switching over to Classic FM in an effort to increase children’s brain power. All this can only be good news for those of us tasked with teaching classical music to children.Young children are innately curious about where music comes from and are fascinated by meeting live musicians and seeing orchestral instruments being played up close. In the orchestral outreach sector, we teach from a starting point that all children should have the opportunity to see and hear live professional musicians and we are passionate about exposing children to ‘real’ orchestral repertoire.

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The breadth of Mozart’s work makes it incredibly straightforward to expose children to his music, live. Musicians who visit schools often, without prompting choose to play a Mozart excerpt to illustrate their instruments. From his horn concertos to the violin sonatas, Mozart was a master of writing for a specific instrument. His melodies let the instrument they were written for really sing and illustrate brilliantly what makes a flute’s sound different from that of an oboe.

When learning about classical music, there is often a dichotomy between the enjoyable act of listening to the music and the often perceived ‘dry’ nature of studying and analysing its style and form. As with understanding Shakespeare, we must ensure that the experience of the opera (or play, or symphony) is intertwined with the understanding of its form and meaning. Additionally, we can deepen this understanding by further integrating the study of the composer – or playwright himself. Mozart’s playful ‘Presto’ movements, for example in his chamber works and symphonies, are so easy to engage with when we imagine the playful nature of Mozart’s character. Understanding Mozart’s relationship with his father makes the plot of his opera Don Giovanni all the more gripping. In short, integrating the ways in which we teach and learn Mozart (and indeed Shakespeare), not separating the musical from the historical, the listening from the analysing, the drama from the form, is a positive way forward to making the topic exciting and relevant.

To read the full article visit the Teaching Shakespeare website

 

CLoSer part two - in words and pictures

Our second CLoSer concert at Village Underground played to a packed crowd on Wednesday 29 February, when the Holst Singers and baritone Derek Welton joined us as Guest Artists. We thought we'd share with you some of the best photos from the night and what the audience had to say:

"Great music - venue warmed by a a fantastic orchestra"

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"Think that might have been my favourite concert in a while; got the whole relaxed thing pitched just right"

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"Incomparable polyphony, musical alchemy!"

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"wonderful programming (incredibly varied), hushed audience, informal atmosphere, excellent musicians & gorgeous setting!"

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"Totally brilliant. Say no more!"

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The final concert in the series will be a jazz finale extraordinaire, when we’ll be joined by Guest Artist and renowned jazz pianist Gwilym Simcock, who’ll be joining the orchestra to perform some of his own compositions, as well as music by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Darius Milhaud.

Listen to our Spotify Playlist to hear some of the music to be performed on the night.

CLoSer
Wednesday 25 April, 7.30pm,
Village Underground, EC2A

Tickets: £15 (includes a free drink)/ Students £5
Box office: 020 7377 1362/spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk

Images: Clare Parker

Conquering the Antarctic Interview: Hugh Bonneville

Ahead of the final concert in our Conquering the Antarctic tour this Saturday, we caught up with Hugh Bonneville, acclaimed actor from ITV's Downton Abbey, to talk to him about his involvement in the tour.

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Image: Philip Thorne

What drew you to take part in the Conquering the Antarctic tour and what do you know about the story of Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole?
The story of Captain Scott is something that I have known about from childhood, like every boy and girl from my generation; one of the great adventures, albeit with a tragic ending. I remember from an early age being inspired by the grandeur and the ambition of the expedition, despite the tragic nature of it all. Of course it was 1912, the year of the Titanic and the year of Captain Scott, what a year! It’s full of schoolboy heroism but ultimate folly in the end; the flawed ambition of Empire.

Captain Scott's final diaries are at the heart of the concert tour; do you keep a diary? If so how long have you kept one for and why?
I haven’t kept a diary since I was 18!  It was usually full of what a terrible result I had in a football match; why wasn’t I any good at goalkeeping?


To read the diaries of Captain Scott in the context of the Vaughan Williams music (which will be performed alongside the readings in the concert) is very moving. You see the confidence with which the polar party set out, the camaraderie of the men and Scott’s admiration for his team; the great chemistry between the men and Scott’s determination to keep his leadership up, despite the will, gradually beginning to slip away.


He definitely ranks up there alongside the great adventurers such as Shackleton and Mallory. I think his tremendous spirit of adventure and daringness to fail ranks him alongside any hero. Flawed as they may be, they were all prepared to push themselves and what is known about the world, to its limits.

Have you ever had any desire to be an explorer and if so where would you go and what would you explore?
I’m a good map reader but a hopeless explorer! I’d love to go to parts of the world that are remote, but I’d be hopeless in icy conditions. I’m fascinated by rivers that hide their source. I did some wandering during my GAP year travels, but that was in several degrees of comfort compared to what these guys experienced. I wouldn’t last five seconds in Bear Grylls back garden, let alone out in the field with him!

What was your first experience with music? Do you play an instrument?
I can’t pretend to be a musician.  My parents are very keen concert goers and my first conscious memory of music is my Dad playing an LP of Faure’s Requiem. My father is an excellent pianist and his effortless technique on the piano made me furious every time I tried to plink out my Grade One. I then took up the clarinet, which remains one of my favourite instruments, which I absolutely love, and only wish I’d kept going.

What's the hardest and also the most satisfying part of being involved in the Downton Abbey phenomenon?
The hardest thing is trying to keep track of which part of the world has seen which series and making sure you’re not giving the game away in press conferences. The most satisfying thing is to be involved in a show that has caught the imagination of so many people around the world; it doesn’t happen very often in your career. We've started back at Downton Abbey already. And no, I’m can’t tell you what happens in Series Three, I’ve only read up to Episode Two!

Conquering the Antarctic
3 March 2012

Cadogan Hall, London

Composer Focus: Igor Stravinsky

Ahead of our performance of Stravinsky's Mass with the Holst Singers at Wednesday's CLoSer, we profile the composer, one of the most innovative of the twentieth century.

 

Stravinsky

Born on 18 June 1882, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky spent much of his childhood in St Petersburg, where his father, Fyodor Stravinsky, was a famous bass singer at the Mariinsky Theatre. The young Stravinsky studied law for several years, before switching to study music privately with the celebrated Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1909, he found fame with his composition The Firebird, which Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris, encouraged him to transform into a full-length ballet.

In 1910, Stravinsky moved to Paris and was commissioned by Diagilev to write further ballets for the Ballets Russes. Petrushka, set in a Russian fairground, followed The Firebird. Stravinsky’s next ballet, The Rite of Spring, which premiered in Paris on 29 May 1913, received one of the most notorious reactions in the history of classical music, when it was booed and ridiculed by the audience. Fist fights and catcalls greeted the highly unconventional choreography, instrumentation and use of dissonance in the orchestra. The police were called to attempt to quell what quickly became a riot.

Some believe that the scale of the unrest was exaggerated by Dagliev and Stravinsky, who courted controversy and desired to be seen as innovators. However, The Rite of Spring undoubtedly broke new ground in composition. Its story is based on a ‘primitive,’ pagan ceremony, and it contains challenging and stirring rhythms of early pagan Russia. It was to remain Stravinsky’s most famous work, and established his reputation as a premier composer of the twentieth century.

From Paris, Stravinsky, his wife Katerina and young children moved to Switzerland, where they spent the war years, returning in 1920. In this period, Stavinsky began to experiment with the inflections, harmonies and rhythms of jazz, and later, turned to a neo-classical style with, for example, his ballet Pulcinella (1919-1920) and his choral work the Symphony of Psalms (1930).  In the 1930s, he began to develop professional relationships with key figures in American music. Following the worst couple of years of his life (beginning with the death of his eldest daughter Ludmila in 1938, the death of his mother in 1939, and, finally, the death of his wife of thirty three years, Katerina, from tuberculosis also in 1939), Stravinsky decided to move to the United States with Vera de Bosset, with whom he had been having an affair since 1921. They married in 1940.

Stravinsky became a naturalised US citizen in 1945, the third nationality he had taken in his life (after Russian and French). He socialised with a crowd of European intellectuals and artists in Los Angeles, including the British writers W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Dylan Thomas and Aldous Huxley. His Mass was also produced during this time (1944-1948) and is written with a French and Russian-sounding, neo-classical aesthetic. However, after meeting Robert Craft, the musicologist who would go on to live with him as an interpreter, chronicler, and assistant conductor for the rest of his life, he began to be more committed to the use of serial compositional techniques such as dodecaphony, the twelve-tone technique.  This generally characterises his compositions from the mid-1950s, but he was never restricted by the musical forms he chose to use, and remained a highly original and inventive composer for the rest of his life. He died in New York in 1971.

 

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Stravinsky, as drawn by Picasso

 

Listen to Stravinsky’s Mass on our Spotify playlist

Read our CLoSer FAQs for more information on the concert series.

CLoSer: Spirit of the Voice
Wednesday 29 Feb, 7.30pm
Village Underground

 

Stravinsky's Mass

The second concert in our innovative, informal series, CLoSer, will focus on the human voice with a performance by CLS and the Holst Singers of Stravinsky's Mass.

Stravinsky began work on his Mass in 1944, completing the Kyrie and Gloria towards the end of that year. Pausing to work on other projects, he returned to the Mass in 1947, finally completing all the movements in 1948. He rarely wrote non-commissioned music, so is believed by his friend Robert Craft (the American conductor and writer) to have written his Mass out of ‘spiritual necessity.’

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Although he was devoted to the religious content, Stravinsky chose to write a Roman Catholic mass, despite being a member of the Russian Orthodox Church.  His reasons for doing this were practical ones: he was committed to creating a Mass that would be performed in liturgical circumstances, and, given that he disliked the sound of unaccompanied singing, couldn’t write for the Russian Orthodox Church, which forbids any music but the human voice and bells. The Roman Catholic Church permits instrumentation on religious occasions so provided the right vehicle for Stravinsky’s small wind ensemble and four-part choir.

Despite Stravinsky’s desire that the Mass be used liturgically, it has almost always been performed in concert since its first performance at La Scala in Milan in 1948. It remains, however, deeply committed to the affirmation of faith. Although he denied that he was influenced by any particular composer or composition, Stravinsky uses a chanting style of singing that is reminiscent of monastic chant, a style that, despite his tendency to put musical stresses on unstressed words, preserves the text of the mass and connects his work to older Christian musics.

His commitment to the spiritual content is, appropriately, particularly apparent in the Credo, about which Stravinsky is quoted by Robert Craft as saying “One composes a march to facilitate marching men, so with my Credo I hope to provide an aid to the text. The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe.” 

 Listen to Stravinsky’s Mass on our Spotify playlist

 

CLoSer: Spirit of the Voice
Wednesday 29 Feb, 7.30pm
Village Underground

CLoSer Interview: Holst Singers

We caught up with Will Davies from the Holst Singers, our Guest Artists at our next CLoSer concert, to find out more about this extraordinary choir.

Holst Singers, what are the origins of the choir and its name?
We were founded in 1978 under Hilary Davan Wetton, but for almost two decades have been conducted by our Musical Director Stephen Layton, who has shaped and nurtured the celebrated sound we make. I believe our name was actually taken from the Holst Room at St Paul’s Girls’ School where we originally rehearsed in the early days - so I guess we are named after the composer, but not directly!

How many singers in the choir? What’s the average profile of a Holstie? (if there is such a thing!)
We have a core of about 40 singers who are the ‘regulars’, who you’ll catch performing at most concerts. I’m not sure there is an ‘average’ Holstie! I suppose most of us are graduates with a chapel choir background, so Oxford and Cambridge feature fairly heavily in the choir’s make-up. Outside of that, we’re a very varied bunch, a whole range of ages and occupations. Without wanting to sound too cheesy, the thing that unites us all is music. I think we’re in a unique position as an institution– we’re one of the nation’s top-flight choirs, but we work entirely as a self-run amateur outfit, with no subscription fees or anything like that. It means that everyone involved is there to concentrate on the music-making; it works really well for us.

What is it like working with CLS Artistic Director Stephen Layton?
In short, truly inspiring. He’s one of the world’s greatest choral conductors, and it shows. He always seems to know exactly what he wants to achieve with the music, from the broad sweep of a piece to the subtle nuances. What’s great is that he knows how to get us to produce the performance he wants; he works us hard, but it’s always worth it for the end result.

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What’s the range of the choir’s repertoire? Do you enjoy performing newly-commissioned work, or prefer more established repertoire?
We love getting our teeth into a wide range of repertoire. I suppose we have a reputation for performing works in the very loose category of ‘unjustly neglected a cappella gems’ – works by Baltic composers like Tormis and Ešenvalds for instance, or the Russian Orthodox music on our Ikon recordings. We’re also actively involved in performing new commissions, from premiering Tavener’s Veil of the Temple to working with Imogen Heap on her soundtrack to The Seashell and the Clergyman.

Talk us through the pieces you’re performing for CLoSer.
We’re performing two pieces, Stravinsky’s Mass and Immortal Bach by Knut Nystedt. The Stravinsky is a great work. It’s quite severe, almost bleak at times, but beautiful with it. It’s scored for choir and a fairly small wind ensemble, and you get these wonderful moments of sparse, dissonant instrumental writing with the choir almost chanting the text, especially in the Credo. That’s probably the most challenging movement for us – not because it’s particularly difficult musically, but because he treats the text in a really counterintuitive way. Instead of setting it in the ‘usual’ way (accented and inflected as one might speak it, with expression) he produces a sort of muttering mantra; it’s this kind of ‘march of belief’, which is surprisingly tricky to get your head around at first.

Immortal Bach is really interesting – Nystedt takes the first two lines of the chorale Komm, süßer Tod and deconstructs them. You hear the unadulterated chorale first and then you hear it transformed, by dividing the choir into separate groups who sing each phrase of the chorale at different speeds, coming together at the cadence points before continuing onwards. It’s a bit tricky to explain without a choir on hand to demonstrate, but it’s very effective – the result is this fantastic smeary collage of Bach.

What do you hope the audience take away from your performance on 29 February?
I hope they get an impression of how the human voice can speak powerfully to you, in unexpected ways. I think the thing that connects the music we’ll be performing is that neither piece uses voices conventionally, to wring emotion from words or to make you say, “Oh, what a lovely tune”. The Nystedt is in a sense just the application of a simple mathematical rubric to a Bach chorale, and the Stravinsky is ascetic, austere music; and yet both produce this captivating atmosphere.

What would the Holst Singers desert island discs be and why?
Ah, now this is going be tricky. I’d have trouble enough doing my own, letting alone trying to speak for the whole choir – I’m inevitably going to get lynched when they see this! “How could you miss out Spem in alium?!” Ah well, here goes…
I think we need something early in there. Let’s have Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, because it’s pretty damn fit, especially the way the Kyrie kicks off; I could listen to that soaring-and-descending motif go round and round all day. It would be rude not to have anything Slavic on the island, let’s cram the Rachmaninov Vespers in the bag too. Last one… we need something English in there too. This’ll be a controversial one, but let’s go for the Vaughan Williams Shakespeare Songs. The middle movement is the sexiest thing ever. Wait. We get a full set of sheet music for these on the island too, right?!

CLoSer: Spirit of the Voice
Weds 29 February, 7.30pm
Village Underground, Shoreditch

Poulenc Suite Francaise
JS Bach French Suite
Poulenc Le Bal Masque
Nystedt Immortal Bach
Stravinsky Mass

100 years ago...

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On January 17 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his team reached the South Pole, becoming the second team to do so after Roald Amundsen’s expedition a month before. Our Conquering the Antarctic concert tour commemorates a hundred years since Captain Scott’s adventure, celebrating the incredible human endurance and scientific achievement of the Antarctic mission of 1910-1912.

But what else happened in that eventful year?  


1 JANUARY:
The Republic of China is formally established on mainland China, following the Xinhai Revolution. The Republic replaced the Qing Dynasty and ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China.

17 JANUARY:
Captain Scott
and his team reach the South Pole.

12 FEBRUARY:
Chinese boy emperor P'ui-I abdicates but is permitted to live in the Forbidden City, where he remains until 1924.

17 FEBRUARY:
Edgar Evans is the first of Scott's team to die.

4 MARCH:
From her exile in France, Christabel Pankhurst decides the Women’s Social and Political Union needs to intensify its window-breaking campaign. A group of suffragettes takes action in London’s West End and storms government offices in Whitehall. 200 suffragettes are arrested.

16 MARCH:
Lawrence Oates
, aware that he is holding up the team’s progress, leaves the tent, saying ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.'

29 MARCH:
Around this time, the three remaining expedition members, Bowers, Wilson and Scott, die.

15 APRIL:
The ‘unsinkable’ ship Titanic, one of the biggest and most luxurious ships ever built, strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean. She sinks the following day with the loss of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

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5 MAY:
The 1912 Olympic Games open in Stockholm, the only full Games ever to have taken place in Sweden. During the games, the Portuguese marathon runner Francisco Lázaro died from a heart attack, the first athlete in the modern Olympics to die during the competition. The games also featured the world's longest wrestling match: a Greco-Roman Wrestling bout between Martin Klein and Alfred Asikainen that lasted 11 hours and forty minutes.

8 MAY:
Paramount Pictures, the oldest American motion picture studio still in operation, is founded by Hungarian-born Adolph Zukor in Hollywood, California.

16 APRIL:
Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel. She dies in an aviation accident on July 1st.

20 APRIL:
Bram Stoker
, author of Dracula, dies aged 65.

22 APRIL:
Kathleen Ferrier, contralto, is born.

30 MAY:
Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer (with his brother Orville), dies aged 45.

26 JUNE:
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is premiered in Vienna by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bruno Walter.

4 AUGUST:
The United States occupies Nicaragua with the aim of preventing any other nation from building the Nicaraguan canal.

13 AUGUST:
Death of Jules Massenet, composer, aged 60.

23 AUGUST:
Gene Kelly, actor, singer and dancer, is born.

 

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1 SEPTEMBER:
Death of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, composer, aged 37.

5 SEPTEMBER:
John Cage, American composer, is born.

8 OCTOBER:
The Balkan League (Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, which had all achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire) attacks Turkey to free parts of their populations from Ottoman rule. The first Balkan War begins.

16 OCTOBER:
Pierrot-Lunaire by Schoenberg is premièred at the Berlin Choralion-Saal with Albertine Zehme as the vocalist. The work is atonal but does not use the twelve-tone technique that Schoenberg would devise eight years later.

12 NOVEMBER:
A search party led by Lt.-Surgeon Edward Atkinson discovers the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers inside their tent. They recover Scott's diary and other documents and perform a burial service. The expedition offically ends.

18 DECEMBER:
Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, is presented to the Geological Society of London. It was exposed in 1953 as a forgery consisting of the lower jawbone of an orang-utan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

 

Conquering the Antarctic - the Scott Centenary Concert Tour

A celebration in music, words and images

Stephen Layton, conductor
Robert Murray, tenor
Hugh Bonneville, narrator

3-8 February and 3 March 2012

Behind the Scenes Photos: Conquering the Antarctic rehearsal

Here's a sneaky peek of what happened in our first rehearsal for our upcoming tour, Conquering the Antarctic. It was our first chance to get our teeth stuck into Cecilia McDowall's new piece (written especially for the tour) Seventy Degrees Below Zero and to meet our narrator, actor Hugh Bonneville .

 

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Images: James Berry

We're now set to get on the road and celebrate the Scott centenary and this epic and inspiring story.

Conquering the Antarctic

3 Feb - Symphony Hall, Birmingham SOLD OUT

4 Feb - Corn Exchange Cambridge

7 Feb - St David's Hall, Cardiff

8 Feb - Town Hall, Cheltenham

3 Mar - Cadogan Hall, London Limited tickets available

 

Conquering the Antarctic - The Expedition

This, the latest blog post in the run up to our Conquering the Antarctic tour starting this week, follows on from Conquering the Antarctic - the Place and Conquering the Antarctic - the People. This time, we focus on the expedition itself.

Here are some interesting facts about the fascinatingTerra Nova expedition of 1910-1912...

Ship

 

  • More than 8,000 men volunteered to be part of the Terra Nova team.
  • £40,000 had to be raised for the trip (over £3 million in today’s money).
  • 20 ponies and 34 sledge dogs were taken to the Antarctic with the explorers. The animals had to be inoculated 10 times before the journey.
  • Temperatures reached -70 degrees Fahrenheit (around -57 degrees Celsius) during the trip. This formed the inspiration for Cecilia McDowall's new composition, Seventy Degrees Below Zero. 
  • Scott took two experimental motor sledges, which had never been used for an expedition like this before. One was lost when it fell through ice during the unloading of the ship; the other broke down after 50 miles (80 km).
  • The Terra Nova ship was the single most expensive item bought for the trip at £12,500.
  • The team also took a piano with them.
  • The Scott Polar Research Institute was founded using the residue of the money donated to the explorers’ families following their deaths.
  • Scott’s hut was restored by the Antarctic Heritage Trust and is now open to visitors (it was featured in Frozen Planet in 2011).

 

Conquering the Antarctic - the Scott Centenary Concert Tour

A celebration in music, words and images

Stephen Layton, conductor
Robert Murray, tenor
Hugh Bonneville, narrator

3-8 February and 3 March 2012

Flashback: L’Chaim

In this edition of Flashback, we look to 1998 and the launch of our L’Chaim, Living Music project, which is still going strong and celebrating ‘living music’ today.

 

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"In tandem with the commencement of Music for Children at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Education and Community Programme also launched L’Chaim, Living Music. This is an informal concert project at the Otto Schiff Housing Association (OSHA) for Jewish refugees of Nazi persecution. Most OSHA residents are of German or Austrian origin, and their combined rich cultural heritage and love of music has been the defining factor in helping to shape the project.

 

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"Based at seven different homes and sites throughout North London, L’Chaim, Living Music will provide a three-year rotating programme of classical, Jewish, folk, religious and coffee house music... Whilst physical frailty may now prevent some of the residents attending concerts elsewhere in London, this has not hindered their support and enthusiasm for this project, and they have been integral to the planning process, programming and structure from the outset.

 

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"A long list of composers and musical interests was drawn up by the residents, many of whom are musicians themselves. After this initial meeting, it was clear that musical interests veered strongly towards the German classical tradition, but that many OSHA residents also enjoy folk, religious, light classical and jazz music. With these interests in mind, the programme for the year was drawn up...

"Soon after this, a trio of musicians were booked for the first three visits to OSHA (Erika Klemperer, violin, Danny Lyness, viola, Jo Cole, cello) and...they devised the first concert programme (including complete works by Beethoven, Kodaly and Schubert.) The first visits were a great success, reaching over 70 residents and staff and instant feedback from the residents was overwhelmingly positive."


Extract from CLScapades newsletter 1998