56TH LITTLE MISSENDEN FESTIVAL

World class artists in the intimacyof a lovely old village church

2nd to 11th October 2015

Welcome to the Little Missenden Festival.

This brochure tells you whats on in October 2015, and howto get tickets.

We look forward to seeing youat some of our events.

56th LITTLE MISSENDEN FESTIVAL OF MUSIC AND THE ARTS

Interior of Little Missenden Church Eric Hardy

Can you help the Festival?The Little Missenden Festival is managed and runentirely by volunteers. We have an excellent team, butwere always looking for new skills and more help. Forexample at the moment wed like to find helpers who:

are willing to host visiting artists from time to time, or meet them off trains are comfortable using the internet could lend a hand with occasional tasks filling

envelopes, collections and deliveries, etc

We also need a new secretary, since Jenny Hesketh is leaving the area next year.

If youd like to discuss the possibility of helpingplease contact Jenny Hesketh, tel: 01494 864 432,email: jennyhesketh@talktalk.net

8.00pm, Little Missenden Church

Event 1 Friday 2nd October

Four hands on two pianos The power of two pianos

Igor Stravinsky Petrushka Johannes Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn, op56b Sergei Rachmaninov Suite no 1 in G minor, op5 Witold Lutoslawski Variations on a theme by Paganini

Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen pianos

Three years ago these two pianists gave us a stunning and unforgettable performance of Stravinskys Rite of Spring. Now theyre back, playing a pair of state-of-the-art Fazioli grands.

Stravinskys moving ballet Petrushka deals with the loves and jealousies of three fairground puppets who come to life. Petrushka loves the Ballerina; she rejects him, preferring the Moor; he challenges the Moor, who kills him with his scimitar; Petrushkas

ghost rises defiantly above the puppet theatre and collapses.

Brahmss variations on the noble St Anthony Chorale theme is one of his best loved works. The two-piano score (written and performed before the more familiar orchestral version) brings out the clarity of the writing.

Rachmaninov dedicated this attractive and romantic suite to Tchaikovsky a lyrical Barcarolle with glittering decoration, a passionate love song, a sadly falling Largo and a hypnotic chant over ostinato bells.

Finally, Lutoslawskis exhilarating, sprightly (and utterly delightful) variations on the theme from demon fiddler Paganinis 24th Caprice.

Katya Apekisheva is one of Europes foremost pianists, a prize-winner at the Leeds and Scottish piano competitions and a profoundly gifted artist (Gramophone), whose power and temperament remind me of Martha Argerich (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow).

Charles Owen has been described as Out of the best school of British pianism bright, sensitive, unaffected and with playing informed by brainwork (Glasgow Herald), and one of the finest British pianists of his generation (Gramophone).

Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva are superb pianists in their own right as a duo they make more than the sum of their parts (Michael Church, The Independent)

Both are Professors of Piano at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

www.katyaapekisheva.com www.charlesowen.net

Tickets 20 15 8Concert in memory of Michael Cox

Katya Apekisheva Georgia-Bertazzi

Charles Owen John Batten

Chaplin films and their music Carl Davis

Recreating Chaplins music

Ever wish you could go to the Saturday Morning Pictures again? Heres your chance.

Charlie Chaplin came to Hollywood in 1913 earning $150 a week, but his rise was meteoric by 1917 he was getting more than the President of the United States, and about to become one of the most famous people in the world.

A series of 12 short comedy films (The Mutuals) was the turning point. They unlocked Chaplins latent genius, and established his comic alter ego, The Tramp. He learned very fast what worked and what didnt.

Live music was often improvised for silent films, but this doesnt survive. One of the great names in putting the music back into silent film is Carl Davis. Hell explain how he created music for Chaplins early two-reelers, with clips from The Mutuals and a complete showing of The Adventurer, featuring key hallmarks of Chaplins work: gags; a chase sequence; and social commentary.

Carl Daviss career spans many genres. He re-invented the silent movie for a new generation (including a score for Abel Gances famous

five-hour Napoleon), and created documentaries about Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. He wrote the music for many new films (from Up Pompeii to The French Lieutenants Woman and The Great Gatsby), and numerous TV programmes, including The World at War, Pride and Prejudice and Cranford.

www.carldaviscollection.com

10.00am, Little Missenden Village Hall

Event 2 Saturday 3rd October

Visit www.little-missenden.org

Tickets 10 unreserved

Chaplin,The Adventurer

Chaplin,The Adventurer

Carl Davis Trevor Leighton

Chaplin photographs from the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment.

3.00pm, Little Missenden Village Hall

Event 3Saturday 3rd October

Tickets 8 unreserved

Goya portraits Illustrated lecture by Gail Turner

Goya exhibition preview

Gail Turner lectures on Goyas portraits a few days before the National Gallerys Autumn exhibition opens.

Goya designed many colourful tapestries, produced hundreds of satirical etchings and painted an influential range of political works; but in his powerful and original portraits he turns his critical and merciless eye directly onto his contemporaries.

Goya was the most sought-after portrait painter in Spain, and his sitters were from many different social spheres: politicians, architects, aristocrats, actresses, bankers, bullfighters, friends, relations and towering over them all the extraordinarily unattractive members of the Spanish Royal Family. We can

marvel now at how daringly unflattering he could be and how he got away with such provocative work.

Gail Turner read History at Oxford University and has an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute. She has taught at the Cambridge University International Summer School and currently teaches at the V&A and the Courtauld Institute Summer School. She lectures to NADFAS, The Art Fund and many other art organisations. HM the King of Spain recently awarded her the Encomienda de Isabel la Catolica (equivalent of the CBE) for her work promoting Spanish art and culture in Britain.

www.gailturner.co.uk

Christmas EventSee inside back cover for details of an intriguing Christmas concert featuring The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments.

Juan de Villanueva(Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid)

Clare Salaman and Benedicte Maurseth

5.00pm, Little Missenden Church

Event 4Saturday 3rd October

Oxford Lieder Young Artists prizewinners The magic of song

Robert Schumann Dichterliebe, op48 Henri Duparc La vie antrieure, Le manoir de Rosemonde, Phidyl Gerald Finzi Let us garlands bring, op18 Josep-Ramon Oliv baritone Ben-San Lau piano

Schumanns Dichterliebe cycle is one of his finest and best loved compositions, born of his struggle to marry Clara against her fathers wishes. His success unleashed a great outpouring of magnificent songs. The Dichterliebe settings, about the pain and joy of love lost and found, are tender, passionate, sad, defiant, angry but unfailingly tuneful and deeply moving.

Duparc was a reticent and ailing genius whose total output of songs was no

bigger than Dichterliebe yet this tiny volume of work sets him firmly among the great songwriters. These perfect settings of three superb texts are among his best and couldnt sound more French!

Finally, a quintessentially English set: Finzis five Shakespeare settings, Let us garlands bring. These were dedicated to Vaughan Williams, who thought Fear no more the heat o the sun one of the loveliest songs hed ever heard.

These two exceptionally talented performers won the 2015 Oxford Lieder Young Artists Competition.

Barcelona-born Josep-Ramon Oliv is studying Opera at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He recently won the Paul Hamburger Prize; and 2nd Prize at both the 20th International Singing Competition of Mcon and the 7th International Singing Competition of Balaguer.

Ben-San Lau took a Guildhall Masters degree with distinction in piano accompaniment. He is a Britten-Pears Young Artist. Graham Johnson chose him for the 2013 Song Guild concert of Schubert Lieder. He has collaborated with Iain Burnside, and taken masterclasses with Malcolm Martineau and Roger Vignoles.

www.josepramonolive.cat www.oxfordlieder.co.uk

Tickets 12 unreservedConcert supported by Oxford Lieder

Josep-Ramon Oliv

Ben-San Lau

8.00pm, Little Missenden Church

Event 5Saturday 3rd October

Nikki Iles & Tina May Terrific voice-and-piano jazz

Nikki Iles piano Tina May vocals Dave Green bass Steve Brown drums

Nikki Iles is one of the UKs foremost jazz pianists and composers. Her sensitive yet swinging playing provides the perfect foil for the vocal talents of Tina May, renowned for her interpretations of the great jazz repertoire to which she often adds Francophile lyricism and a cinematic European twist.

Iles is one of the most refreshing and promising figures to have emerged in the UK in recent times, with a liquid sound and supple, obliquely resolved phrasing as an improviser (Guardian)

There is a lot of very routi