A London Sketchbook

Thursday 20 August And available for 30 days after viewing

St Martin's StringsZeb Soanes Presenter

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square London WC2N 4JJTel: 020 7766 1100 Online: www.smitf.org

Welcome to Summer Online Festival 2020

St Martin’s is delighted to present St Martin’s Summer Online Festival. Our first concert series since March explores the musical heritage of St Martin’s and features a fresh look at our most-beloved repertoire. Although audiences will need to watch from home for now, all the concerts are recorded in St Martin’s and introduced by much loved BBC Radio 4 presenter and author Zeb Soanes. The performances are broadcast on Thursday evenings at 7.30pm, and available to watch for 30 days afterwards.

We open our summer online festival with this journey through the heart of musical London, including pieces performed in and around the church in the 17th and 18th centuries. Featuring well-known movements from Purcell’s Abdelazer and Handel’s Water Music, alongside part of Mozart’s London Sketchbook composed during his childhood London residency together with music by Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an extraordinary composer, violinist and conductor born in 1745 in Guadeloupe.

Please do keep an eye out for the next two concerts in our Summer Online Festival – A Celebration of Bach (27th August) and The Glories of Venice (3rd September) – tickets are available through the St Martin’s website.

As the impact of COVID-19 takes hold, we need people like you to keep helping us and the musicians we work with. Each concert in our festival costs around £2,000 to produce. If you are able to make a donation, please visit www.smitf.org/give.

Thank you for helping to keep our doors open this year.

Dr Andrew EarisDirector of Music

PROGRAMME

Kontratanz from The London Sketchbook – Mozart (1756-1791), arr. Rondeau (b.1848)

Rondeau from Abdelazer – Purcell (1659-1695)

Chaconne in G minor – Purcell

Suite from Water Music in F – Handel (1685-1759)i. Overture

ii. Air Iiii. Air II

iv. Bourréev. Hornpipe

Allegro assai from Quartet No 6 in D – Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799)

Suite from Water Music in G – Handeli. Minuet

ii. Rigaudon and Trioiii. Minuetiv. Gigue

Divertimento in D – Mozarti. Allegro

ii. Andante iii. Presto

PROGRAMME NOTESby Charlotte Marino

Kontratanz from The London Sketchbook Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart We open with a selection of Mozart’s London Sketchbook. The sketchbook is a set of 43 short pieces, lasting between 40 seconds and four minutes, written during the Mozart family’s Grand Tour of Europe. Composed above a barber shop next to St Martin’s, Mozart wrote this array when he was only eight as an exercise in notating his own inspiration without needing help. He had just learned how to use pen and ink, yet corrections by his father, Leopold, appear in rarity and in pencil only on the score.

First page of music from Mozart's "Londoner Skizzenbuch" 1764

Rondeau from Abdelazer Henry PurcellHenry Purcell was born in Westminster and sang as a chorister at Westminster Abbey for many years. Known as one of the greatest English composers, he learnt his craft as he progressed to the position of Organist of Westminster Abbey, where he spent time composing vast amounts of sacred vocal music. Throughout London, however, he was also in considerable demand for music of theatre productions and, later, he split his time between writing sacred music for the Abbey, Royal commissions and, of course, music for the theatre.

Abdelazer was composed by Purcell as incidental music for the revival of a play, written in the summer of 1695, the final year of his life. The suite transports us back to theatres, costumes, poetry, dance and melodies of the late 17th century, showcasing the variety of moods expected of incidental music of the time. The Rondeau is the most famous of the suite, as it was used by Benjamin Britten as thematic inspiration for his The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

Chaconne in G minor Henry PurcellThe G minor Chaconne was likely to have been written around 1680, when Purcell was composer in residence for the court violin band, Twenty-Four Violins. He took this job when he was merely 18, and used it as an opportunity to compose instrumental music as a way of teaching himself the rules of counterpoint. The piece may have been written as incidental music, or perhaps a lively dance, but sadly we don’t know a lot about it. The scoring is now for the established modern Italian quartet of two violins, a viola and a cello, but the piece may have been scored originally for four viols. Likewise, we are unsure as to why Purcell chose to name the music ‘Chacony’, rather than ‘Chaconne’, which is the common French title for a piece written over a repeating bass line. Regardless, the music is an astonishing example of the era’s mastery in growing musical tension, power and excitement with each repeated eight-bar phrase.

Suite from Water Music in F George Frideric HandelThe premiere of George Frideric Handel’s Water Music is recorded in The Daily Courant – the first British daily newspaper – as being on 17 July 1717. The composition arose in response to King George I's request for a concert on the River Thames, and Handel did not disappoint. King George boarded a Royal barge at Whitehall Palace and went on an excursion up the Thames towards Chelsea. Another barge containing 50 musicians performed the concert and Londoners adorned the river to enjoy the spectacle, with the Courant reporting that "the whole River in a manner was covered” with boats! When the Royal barge arrived at Chelsea, King George left his barge, but returned to it for the trip back down the river, where he enthusiastically demanded three more repeats of the music.

Handel (left) and King George I on the River Thames, 17 July 1717; painting by Edouard Hamman

Allegro assai from Quartet No 6 in D Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-GeorgesJoseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, but travelled to France at a young age. A prominent musician, Boulogne became conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris and was known for having similar compositional and stylistic finesse to Mozart. He was a regular performer of his own music at the Anacreontic Society in London, where professional Londoners would gather to enjoy the most current and fashionable of classical music. Boulogne was a leading force for the campaign to abolish slavery in Britain and France, and spent a lot of time championing for the cause in each country. British newspapers raved his eminence, “He plays seven instruments beyond any individual in the world, and speaks 26 languages, maintaining public theses in each. He walks around the various sciences like the master of each.” Boulogne enjoyed a close friendship and patronage with King George IV, who, being great Grandson of King George I (a Church Warden for St Martin’s), presented the Church with land and funds to build many of the buildings that stand here today.

Divertimento in D Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart The Divertimento in D is one of Mozart’s most famous and well-loved pieces from his extensive repertoire. By the age of 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Saltzburg court, which gave him the opportunity to compose in a great number of genres. This work is an example of that; inspired by music from around Europe during his family’s Grand Tour, the Divertimento demonstrates brilliant inventiveness and virtuosity. To echo the words of Alfred Einstein, “a masterpiece of masterpieces, on the smallest possible scale.”

PERFORMERS

St Martin's StringsZeb Soanes Presenter

Violin 1 Richard MiloneViolin 2 Ciaran McCabeViola Matthew QuenbyCello Adrian Bradbury

Double bass Jan Zahourek

Zeb Soanes is a trusted newsreader and reassuring voice of the Shipping Forecast to millions of listeners on BBC Radio 4. He is a regular on The News Quiz, has reported for From Our Own Correspondent, presented BBC Radio 3’s Saturday Classics and read for Poetry Please. Sunday Times readers voted him their favourite male voice on UK radio. On television he launched BBC Four, where he presented the BBC Proms.

He studied Creative Writing and Drama at UEA and has written for The Observer, Country Life and The Literary Review. His best-selling first book for children, Gaspard the Fox, illustrated by James Mayhew began a series of stories based on a real urban fox that visited him at home in London.

He trained as an actor and has earned a reputation as ‘the go-to person for music narration’ (Daily Telegraph) performing favourite orchestral works for children including Peter and the Wolf, Babar the Elephant and Paddington; his third book in the Gaspard series, Gaspard’s Foxtrot, has been adapted as a major new concert work by Jonathan Dove and will be touring the UK in 2021.

In recognition of his efforts to culturally rehabilitate the urban fox he was made the first patron of the Mammal Society.

Our thanks to supporters of the St Martin-in-the-Fields Trust, who have funded the St Martin’s Summer Online Festival.

As the impact of COVID-19 takes hold, we need people like you to keep supporting us and helping the musicians we work with. Each concert in our festival costs around £2,000 to produce. To help us keep playing on, please consider making a donation today.

Join us for the next two concerts in our Summer Online Festival.

A Celebration of BachThursday 27 August

A programme of some of Bach’s most beautiful and virtuosic choral motets on themes of religious longing, comfort and praise, intertwined with the haunting Cello Suite No 4 and the celebrated Cello Suite No 1.

The Glories of VeniceThursday 3 September

A portrait of Venice in the Baroque period, with a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria sung by an all-female vocal ensemble, just as in Vivaldi’s first performance at the Ospedale della Pietà. The concert also features one of the many solo vocal introductions he composed for the work, as well as madrigals by Barbara Strozzi, one of the most illustrious singers and composers of her time.

Tickets are available for £10 per concert. Each concert will be available for 30 days after the initial broadcast, and can be viewed as many times as you wish.

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