Based on an original idea by Errollyn Wallen who is presenting the programme, CLASSICAL COMMONWEALTH for Radio 3, unravels how classical music fused with local musical traditions across the British Commonwealth, speaking to acclaimed conductor Zubin Mehta and others.

This Sunday Feature is available to listen after broadcast

Errollyn Wallen NNENNA

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson Blue/s Form I Plain Blue/s

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson Blue/s Form II Just Blue/s

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson Blue/s Form III Jettin' Blue/s

Trevor Weston Bop

Ignatius Sancho Minuets 4 and 11

Florence B Price Two Folksongs in Counterpoint - Drink to me with thine own eyes and Shortnin' Bread

Joseph Bologne Quartet No 3 in G minor

Matthew Evan Taylor Let's Meet at the Horizon

Valerie Coleman Red Clay and Mississippi Delta

London Chamber Ensemble/director Madeleine Mitchell, violin



Rebecca Clarke - Piano Trio

Judith Weir - Atlantic Drift duo for 2 violins

Helen Grime - Miniatures for oboe & piano 2005

Judith Weir - The Bagpiper's String Trio

Cheryl Frances-Hoad - Invocation for cello & piano

Thea Musgrave - Colloquy (violin & piano

Ruth Gipps - Prelude for bass clarinet

Errollyn Wallen - Sojourner Truth for Madeleine Mitchell violin & piano World Premiere, supported by the RVW Trust

Grace Williams - Suite for Nine Instruments



Madeleine Mitchell (violin), Joseph Spooner (cello), Sophia Rahman (piano – Clarke, Wallen, Grime, Hoad) and Ian Pace (piano – Musgrave, Grace Williams), David Aspin (viola), Gordon Mackay (violin), Lynda Houghton (double bass), Peter Cigleris (clarinet & bass clarinet), Nancy Ruffer (flute), Alec Harmon (oboe), Bruce Nockles (trumpet)



On International Women’s Day violinist Madeleine Mitchell has put together a fantastic range of music celebrating some of the finest British female composers of the past 100 years with the London Chamber Ensemble which she founded and directs. The concert includes one of Grace Williams’ rarely performed large chamber work of 1934, recorded by them for Naxos: “Passionate and persuasive advocacy… a powerful musical personality, well served by some gripping interpretations. More please.” (Gramophone), works by Master of the Queen’s Music Judith Weir and the world premiere of a new violin piece for Mitchell by Errollyn Wallen, supported by the RVW Trust. Rebecca Clarke’s romantic piano trio of 1921, the birth year of Ruth Gipps (BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week March 2021), is juxtaposed with Helen Grime’s Miniatures of 2005, performed by her former Royal College of Music oboe teacher, John Anderson’s former student. The powerful Colloquy of 1960 by nonagenarian Thea Musgrave, winner of the 2020 South Bank Sky Arts Award, contrasts with the searing lyricism of Cheryl-Frances Hoad’s short piece of 1999.

This concert will be available to view from 8pm on Monday 8th March through to 8pm on Thursday 8th April 2021.

Supported by The Ambache Trust

AVAILABLE TO WATCH ONLINE FOR 30 DAYS FROM 22 APRIL
PROGRAMME
Matthew Locke: Suite from The Tempest (selected movements)

Purcell (arr.Britten): Chacony in G minor

Purcell: Suite from the Fairy Queen (selected movements)

Errollyn Wallen: Concerto Grosso, Movements I & IV

Handel: Concerto Grosso in B flat major

With

John Butt, conductor & harpsichord

How to watch the online concert

You can watch the performance from 7.30pm on Thursday 22 April and it will be available to watch as many times as you like for the following 30 days. Your access details will be sent to you 24 hours before the performance starts, with full details of how to watch the concert.

Performers

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

John Butt, director

The story of Dido and Aeneas didn’t end with Dido’s death. Errollyn Wallen takes the story forward, interweaving a full performance of Purcell’s great tragedy with her imaginative new partner-piece.

‘Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate' sings Dido at the end of Purcell’s opera. But life isn’t quite as easy as that, and some memories have a destiny of their own. Set several years after the Carthaginian queen’s death, Dido’s Ghost finds Dido’s sister Anna abandoned on the shores of Aeneas’s new kingdom, igniting a murderous jealously in Aeneas’s wife Lavinia – and as events play out, its characters confront a past that refuses to fade.

Errollyn Wallen’s new opera, based on a tale by Roman poet Ovid, embraces and complements Purcell’s original, which is performed in its entirety as the centrepiece of a drama that is both old and new. Performed by the period instruments of the Dunedin Consort, past blurs into present and memory becomes emotion in this ambitious and poignant new commission.