Introducing…
Blyth Valley Chamber Music presents six afternoon concerts on alternate Sundays each summer (July-September): the series is called Concerts at Cratfield, because since 1991 all our summer concerts have been given at the church of St Mary’s Cratfield, East Suffolk (UK). Concerts begin at 3pm, usually ending at around 5pm.
Cratfield is a small village in tranquil and rolling countryside about 5 miles (8km) west of the A12, close to Halesworth and Yoxford: click here for a local map and here for further details of the church and its facilities for concertgoers. We specially welcome young people and students, who can book tickets at half-price.
The Badke Quartet 2011
Our concerts are all of chamber music, from solo recitals, duos and trios through to string quartets and larger ensembles: piano quintets and string or wind sextets are the largest groups which can fit comfortably on the platform at the church. Most concerts are purely instrumental, but singers occasionally take part too.
Our approach is simple: to invite to play for us the best ensembles we can afford, playing pieces from the best in the repertoire to the best standard attainable by them; and to offer a wide variety of ensembles and composers within each season.
We often feature performers with connections to the activities of Aldeburgh Music nearby: the Aldeburgh Festival in June, the winter lunchtime concerts at the Jubilee Hall and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at Snape. Each Cratfield season mixes young performers with those further on in their careers (we often invite back those whom we have enjoyed in earlier seasons); it also blends well-established works from the ‘core repertoire’ with lesser known, early and new music, including first performances and new commissions.
For more detail on our history and organisation, click here or on the ‘About’ tab above.
Quartet by Vasks opens Aldeburgh lunchtime series
Peteris Vasks
On Friday 6 January 2012, the Almandin Quartet opened the first concert of the winter Friday lunchtime series by Aldeburgh Music at the Jubilee Hall with the fifth string quartet (2004) by the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks (b 1946).
Not yet well known to many British concertgoers, Vasks has an impressive record of orchestral, choral and chamber compositions: the Navarra String Quartet have recently recorded his first three quartets and the Kronos the fourth.
Vasks’ second quartet (‘Summer Tunes’) from 1984 can be heard at Cratfield in the concert by the Wu Quartet on Sunday 19 August 2012, together with quartets by Tippett and Schubert: click here for that concert page. Before that, the Wu are also appearing in the winter Jubilee Hall series, on Friday 23 and 30 March 2012.
The Almandin gave their second concert at the Jubilee Hall on Friday 13 January at 12.15pm: quartets by Viktor Ullmann (no 3, from 1943) and Beethoven op 130.
AGM report
Gavel (never in fact needed at Cratfield)
The 2011 Annual General Meeting of Blyth Valley Chamber Music took place on Sunday 11 December at the Cratfield Village Hall. About 50 Members and Patrons heard reports from the Chairman, Concert Organiser and Treasurer on past and future concert plans, approved all these and re-elected the Chairman, Treasurer and Committee members for 2012.
The meeting also approved some small changes to the Constitution – the new version is downloadable here.
Wu Quartet: Aldeburgh Music residency
The Wu Quartet, who play at Cratfield for the first time on Sunday 19 August 2012, have been selected to come to Snape for a residency in the New Year 2012 and to perform two concerts in the Jubilee Hall Winter Chamber Music series (Friday 23 and 30 March 2012). To book, contact Aldeburgh Music; click here to go to the page about their concert at Cratfield.
As our earlier post about the quartet suggested, following their Schubert Quintet in C D956 during Humphrey Burton’s 80th birthday weekend: ‘we believe the wait [to 2012] to be well worth it and that their name and reputation will be much more widely known by the time they come back to Suffolk’.
Jamie Walton & Daniel Grimwood: new CD
Jamie Walton cello and Daniel Grimwood piano have now released a new CD for Signum Records. This brings together three twentieth-century cello sonatas – by Britten, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. If you attended their concert at Cratfield in September 2010, you’ll remember hearing both the Britten op 65 and the Shostakovich op 40.
Of the new CD, Ben Hogwood on www.classicalsource.com says: ‘This is another successful disc for a partnership that clearly enjoys playing and recording together. Their forthright style in each of these three pieces pays dividends, and when all three are listened to consecutively they serve as an appropriate reminder of Rostropovich’s incalculable influence on the cello repertoire of the 20th-century.’
Jamie and Danny return to Cratfield on Sunday 22 July 2012, joined by Min-Jin Kym violin as the new Moscheles Piano Trio. They play piano trios by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich (the dramatic and Klezmer-inflected piano trio no 2 in E minor from 1944, dedicated to the memory of the composer’s friend Ivan Sollertinsky) and Schubert. Click here for the page about their concert.
More recently, Jamie has been recording the three Britten solo cello suites in the Britten Studio at Snape, also for Signum, for release in the Britten anniversary year of 2013.
Ahead of our 2012 season
If you are hungry for chamber music while Concerts at Cratfield takes its winter break, here are links to a range of possibilities, mostly within East Suffolk, including some performers well known at Cratfield:
Stour Valley Arts & Music: its season of concerts at East Bergholt is already under way, running through to March 2012 and including the Navarra String Quartet
Aldeburgh Music: the Friday lunchtime chamber music series at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh opened on 6 January 2012: click here for our ‘post’ about the opening concert. This series of thirteen weekly concerts includes the Wu Quartet, who return to Suffolk to play Tippett, Vasks and Schubert at Cratfield in August 2012: click here for the page about this concert.
The Cut at Halesworth: there were concerts within the Halesworth Festival, followed in March 2012 by a series of four string quartet concerts on Sunday afternoons (booking opens in the New Year) – these include the Heath Quartet
Ipswich Chamber Music Society: four concerts over the winter
Southwold Concert Series: a series of concerts up to May 2012.
Though not quite East Suffolk, there is also an interesting concert programme at the new venue The Apex, Bury St Edmunds.
2012 season: details now published
Concert information
The individual concert pages for all six of our 2012 season concerts are now ‘live’ and can be accessed from the ‘Concerts’ tab above. Clicking on the tab will open the introductory Concerts page, which summarises the whole season; letting your mouse or cursor hover over the tab will drop a menu down which gives direct access to individual concert pages. Or click on the concert which interests you in one of the boxes for each month on the right-hand side of this page. Some concert pages now include video clips of the performer/s playing or talking about music.
Each page will be extended or changed, and the background about each performer or ensemble updated, as necessary, so it’s worth revisiting these pages regularly. Any significant changes of performer or programme will also be signalled in a ‘post’ here on our home page.
Booking information
Also updated is the ‘Tickets’ page, which now includes ticket prices and booking dates for the 2012 season. Click here for the new downloadable church plan, which shows which seats will be at which price for the new season; the PDF file will either open in a new window or be downloaded to your computer, depending on your own browser settings or preferences.
Data protection – and our mailing-list
All organisations which hold and process personal data need to have clear principles and practices. This is to comply with the law, as well as to reassure those who deal with them that it is safe to let the organisation have data about them. Concerts at Cratfield has now published the 2011 version of its Data Protection Statement. The PDF can be accessed here; it will either open in a new window or be downloaded to your computer, depending on your own browser settings or preferences.
The document summarises the legal background and lists all the different classes of data which we hold, how we use each and the safeguards we have adopted to ensure that the data is accurate, up-to-date, secure and not misused.
If you are a concertgoer, our mailing-list records the contact information you have most recently given us, together with details of tickets you have bought. Those of you who pay with a debit or credit card (almost all of you who made advance bookings for the 2011 season) also trust us with your card details. The new Statement makes clear that, once a ticket sale is complete, we destroy any hard copy record which could be used to link your name to your card details; the card details themselves are also destroyed at the same time.
In parallel, our mailing-list now gives everyone a chance to opt out of receiving the season brochure by post, as well as any other general mailings from Concerts at Cratfield. This comes about since our website is a better source of information than our brochure: it has much more information and is regularly updated, especially with ticket availability for each concert. Instead, you can now sign up to receive e-mail alerts about our concerts: these will include booking information (and a printable booking form) for the next season.
To opt for this, just send an e-mail with your details to info@concertsatcratfield.org.uk. Reducing the scale of our annual mailing of course reduces our costs, as well as saving resources more generally; but everyone who would like to be sent mailings by post will still receive them (free of charge).