Concerts at Cratfield

Concerts

Past seasons

A separate Past Concerts page now lists all the works performed and performers’ names, from the earliest concert for which a printed programme survives (Summer 1988) to the end of our 2012 season. Alternatively, click here for a downloadable file of the same information in PDF format; the file will either open as a new on-screen page or be downloaded to your computer, depending on your own browser settings or preferences.

2012 season in retrospect

Ticket sales

From this point of view, the season was yet more successful than 2011, with no concert below about 90% capacity and the last two close to absolutely full. Reassuringly, in the gloomy economic climate, there was no evidence that the ticket price increases had deterred anyone from booking at all; or that concertgoers had ‘traded down’ into cheaper seats or decided against buying season tickets. Competing sports events and sudden lunchtime storms on the coast caused more seats to be left empty, though booked and paid for, than we have encountered before; and over the season we had fewer ‘walk-in’ concertgoers buying on the door than in earlier years. We always keep a small number of rear nave £8 seats for last-minute arrivals, but people may assume from the competition for the best seats in the priority booking periods that our concerts are always full. Our website always records the real situation, as does the message on our phone line.

Concert planning

The season was built, as usual, on the rock of the string quartet, with the Badke returning at the start and the young Wu midway (with our agreement, they substituted Britten no 2 for the Tippett no 2 originally planned); the Iuventus Ensemble, in effect an augmented string quartet, provided the final concert, offering two string quintets and the showy Weber clarinet quintet, stylishly executed by Thomas Hull. It has become usual to have one piano-plus-strings concert most seasons; in 2012 it was Jamie Walton cello, Min-Jin Kym violin and Adam Johnson piano.

The other two concerts represented strands in our programming which recur only occasionally: piano four hands (Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva, who substituted Ravel for one planned Mozart piece) and a song recital (Mark Padmore tenor and Andrew West piano). Both appeared to be great successes artistically, as well as proving that we can attract a performer like Padmore at the very peak of his abilities – happy to offer an interesting and demanding programme in a small and intimate setting. To aim so high was in part a wish to have something special in our twenty-fifth season; it was aided by an anonymous donation in memory of Stuart Hague, who died earlier in 2012 and to whose memory the Padmore/West concert was dedicated.

Constructing a season

This is like forming a cricket team: to add A means that B will have to go. The aim is to get the right balance between well-established performers (often returning to Cratfield, having pleased us in the past) and those newer in their career who have enthusiasm and energy on their side and who deserve a chance to perform to our attentive and well-informed audience. Another aspect of balance is between works from the ‘core repertoire’, as we call it, and those less well known or more demanding.

In 2012, of ‘big names’ we heard three instrumental works each by Mozart and Schubert (plus Mark Padmore’s song sequence), two by Shostakovich and one each by Beethoven, Britten, Tippett, Maxwell Davies, Rachmaninov, Ravel and Weber. [No Haydn at all, who was being ‘rested’ after appearing often in 2011, and from the pre-classical era only a short pavan by Tomkins.] Of living composers, we featured Vasks from Latvia and Larcher from Austria. It is of course only over the long run of several seasons taken together that the properly varied pattern of composers, works, periods of composition and different combinations of instruments will emerge.

The full details of the season are now included in the Past concerts information described above.

2013 season in prospect

Our season opens with a middle-period Haydn quartet; it closes, twelve weeks later, with one of Beethoven’s late great quartets. Just thirty-five years separate these compositions, but our season actually offers works which span more than three centuries: our oldest composers were both born in 1685 and our youngest in 1974.

Constructing the season

There is no overarching theme to the season (and we have chosen to leave celebrations of Britten to others), save the ongoing search for variety in what is performed and on what instruments, attempting in each concert to find a balance between the ‘core repertoire’ and less well-known pieces. Looking back, omissions emerge which over time we try to fill; and works not played recently which deserve rehearing. In these categories belong the piano trios by Martinů and Smetana (Sunday 14 July), as do four string quartets: Schubert in G D887 (Sunday 30 June); Mozart in D minor K421 and Brahms in A minor op 51 no 2 (Sunday 11 August); and finally Haydn in G minor op 74 no 3 (Sunday 8 September).

A notable highlight this year is our new commission: a song cycle for two high voices and baroque ensemble, sandwiched between vocal and instrumental music by Bach and Handel (Sunday 28 July). A piano quartet assembled specially for us (Sunday 25 August) will allow an overdue glimpse of the rich, but too rarely heard, repertoire for this combination of instruments. Four of our concerts include works by living composers based in the UK – and Kurtág in our first concert adds his own distinctive contemporary voice from Hungary.

Our performers

Two string quartets return whom we are eager to hear again – the Solstice and Carducci, who start and end the season respectively. In every other concert we welcome newcomers, heard and enjoyed elsewhere. We hope that all our performers – and our choice of music – will delight, but sometimes also challenge, our loyal and enterprising audience.