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.

We have booked the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh for a concert at 4pm on Sunday 7 October 2012.  This is to raise funds for the national charity, the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

So far Jamie Walton cello and Anna Dennis soprano have agreed to appear, performing music by Bach, Britten, Purcell & Monteverdi.

Please keep an eye on this site for further details of the event, which will be released as they become available.

Tom Southern & Philip Britton

e-mail tom.southern@marshwinds.co.uk

Sir Thomas Beecham

On Saturday 12 May 2012 at 7.30pm, David Holmes, founder of Blyth Valley Chamber Music, will introduce a programme of historic recordings of classical music from his own collection.  The music will be updated digitally and reproduced professionally.

Sir Thomas Beecham will be heard conducting Delius (1926); Pablo Casals playing Elgar (1945); and Rudolf Kempe conducting the great Dresden Staatskapelle in Richard Strauss (1970).

The event will be at Walpole Old Chapel, which stands on the B1117 just NE of Walpole village.  Parking will be available.

Admission will be free; there will be a collection in aid of the Chapel.  Bring cushions for greater ease and comfort.  Non-alcoholic refreshments will be served in the interval.

Concerts at Cratfield regulars are specially welcome.

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.

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.

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’.

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.  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.

In addition, below are links to a range of possibilities for chamber music, 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: concerts within the Halesworth Festival are followed in March 2012 by a series of four string quartet concerts on Sunday afternoons (booking now open) – 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.

There is a concert of early music at Sudbourne Church at 7pm on Saturday 26 May 2012 by students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama: Poeticall Musicke includes works by Byrd, Dowland and Purcell.  Click here for more information; the PDF file will either open in a new window or be downloaded to your computer, depending on your own browser settings or preferences.

Though not quite East Suffolk, there is also an interesting concert programme at the new venue The Apex, Bury St Edmunds.

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.

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).