New Town Concerts is a registered charity no SCO15893
New Town Concerts
2023-24 Season
Monday 23rd October 2023 at 7.45pm
Carolyn Sampson soprano
Joseph Middleton piano
But I like to sing...songs by Schubert, Wolf, Poulenc, Duparc, Bernstein, Barber, Strauss
Carolyn Sampson is one of today's leading sopranos. Her wide-ranging and eclectic programme celebrates the launch of her 100th recording. Equally at home on the concert and opera stages, she has enjoyed notable success in the UK as well as throughout Europe and the US and performs with the most illustrious orchestras and opera companies. Joseph Middleton is her wonderfully sensitive accompanist and a leading light in contemporary lieder programming.
Carolyn Sampson's "freshness of tone, superb control and subtle sensuality” Guardian
Joseph Middleton "a perfect accompanist" Opera Now
Free tickets for 8 - 25 year-olds!
New Town Concerts Society is delighted to announce membership of CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust which exists to encourage more young people to attend chamber music concerts. CAVATINA operates a Ticket Scheme under which young people can obtain free tickets for certain chamber music concerts. Up to 50 free tickets will be available free of charge for all New Town Concerts (except the piano recitals) for any young person aged 8 to 25 inclusive. Please encourage young people you know to discover the delights of chamber music. Tickets available via the Queen's Hall box office either in person or by phone (0131 668 2019).
Monday 11th December 2023 at 7.45pm
Elias Quartet
Schubert: Quartettsatz in C minor D703
Peteris Vasks: Quartet no 3
Mendelssohn: String Quartet No 2 in A min Op 13
Since their breakthrough as BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists in 2009 the Elias String Quartet's exceptional ability to communicate musical meaning has led to an international following. They perform in the world's most prestigious chamber venues across Europe and the US and this year undertook a residency at Suntory Hall, Tokyo. This programme comprises Schubert's thrilling 'Quartettsatz', one of six string quartets by Latvia's Peteris Vasks who counts Arvo Pärt as one of his 'spiritual relatives' and concludes with one of Mendelssohn's most passionate early works.
"Simply astounding, in the freshness, intensity, assurance, and seeming spontaneity of their playing" BBC Music Magazine
Monday 12th February 2024 at 7.45pm
Barbican Quartet
Haydn: String Quartet in B flat major Op 50 No 1
Berg: String Quartet Op 3
Beethoven: String Quartet in A minor Op 132
The Barbican Quartet is an original voice on the chamber music scene, based between London and Munich, delighting audiences with their intimately powerful performances and virtuosic ensemble playing. A multi award-winning ensemble, they made their Wigmore Hall debut in 2017 and were first prize winners of the 2022 ARD International String Quartet Competition. A varied programme begins with the first of Haydn's "Prussian" quartets, continues with Alban Berg's two movement quartet Opus 3, and culminates in one of Beethoven's late, great quartets written towards the end of his life and including one of his most sublime movements, dedicated by the composer as: "A Convalescent's Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode."
"Finely structured and virtuosically balanced..." Süddeutsche Zeitung
Monday 18th March 2024 at 7.45pm
Nash Ensemble
Beethoven: Clarinet Trio in B Flat, Op 11
Stravinsky: 'The Soldier's Tale' suite for clarinet, violin and piano
Debussy: Cello Sonata
Ravel: Piano Trio
New Town Concerts is delighted to welcome back the Nash Ensemble, described by The Sunday Times as "chamber music royalty". Acclaimed for its exceptional performances, the ensemble has won numerous accolades including The Edinburgh Festival Critics award "for general artistic excellence" and two Royal Philharmonic Society awards in the chamber music category "for the breadth of its taste and its immaculate performance of a wide range of music." Four of its highly acclaimed musicians will perform a virtuoso programme for clarinet, violin, cello and piano.
"Performances of exemplary standard customarily expected from the Nash Ensemble" The Gramophone.
Adrian Brendel, Jack Liebeck ,Alasdair Beatson, Kaupo Kikkas
NEW TOWN
CONCERTS SOCIETY
EDINBURGH
e
About Us
New Town Concerts Society
Beginnings
In 1964 Laurence Harris hit on the notion of New Town Concerts to replace Ruth D'Arcy Thomson's seasons of chamber concerts at the Freemasons' Hall in George Street, the heart of Edinburgh's original New Town, and the home of international chamber music at the Edinburgh International Festival from its start in 1947. These concerts were intended to light up the 49 weeks of musical darkness in the Hall over the winter months between one Edinburgh International Festival and the next. In January 1965 the dream became reality with the first New Town Concert, given by the Smetana Quartet. In 1971 New Town Concerts Society was formed to promote an annual concert series with tempting price reductions for subscribers, though the single ticket price of £1 could hardly, even then, have seemed preposterously high.
The early years
The first full season in 1971-2 looked eastwards, with the Warsaw Piano Quartet playing Shostakovich, the Tel Aviv Quartet paying tribute to Britten, Gyorgy Pauk and Peter Frankl in a programme including the Stravinsky Serenade and the impassioned Janacek Quartet in Dvorak's Opus 106. But as the Edinburgh International Festival had already discovered, the marmoreal chill of the Freemasons' Hall was not the best of places for great music-making. For all the fine performances that had been given there, change seemed overdue and by 1980 it came when New Town Concerts were joined by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a combined series in the recently opened Queen's Hall. This classical former church offered better facilities, more seats, a less penitential atmostphere and a welcoming bar. Though Newington, where the hall was situated was not quite the New Town, it was apt in style and perfectly accessible. To have changed the name of the concerts would have seemed a betrayal of the original vision.
Fifty years forward
Some of the illustrious old string quartets faded away, to be replaced by new ones. The Emerson Quartet made their first Edinburgh appearance playing Bach and Beethoven in a New Town Concert in 2004. The Lindsays, now themselves a thing of the past, played a complete Beethoven cycle, the first in the history of New Town Concerts, thereby adding six extra concerts to the 2001 season. Alfred Brendel retired, but his protege, Paul Lewis came with two additional series for solo piano; the first a survey of all Schubert's piano sonatas, and the second a Beethoven sonata cycle of eight recitals spread over two seasons.
Based on an article by Conrad Wilson for New Town Concerts Society 50th anniversary programme