Proudly collaborating with the Orpheus Sinfonia for the first time, Pushkin House presents a programme of masterpieces of Russian chamber repertoire, rarely heard in live performance.
Vibrant, dynamic and inspiring, Orpheus Sinfonia is a young, bright beacon of the orchestral scene, producing high-quality performances for public benefit, exploring new and ground-breaking avenues and also actively engaging with accessible performances, outreach work and community interaction.
Programme
A. Alyabyev (1787-1851): Trio in E-flat for violin, cello and piano
M. Balakirev (1837-1910): Octet for flute, oboe, horn, violin, viola, cello, double-bass and piano, Op. 3
N. Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): Quintet in B-flat for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano
Alexander Karpeyev, piano
Orpheus Sinfonia soloists
Premiered online 2 March at 6.00pm GMT and now available to watch on demand until 14 April 2021.
How to book on demand tickets
Once you have completed your purchase of the concert we will send you a link that will give you on demand access until 14 April 2021.
Founded in 2009, Orpheus Sinfonia is one of London’s most vibrant, dynamic and inspiring of orchestras, attracting the best of music conservatoire graduates, under the artistic direction of international cellist and conductor Thomas Carroll. We exist for musicians to succeed and discover their creativity, investing in music’s future and meaningful, inspiring audience engagement.
Equally at home with symphonic repertoire, world premières, specially curated and bespoke programmes, choral works, live orchestra with film and opera, Orpheus Sinfonia’s versatility has created its own special place in an exciting and developing music industry. The orchestra has enjoyed collaborations with Dame Felicity Lott, Tasmin Little, Heinrich Schiff and our Patron Sir Antonio Pappano, invitations to renowned music festivals including Windsor, Brighton, Wimbledon, Swansea and Cambridge, and appearances at the Royal Festival Hall, London Coliseum, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Windsor Castle, alongside our residency at St George’s Hanover Square. Acclaimed for the excitement and enthusiasm of its music-making, Orpheus’ reputation continues to grow thanks, in part, to the generous support of many established musicians. The orchestra has featured on BBC Radio 3, BBC World Service and released its debut CD on Signum Classics.
Orpheus developed the innovative “Beneath the Score”, which explores the character and influences of selected composers, and we launched the Orpheus Principals. Partnerships have been enjoyed with the Menuhin Competition, International Opera Awards and Opera Danube, alongside a wide range of choirs, including the Bach Choir, Windsor and Eton Choral Society, Brighton Festival Chorus and conductors such as the late Sir Stephen Cleobury, David Hill and Gareth Malone. Also important to Orpheus is outreach work, including projects with Trinity Hospice, Tim Henman Foundation and students from Fukushima, Japan, and most recently the launch of our own innovative MULTIPLAY programme.
More recently Orpheus returned as the Official Orchestra for the International Opera Awards, received great critical acclaim and a nomination for operatic productions with Iford Arts and Grimeborn Opera Festival. Orpheus’ production of the Rape of Lucretia with the Arcola Theatre won the Offies Best Opera Production in 2019, and the same team returned with Das Rheingold, which was selected as one of the Evening Standard’s Top 10 of 2019. The orchestra has enjoyed performances in festivals including Windsor, Cheltenham, Newbury, Hampstead and Cambridge, welcomed soloists such as Sir Roderick Williams, Anne Sophie Duprels, Brindley Sherratt, Bryan Hymal and Jack Liebeck and toured The Snowman live to film around Christmas in 2018 and in 2019 for the 40th anniversary tour, alongside our programme of core concerts in London.
Biographies
Alexander Karpeyev
Featured as ‘One to watch’ in International Piano magazine, Alexander Karpeyev is a Russian pianist resident in the UK, who has performed throughout the UK and Europe and toured in the USA, Canada and Russia as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.
Karpeyev trained at the Moscow Conservatory with Vera Gornostayeva and Alexander Mndoyants and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama under Joan Havill. He is the winner of the Dudley International Piano Competition as well as the Norah Sande Award and the holder of a Silver Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians. In 2014 he completed a performance practice doctoral degree at the City University, based on the Edna Iles Medtner Collection at the British Library. Karpeyev is often asked to give masterclasses and lectures on Russian performing practice.
‘Sasha’ is passionate about communicating his ideas on Romantic 19th and early 20th-century piano repertoire, and in particular exploring the works of virtuoso pianist-composers. A Medtner specialist, he became deeply immersed in Medtner’s music and approach to music-making while working on his doctoral degree, and his contact with unique performing practice evidence informs his own playing. In 2019 he gave the Algerian premiere of Chopin’s F minor Concerto with the Algerian National Opera Orchestra under Maestro Amine Kouider.
He devotes considerable time to promoting Russian music in London as the Music Curator of the Pushkin House Music Salon in Bloomsbury, where he appears both as a soloist and collaborator with guest artists. He also has a mission to devise and direct music festivals that imaginatively combine performance and scholarship.
As well as performing and speaking about music, Karpeyev is actively engaged in recording projects. The first, entitled ‘Russian Émigré Composers’ (Claudio Records, 2018), commemorates the centenary of the Russian Revolution and, in particular, highlights some of the achievements of the pianist composers who emigrated to Europe and the USA at that time. The second is a recording of ‘Composers at the Savile Club‘ (SOMM Recordings, 2019). The recording celebrates the 150th anniversary of the founding of the London club. Among those featured are Elgar, Parry, Stanford, Howells and Walton. In addition to works for solo piano, the recording includes trumpet fanfares by Savile Club recent and current members Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Anderson. This critically-acclaimed recording was at the top of Spotify, Apple Music and Primephonic releases in August 2019, as well as the Album of the Week at KUSC and KDFC radio stations in the US. The latest project is a CD of Medtner Songs, Opp. 36-7, 45-6, recorded with the Russian soprano Sofia Fomina, offering the first complete version of Opp. 36 and 46, with Russian texts by Pushkin, Tyutchev and Fet, and German texts by Goethe, Eichendorff and Chamisso; it was released by Chandos Records in 2021.
