Join us for a special 80th birthday celebration concert of music by the acclaimed Russian-British composer Vladislav Shoot
This was a live concert with an audience, held at St George’s Bloomsbury. We are now delighted to offer an ‘on demand’ digital ticket option as well - see below for details.
Programme:
Triptych for Violin and Piano 2013
Reverie, Adagio, Elegie
Charlotte Bonneton VIOLIN
Veronika Shoot PIANO
Adagio from Youth Album
Charlotte Bonneton VIOLIN
Veronika Shoot PIANO
Selection from Children’s Album for solo piano 1975
Debut of recording release "Journey Through Childhood" (released 2019 with Ulysses Arts)
Veronika Shoot PIANO
Silhouettes for solo piano 1973
Veronika Shoot PIANO
Reflections Trio 2011
Marsyas Trio
Richard Shaw PIANO
Amoroso for String Quartet and Clarinet 1996, 3rd mov
Castalian String Quartet
Anna Hashimoto CLARINET
Russian Souvenir for String Quartet and Balalaika (arranged for the Mandolin) 2007
Castalian String Quartet
Bradley Johnson MANDOLIN
Magic Flight 1992
Composer’s arrangement of an excerpt from his own orchestral music written for the Russian film ‘Mad Love’
Veronika Shoot PIANO
Castalian String Quartet
ONLINE, ON DEMAND
We will email you a link to watch the live-recorded concert in the comfort of your own home. Please note that this will be on or after Tuesday 29th June, and will be available to watch until 29th July. Unlimited tickets at £5/£3 per household.
Vladislav Shoot studied composition at the Gnessin Music Institute (the present Russian Academy of Music) and served as the music editor of The Soviet Composer, using his position to champion Soviet avant-garde music, which at the time had been suppressed and often banned. Later Shoot turned to freelance composing, earning his living by film scoring in addition to concert music. Writing music to about 20 films provided him with fertile ground for timbral, textural and stylistic experimentation, some of which found its way into his concert music.
In 1990 Shoot, together with a small group of Moscow composers headed by Edison Denisov, founded the Association for Contemporary Music (ACM-2), a revival of a post-Revolutionary avant-garde composers’ association of the same name, founded by Roslavets, Mossolov and Luriè, but disbanded in the early 1930s. ACM-2 had much success in promoting and performing the music of its members and contemporary music in general, but within five years of its existence its ranks were visibly thinned by emigration.
In 1992, Shoot and his family left for Dartington Hall, England, where he served as composer-in-residence until 1995, remaining a resident of the idyllic country estate to this day. Shoot naturalized as a British citizen in 1999.
The music of Vladislav Shoot has been performed at numerous venues and festivals among which are Moscow Autumn (Moscow), Making Music Together (Boston), Almeida (London), New Beginnings (Glasgow), Ars Musica (Brussels), Wien Modern (Vienna), Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Schonheit-ein Utopie (Frankfurt), Presences (Paris), Dartington International Summer School and many others.
His music has been recorded by Moscow, Cologne, Paris, Berlin, Budapest and London (BBC3) radio, and released on LP and CDs (Olympia Records and others). His publishers have included Compositor and Musika (Moscow), Wydawnistwo Muzyczne (Krakow), Ricordi (Milan), Sikorski (Hamburg), Le Chan Du Monde (Paris), G. Schirmer (USA), Boosey & Hawkes (London), Peters (Frankfurt). Since 1993 Shoot’s music has been published mainly by M.P. Belaieff
(in association with Peters and later with Schott).
Shoot has been a featured composer at the Meet the Composer series by the Philharmonia Orchestra, and has been commissioned and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Dartington International Summer School, Radio France, the Cheltenham Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and other ensembles and organisations.
The next generation of Shoot’s family continues its musical tradition. His son Eli is also a composer and daughter Veronika is a concert pianist.
"Many serious Russian composers of Shoot's generation, let alone his contemporaries who were younger, took care to write music in a way that placed them in a particular camp of the day. [...] Shoot's work never belonged to any of these camps. And if his music seems always to have been his own, at times hardly even appearing at all as part of this larger picture, then perhaps this was because already early in his career he had found a most unusual voice of a kind quite unlike that of the majority of other composers in the world to which he belonged." Gerard McBurney, composer, broadcaster, teacher and writer
"Vladislav Shoot strikes me as a highly emotional and profoundly intellectual composer. All the works which have been performed show essentially personal treatment of the musical idea. His works do not always possess an outward gloss-indeed, some of them are downright rough-edged. But under this rough, angular and murky surface there is a deep feeling and awareness of the artist's connections with the world." Sofia Gubaidulina, composer
ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Russian-born Veronika Shoot moved to the UK at the age of five when her father Vladislav Shoot became the composer-in-residence at Dartington Hall. Veronika studied with full scholarships at Yehudi Menuhin and Purcell Schools of Music, Royal Academy of Music and Royal Scottish conservatoire from which she graduated with distinction. Veronika has performed regularly as soloist and chamber musician on many renowned stages of classical music around the world and is a Laureate of numerous International Competitions and prizes. Performing across the UK and worldwide, Veronika has broadcasted on platforms such as BBC Spotlight News and BBC Radio 3. She has been invited to play on some of the most prestigious stages in classical music, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Purcell Room, Steinway Hall, BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, the Rachmaninov Hall in Moscow, Amsterdam Conservatoire, International Mozart Festival in Istanbul, Koblenz Gymnasium and L’Opéra Gabriel at the Château de Versailles. In 2019 her solo album ‘Journey Through Childhood' was released with Ulysses Arts label featuring an array of miniatures including famous masterpieces and unknown musical gems by Debussy, Schumann, Lyadov, Takemitsu, and Vladislav Shoot.
The Castalian String Quartet was named the 2019 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist of the Year. In 2018, the Quartet was the recipient of the inaugural Merito String Quartet Award & Valentin Erben Prize and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award.
Born in Grenoble, Charlotte Bonneton is a soloist and chamber musician who plays both the violin and the viola. As a violinist she has performed as soloist in venues including the Maison de Radio France, the Auditorium du Louvre, the Salle Cortot, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Festival Radio-France in Montpellier and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. As a concerto soloist she has appeared with orchestras including Orchestre National de Lorraine, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Kazakh State Philharmonic Orchestra, Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum and the London Contemporary Orchestra. Charlotte Bonneton is the violist of the Castalian String Quartet.
Australian flautist Helen Vidovich is an orchestral and chamber musician. Career highlights include performances at the Sydney Opera House and Royal Albert Hall, and work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. As a member of the Marsyas Trio, Helen’s ensemble projects and commissions have been supported by Arts Council England, the RVW Trust and the PRS and Britten-Pears Foundations. Helen’s discography includes A Triple Portrait (Meridian Records 2015), and In the Theatre of Air (NMC Recordings, 2018), which received international airplay and reviews in The Strad, Tempo, the Sunday Times, BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone. Helen undertook postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, following a Master’s degree at the Sydney Conservatorium. Her teachers include Michael Cox (BBC Symphony Orchestra) and Sharon Williams (London Symphony Orchestra). Helen has performed as a soloist with the Sydney Chamber Orchestra, including Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto with harpist Marshall McGuire.
Pianist Richard Shaw enjoys giving concerts and broadcasting with a wide range of instrumentalists and singers.He is staff accompanist at the Royal Academy of Music. He is currently writing a biography of the distinguished Russian mezzo soprano, Maria Karinskaya (1882-1942), following his discovery of an unknown 400-page Russian manuscript based on Karinskaya’s lost memoirs. His music album, Malcolm Arnold: Songs and Arias, is published by Novello & Co/Music Sales shortly. Recent CDs for the Deux-Elles label include music by Phillipe Gaubert, with Kathryn Thomas (flute), the chamber works and piano solos of Sir Harrison Birtwistle, ‘Piper’s Dream’ (with Ensemble Lumière) featuring the piano solos and chamber works of Cecilia McDowall, and ‘Fauré and his circle’. He has recorded many CDs for Cramer Music and for the ABRSM.
Canadian-born Val Welbanks leads a busy chamber music career in London as the cellist of both the Marsyas Trio and the Ligeti Quartet, who are currently resident ensemble Goldsmiths, University of London and Nottingham High School. Val is regularly invited as guest cellist of various chamber groups in the UK and in Canada, and has recorded various discs with the Longbow and G-Plus ensembles for Métier, Naxos, and Real World Records. She has greatly enjoyed performing as soloist over the years, performing several times the Dvořák and Lutoslawski Cello Concertos, and Gubaidulina’s Sonnengesang.
Val completed her PhD in 2016, having submitted a thesis codifying modern techniques for the cello, under the supervision of composer Roger Redgate, and previously the late cellist Alexander Ivashkin. During this time, she undertook studies with Natalia Pavlutskaya. In 2008, she obtained a Masters in Music Performance at the Royal Academy of Music in London, graduating with distinction from Philip Sheppard’s class. Her passion for cross-disciplinary arts sees her often performing in plays, operas, dance productions, and sound installations.
Anna Hashimoto has a career encompassing appearances as a soloist and orchestral musician alongside a commitment to education. As a soloist Anna has worked with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Myung-Whun Chung and Martyn Brabbins, and performed chamber music collaborations with artists such as Michael Collins, Leon McCawley, and the Endellion, Maxwell, and Kodaly String Quartets. After winning the Young Clarinettists Competition in Tokyo in 2003, she made her London concerto debut at the age of fifteen with the English Chamber Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, and went on to win international clarinet competitions in Carlino, Italy, in 2009, and Kortrijk, Belgium, in 2010. Following this her solo career took her to major venues across Europe and Japan, performing concertos with orchestras such as the Brussels Philharmonic, Filharmonie Hradec Kralove in the renowned Dvořák Hall in Prague, Japan Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, and Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra. She released three solo CD albums which all received high praise, and has been broadcast on NHK TV and FM, Tokyo FM, ABC Radio and BBC Radio 3, including numerous appearances in Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, NHK-FM’s ‘Best of Classic’, and NHK TV’s ‘Classic Club’. She is a founding member of the Atéa Quintet, the Associate Ensemble in Residence at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Anna has appeared as guest principal clarinet with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Japan Chamber Orchestra, and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra.
Described by Grammy award winning classical guitarist, David Russell, as a guitarist of ‘outstanding talent’, Bradley Johnson is a classical guitarist based in London. Bradley has been drawn to modern music and has recently worked with Gary Carpenter, David Gorton and Philip Cashian on new solo repertoire for the instrument after working on ensembles with Georg Friedrich Haas, Edward Cowie and having performed Reginald Smith-Brindle’s duos with Professor Steven Thachuk at the International Guitar Research Conference. This passion was ignited by exposure to Tippett’s 'Sonata - ‘The Blue Guitar’, a performance of which secured First Prize in the Ivor Mairants Guitar Award - described in Classical Guitar Magazine as possessing ‘strongly formed musical ideas and the ability to deliver them with a natural sense of spontaneity’. Bradley began studying with Professor Michael Lewin at the Royal Academy of Music in 2017, from where he graduated in 2019 with Distinction, DipRAM and First Prize in the Royal Classics Concerto Competition. After this, he was awarded a full scholarship for the Advanced Diploma course where he was selected to premiere and record new works for the Academy’s Bicentenary ‘200 Pieces’ project. As a mandolin player, Bradley has performed with Royal Academy Opera as well as the Symphony Orchestra. His performance of Don Giovanni’s Serenade was described by Chicago Opera’s Brian Dickie as ‘astonishingly beautiful’.