Pushkin House presents
PUSHKIN HOUSE MUSIC SALON
Music by Russian-British Composer Vladislav Shoot
A celebration concert at St. George’s, Bloomsbury
Thursday 24th June, 2021
Programme notes for both halves of the concert are below.
PROGRAMME:
Vladislav Shoot (b. 1941)
Mini Partita for clarinet and piano, 1987
1. Preludio
2. Chaconne
3. Scherzo
4. Intermezzo
5. Toccata
6. Danza
Veronika Shoot, piano
Anna Hashimoto, clarinet
Silhouettes for solo piano, 1973
1. Adagio
2. Agitato
3. Andantino
4. Allegretto
5. Risoluto
6. Impetuoso
7. Allegro Moderato
8. Lento
9. Allegro Burlesco
Veronika Shoot, piano
Triptych for Violin and Piano, 2013
Reverie
Adagio
Elegie
Charlotte Bonneton, violin
Veronika Shoot, piano
Magic Flight, 1992
Composer’s arrangement for string quartet and piano of an excerpt from his orchestral music for the Russian film ‘Mad Love’
Castalian String Quartet
Sini Simonen, Daniel Roberts, violins;
Charlotte Bonneton, viola; Christopher Graves, cello
Veronika Shoot, piano
INTERVAL
Selection from Children’s Album for solo piano, 1975
Russian dance
Street musicians
Sounds of waltz
Rain during sunshine
Sad dream
Falling leaves
Kite
Veronika Shoot, piano
Reflections, 2011
for flute, cello and piano
(in 4 movements)
Marsyas Trio
Helen Vidovich, flute, Val Welbanks, cello
Richard Shaw, piano
Adagio from Youth Album (1971)
Charlotte Bonneton, violin
Veronika Shoot, piano
Amoroso for String Quartet and Clarinet (4th mov.), 1996
Castalian String Quartet
Anna Hashimoto, clarinet
Russian Souvenir for String Quartet and Balalaika, 2007
(arrangement for the Mandolin)
Castalian String Quartet
Bradley Johnson, mandolin
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
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), and 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
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Mini Partita (1987). Mini Partita for clarinet and piano (in 6 movements). It was originally written for saxophone and piano for students of saxophone class of Moscow’s Gnessin Academy of Music. Later at the request of different players the composer made arrangements for viola, clarinet, flute and other instruments.
Silhouettes (1973). “Silhouettes was my first twelve-tone work, driven by the sheer enthusiasm of discovery, in which I've already begun forging links with tonal music by using ‘tonal-like’ harmonies and motives, something that continued to evolve in a number of my later works.” - Vladislav Shoot. The premiere took place in Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow.
Triptych (2013). Triptych was conceived and almost completely "written" in my head during my walks around the beautiful English countryside. At times, there are such moments when one's mind switches off from reality and is able to see and hear the rustling of leaves, the singing of birds and even the flashing of ideas and feelings as being already transformed into abstract musical images and gestures. It seems that Triptych is a lucky catch of these ephemeral things. The music consists of three pieces (Reverie-Adagio-Elegy) which can be performed separately. The premiere took place in deSingel, Antwerp.
Magic flight (1992). The composer’s arrangement of an excerpt from the orchestral score written by him for the Russian film "Mad Love". The scene shows a doctor-hypnotherapist's session which gives his patients a blissful oblivion.
Pieces from The Children’s Album for piano (1975). Music for children is a significant part among Shoot’s Complete works. The Children’s Album is fresh and original music written by the composer in his youth at the beginning of his career . The Children’s Album was included into Veronika Shoot's album "Journey Through Childhood", released in 2019 with Ulysses Arts record label.
Reflection (2011). As the title suggests, there are certain reflections in the musical material itself. When the music appears to be upside down or inverted, the musical texture gets progressively jagged and discombobulated until coming to a tranquil close.
Adagio from Youth Album for violin and piano (1971)
Amoroso (1996). The title of this piece speaks for itself. Yet the initial lyricism unfolds towards a tragic end. The premiere took place in Moscow, Rachmaninov Hall.
Russian Souvenir (2007). "The one movement piece is written for an unusual combination of the very 'classical' string quartet and the very 'folk' balalaika (which has only three strings, two of them tuned to the same pitch). "It was an exciting task for me to prepare such a weird and wonderful cocktail of classical and folk Russian idioms." - Vladislav Shoot. The piece was commissioned and premiered by the Dante Quartet. In today’s concert, the part of the balalaika will be played on the mandolin which is close to balalaika in register, though somewhat different in character.
Veronika Shoot, 2021
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.
Formed in 2011, the Castalian String Quartet studied with Oliver Wille (Kuss Quartet) at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media, graduating with a Masters degree. Awards include 1st Prize at the 2015 Lyon Chamber Music Competition and 3rd Prize at the 2016 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The Quartet was selected by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2016 and have received further coaching from Simon Rowland-Jones, David Waterman and Isabel Charisius.
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.
Christopher Graves studied the cello with Melissa Phelps at the Royal College of Music and with Johannes Goritzki at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana. He studied chamber music with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover. His other teachers have included Bernard Greenhouse and Kate Beare. During his studies he was awarded scholarships by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Musicians Benevolent Fund, and the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund. Aside from his activities with the Castalian Quartet he has performed widely as a chamber musician in the UK and abroad, at venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall and Kings Place, and played at festivals such as the Middelburg International Festival and Kings Place Festival. As a soloist he has been heard on BBC Radio 3 playing in the BBC Proms Plus festival with an RCM chamber orchestra, and has given recitals in the UK and Europe. As a teacher he has coached chamber ensembles at the Royal College of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire and Chethams Music School. He has played principal cello with orchestras such as Scottish Opera and Sinfonia Cymru and worked with other orchestras including the Philharmonia.
Daniel Roberts studied with Nigel Murray and Jan Repko. He is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, holds Masters degrees from the Royal College of Music, London (as a Yehudi Menuhin Scholar), and the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover, and has twice been a Leverhulme Chamber Music Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a soloist, Daniel has appeared in Hong Kong City Hall, the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, the Hindemith Cabinet, Frankfurt, and the Sudler Recital Hall, Yale University. He was the recipient of the 2009 Musicians Benevolent Fund ‘Emily English’ Award for ‘most outstanding violinist’, and the 2010 Philharmonia Orchestra MMSF ‘John E. Mortimer’ prize. Alongside his role as violinist with the Castalian String Quartet, he performs internationally as a chamber musician and has collaborated with musicians such as Simon Rowland-Jones, Tom Poster, Levon Chilingirian and the Primrose Piano Quartet. Daniel is in demand as both a violin and chamber music teacher, previously holding positions at Birmingham Conservatoire and St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London, and giving masterclasses at St. Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh, and in various music schools and conservatoires in China. He teaches on the Xenia Chamber Music Course in Italy. Daniel is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians and is extremely grateful to them for the loan of a fine violin by Joseph Guarneri filius Andrea of 1705.
Finnish violinist Sini Simonen enjoys an active international career as a chamber musician and soloist. She is the leader of Castalian String Quartet and the violinist of Calvino Piano Trio. Simonen has won top prizes in several major international violin competitions including the Flesch, Lipizer and Cremona competitions. She has also won prizes in the Brahms, Lyon, ARD, Banff and Citta di Pinerolo chamber music competitions. She studied in Sibelius Academy, Musikhochschule Hannover and Musik-Akademie Basel with Lara Lev and Rainer Schmidt among others. Masterclasses and collaborations with Ferenc Rados, Gerhard Schulz, Sir Andras Schiff, Miriam Fried, and Ursula Smith provided important influences. From 2013 to 2017, Sini was a violinist of Esbjerg Ensemble, one of Denmark’s oldest chamber groups. The ensemble is comprised of a string quartet, wind quintet and percussion, and it is known for its innovative programmes combining contemporary and classical music. She has appeared as a concerto soloist with orchestras including Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Göttingen Symphony Orchestra and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. Her CD recordings as a soloist include Bach’s double violin concerto with Helsinki Strings (Warner) and Vivaldi’s concerto for 3 violins (tacet). Her chamber music partners have included Ferenc Rados, Robert Levin, Midori and Steven Isserlis.
The London-based Marsyas Trio, formed in 2009 by graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, is the UK’s leading flute, cello and piano ensemble. The mythology of Marsyas’ name represents the trio’s ambition to revive and challenge tradition in chamber music. The Trio inspires a generation of new works through commissioning initiatives and recording projects, while bringing to the public forgotten music from the Classical & Romantic eras to the present day. The Marsyas Trio has been delivering engaging and innovative work in the publicly funded arts sector for over a decade - unique within classical chamber music, their ‘no-boundaries’ ethos focuses on women composers and cross-art collaborations. The ensemble has gratefully received generous support from many organisations including Arts Council England, RVW Trust, PRS Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, Hope Scott Trust, Marchus Trust, Ambache Charitable Trust, Fidelio Charitable Trust and the Britten-Pears Foundation. The Marsyas Trio’s first North American tour was supported by the HMUK Doing it Differently fund, during which they performed music by British and American women composers from their critically acclaimed album In the Theatre of Air.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
ABOUT PUSHKIN HOUSE
Founded in 1954, Pushkin House is the independent Russian cultural centre in London. Situated at 5A Bloomsbury Square, in the heart of London’s literary district, Pushkin House hosts a year-round programme of talks, concerts, exhibitions, screenings and performances, showcasing the best of Russian culture in Britain. The annual Pushkin House Book Prize awards a prize of £10,000 to the author of the best work of non-fiction about Russia written in English, and Pushkin House hosts a translation residency for a Russophone poet and English-language translator, furthering the charity’s mission of spreading Russian culture to the Anglosphere.
A registered charity in the UK, and completely independent of any governmental funding (from either the UK or Russia), Pushkin House maintains its financial and artistic independence through donations by members of the public. Any and all support is vital to our survival, so if you’d like to get involved or become a donor, please visit pushkinhouse.org/support-us
UPCOMING CONCERTS
‘NIGHT WIND’ with Patrick Hemmerlé
Sunday, 11 July 2021
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
UK-based, French pianist Patrick Hemmerlé presents an exciting programme of virtuoso piano works, culminating in Nikolay Medtner’s rarely heard epic ‘Night Wind’ sonata. Hemmerlé is laureate of the international competitions in Valencia, Toledo, Epinal, Grossetto. ‘Hemmerlé impresses with his mastery of musical flow and seduces with his way of managing tonal sonorities’ — Diapason
Programme:
S. Lyapunov (1859-1924): Transcendental Etudes Berceuse, Harpes Eoliennes, Lezhinka and Ronde des Sylphes from Op. 11
D. Tchesnokov (b.1982): Two Etudes
N. Medtner (1880-1951): Sonata, Op. 25 no. 2, ‘Night Wind’
LATER THIS YEAR
Sunday, 5 September, 3pm. Prizewinning pianist Nikita Lukinov in a recital.
Sunday, 19 September, 3pm. Prizewinning pianist Dinara Klinton and Professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music Michael Foyle join forces to perform Prokofiev’s two violin sonatas.
Friday, 15 October, 7pm. Sylvia Chan, Laura Perešivana and Alexander Karpeyev explore the art of the singer-composer Pauline Viardot, as well as her artistic connections with Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, Turgenev and Fet.
Pushkin House
5A Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA
www.pushkinhouse.org | Registered Charity No. 313111