CHAMBER MUSIC CAMP

“An endless spiral of growth – this camp has made an impression on me that will affect me for ever.”  Chamber Music Camp Participant

AYO Chamber Music Camp Free Concerts

Armidale Town Hall
Armidale, NSW

GUEST DIRECTOR: Anthony Marwood

Anthony Marwood is one of the most sought-after and versatile violinists of his generation. He has won numerous awards, and was named Instrumentalist of the Year by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2006 , the first string player to receive this honour in more than a decade.

Recent engagements have included a tour of Germany as soloist/director with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Barbican and the Edinburgh Festival, the London Philharmonic at the South Bank, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Paris, the NDR Hamburg, the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Philharmonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Manchester Camerata. The last year has seen a return to the BBC Proms and concerto engagements with the Colorado Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, CBSO and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He has return engagements to the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in  spring 2010.

In January 2006 he became Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and of the Limerick International Music Festival, and last season they gave highly successful concerts in Berlin and on tour in the USA. In summer 2006 he took part in a major tour as soloist/director with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and will return there in 2009. He is a regular collaborator with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (their first CD together winning high praise), and in summer 2005 his passion for theatre resulted in a UK tour with the Academy of a fully staged production of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, in which he acted the role of the Soldier as well as playing the violin part – his performance, directed by Lawrence Evans, was picked as one of the cultural highlights of 2005 by the Daily Telegraph. The production was revived to great acclaim in November 2007.

He has had many works written for him, including Sally Beamish's 1995 concerto, subsequently televised for BBC4 and recorded on the BIS label. Thomas Adès's concerto “Concentric Paths”, which he premiered in September 2005 in Berlin and at the BBC Proms is the result of a fruitful musical partnership with the composer. He has since performed the work on numerous occasions giving the US premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the French premiere in Paris with the CBSO, and the Russian premiere in St Petersburg. His recording of the work on EMI, with the composer conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, has been garnering extraordinary reviews and was picked as Gramophone Magazine’s Recording of the Month. Adès and Marwood are touring a programme of all Stravinsky's music for violin and piano, which will be released on the Hyperion label in October 2009. With the cellist Steven Isserlis they will perform at the Aldeburgh Festival and Carnegie Hall in New York. In the 2009-10 season Anthony Marwood will premiere two new concertos written for him, one by American composer Steve Mackey (a concerto for violin and electric guitar, commissioned jointly by the ASMF and the ICO) and one from New Zealander Ross Harris, with the NZSO.

Anthony Marwood’s recordings include Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on BMG, but he also enjoys performing and recording more unusual works. He has made acclaimed recordings on the Hyperion label of sonata repertoire with the pianist Susan Tomes of Dvorak (Classic CD Award), Schumann (Gramophone Award nomination) and concertos by Stanford (Gramophone Award nomination), Coleridge-Taylor and Somervell, and with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos by Kurt Weill and Peteris Vasks, “performed with blistering intensity and astonishing accuracy” BBC Radio 3 CD Review. Future recordings for Hyperion include Schumann and Britten concertos.

He is the violinist of the celebrated Florestan Trio (the first trio to win a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, in 2000) and has performed all over the world with his colleagues Richard Lester and Susan Tomes. They have recorded much of the mainstream trio repertoire on Hyperion, many of them becoming benchmark performances. The Florestan Trio also has its own Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh, an annual event in June. He has just embarked on a project with the pianist, Aleksander Madzar, which will culminate in a series of three concerts at the Wigmore Hall in 2010/11.

Anthony Marwood enjoys teaching and each summer attends the Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont, where students and faculty perform together in a rural setting.

He plays on a beautiful violin by Carlo Bergonzi (1736), kindly bought by a syndicate of purchasers.

GUEST ENSEMBLES:

• Goldner String Quartet
• Elias String Quartet
• Flinders Quartet

The Goldner String Quartet launched in 1995 and has performed regularly together since 1991, as the four string players from the highly acclaimed Australia Ensemble (resident at the University of New South Wales). The quartet is named after Richard Goldner, renowned pedagogue, inventor, and founder of the original Musica Viva Australia. The players are all well known to Australian and international audiences through solo performances and recordings.

All have occupied principal positions in organisations such as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. The Quartet regularly appears at major music festivals around Australia in addition to national tours for Musica Viva. The members of the quartet have been a mainstay of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville since 1993 and have just returned from highly successful appearances at music festivals in Finland, France and the U.K. In 1997 the Goldner String Quartet made its debut at the Wigmore Hall in London, with return engagements there in 1999 and 2003. They have appeared at the UK festivals of Cheltenham, Newbury and Brighton and at the Festival du Sceaux in France. In October 2001 the quartet made its American debut with concerts at the prestigious 92nd St Y in New York and in Washington DC.

The Goldners have undertaken extensive tours of New Zealand, and performed at the Jeju Muisc Festival in Korea in 2006. More recently the quartet has collaborated with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in their festivals celebrating the works of Beethoven and Shostakovich. The Goldner Quartet received the Australian Music Centre Award in 2000, for the ‘Best Performance of an Australian Composition’, for their performance of Carl Vine’s Quartet No.3. The instruments of the Quartet are maintained by Mr Gabor Balogh, Master Violin Repairer and Restorer (Sydney).

The Flinders Quartet has been the vanguard of an extraordinary creative awakening amongst a new generation of string quartets in Melbourne, excelling in their dynamic and stirring performances of a full spectrum of repertoire. Audiences and critics alike were quick to articulate their esteem as the quartet developed into a highly respected force in Australian chamber music. The Flinders Quartet have toured regularly for Musica Viva, appearing regionally and in capital cities. The quartet is in demand at festivals throughout Australia, where it often appears in association with some of Australia’s finest talents, including Slava Grigoryan, David Thomas, Kristian Chong and Genevieve Lacey. The quartet was Radio 3MBS FM’s inaugural selection as Artists in Residence, a position they held until 2006.

ABC Radio’s Classic FM has also broadcast many of their performances. Building on their 2006 Limelight Award and identification amongst Australia’s most influential artists, Flinders, in collaboration with new music ensemble Halcyon, were nominated for a 2007 ARIA award for their performance of Gillian Whitehead’s “Bright Forms Return” for string quartet and mezzo-soprano. 2007 also saw the quartet’s debut at the Sydney Opera House in the new Utzon Room series. Other performance highlights included a collaboration with Duo Sol at the Melba Festival as well as appearances at Bangalow, Bateman’s Bay and Mount Macedon. The quartet also received a 2007 nomination for a Melbourne Award.

The Elias String Quartet formed in September 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where they worked regularly with Christopher Rowland. They won all the RNCM quartet awards and became Junior Fellows and then Associated Quartet. They also spent a year studying at the Hochschule in Cologne with the Alban Berg Quartet.

The Quartet received second prize and the Sidney Griller Prize at the 9th London International String Quartet Competition in 2003 (as the Johnston String Quartet). They were then finalists in the Paolo Borciani Competition in 2005, and have twice been awarded scholarships from the Hattori Foundation. They have performed extensively throughout the UK, and in France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Italy and the USA, in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Snape Maltings, Bridgewater Hall, Fairfield Halls, Stockholm Concert Hall, The Louvre, and Jordan Hall. They are currently ensemble in residence at Kettlesyard in Cambridge and have broadcast live on national radio in the UK, France and Sweden. They have performed with artists such as Andrew Marriner, Ralph Kirshbaum, Joan Rogers, Mark Padmore, Roger Vignoles, Peter Cropper, and the Endellion and Vertavo String Quartets. In 2005 the Elias was appointed resident string quartet at Sheffield's Music in the Round as part of Ensemble 360. The Ensemble brings together eleven musicians from across the globe; five wind players, a pianist, a double bassist and the Elias.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Colonial Foundation Trust