Thursday, 7 February 2019 at 13.10
Ruddock Performing Arts Centre
Samantha Burley – violin
Junias Wong – violin
Saffron Pougher – flute
Enoch Cheung – violin
works by Bloch, Elgar, Kreisler, Harty, Sibelius, and two Bachs
This recital is presented jointly with King Edward VI High School for Girls
Peter & the Wolf: Elms Farm Primary School
Pupils from Elms Farm Primary School followed the story of Snow Maiden. These are just some of the chalk drawings they have created.
Peter & the Wolf: The Oval Primary School
Pupils from the Oval Primary School have recreated some of the Cinderella magic.
Peter & the Wolf: Hallmoor School
Hallmoor School students have immersed themselves into the world of Hensel and Gretel. They built some beautiful houses.
Peter & the Wolf: Hillstone Primary School
Pupils at Hillstone Primary School have created some truly marvellous paintings in readiness for their performance on 5 February.
Peter & the Wolf: Bourville and Tiverton Primary Schools
Pupils at Bourville and Tiverton Primary schools are working very hard on their composition pieces to be performed on 5 February at the Ruddock Hall.
This is just the taster of the musical soundscape they created. We are all very excited to hear their live performance!
Peter & the Wolf and the Firebird
The Ruddock Hall
1800, Tuesday, 5 February 2019
There’s a very special event at King Edward’s next week. At 1800 on Tuesday, 5 February, KES/KEHS Symphony Orchestra will perform Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, followed by the 1919 suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird.
Both works are highly colourful, paint vivid pictures of characters, tell stories of the imagination. Capitalising on this, we have invited James Mayhew, author, illustrator, and artist, to perform with us. He will narrate Peter, and, at the same time, paint pictures of the stories live with the music. It’s hard to describe, but, once seen, it’s an extra-ordinary experience, quite impossible to forget.
The performance lasts only for an hour, and the early start means that it’s a perfect evening for children of all ages.
Tickets, priced £5, are available at:
If you would like to come straight from school to the Ruddock Hall, we offer a children’s picnic tea at 1715. The combined price for tea and concert is £8.50.
It’s going to be a really special evening.
Monday 14 January 2019 at 18.00
Ruddock Performing Arts Centre
An informal concert given by pianists and singers from King Edward’s School and King Edward VI High School for Girls.
This recital is presented jointly with King Edward VI High School for Girls
Thursday, 10 January 2019 at 13.10
Ruddock Performing Arts Centre
Ella Mason, trumpet
Renee Chang, violin
works by Bozza, Büsser and Saint-Saëns
This recital is presented jointly with King Edward VI High School for Girls
Knowing the score
So………..serialism. That great musical genre, of harmony, tunefulness and beautifulness. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything like that. Our compositions were full of increasingly obscure intervals and notes which clash and produce a dissonance that would usually mean your music is awful. But no, not serialism. It can sound as unusual and un-’musical’ as you want. I think that’s the really interesting aspect of our compositions is that we can break the majority of the rules we thought existed. Thus, the creations had rhythms that were harder to notate than play, titles which seemed like the composer was going mad while writing them and notes which had no musical bearing to their surroundings, save the matrix which we so faithfully trusted.
Trust the Matrix
We embarked on our ‘creations’ towards the end of our fourth year and finally at the end of the autumn term in fifths our pieces got recorded by a remarkable set of players: Kate Suthers, CBSO principal second violin; Kate Oswin, CBSO first violin; Adam Römer, CBSO principal viola; Richard Jenkinson, ex-CBSO ‘cello, Mark Walkem, double bass extraordinaire and Sara Wilander, pianist of note. On that Friday, these players all came together to give life to our pieces and a recording of our pieces that even the titan of Sibelius (the musical composition software not the man himself…) could reproduce.
Arush’s piece Twisted Flamingoes, untwisted into particularly difficult slow triplet minims. We then had a sad moment when Rohan’s Orangutans died, so we had to play them a funeral piece, which was handily composed by Rohan. Then as time flew along we had Louis’ Tempus, and no sooner had we started the baroque-styled piece we moved on. We then had Heftigkeit (violence) by Gokul, which was lost over the summer and then refound (i.e. Gokul re-wrote it). We then tamed Jacob’s Wild Beasts, which turned out to be the middle strings.
Written the night before?
Then, we had the piano pieces. These came about due to our rebellious nature: Dr Leigh said do a string quartet, so I did a piano sextet, Shirom a piano trio and Jiaqi a piano quartet. I got the prize for the longest title being: A three legged waltz, a bridge, hell and back again. Then Shirom had his Notes- The exploration of serialism through the transcendence of life and love, which had some interesting rhythms and some challenging double stopping that even the CBSO found tricky. Finally Jiaqi, the most rebellious one. He had a ‘normal’ piece after giving up on his serialist one. It had a piano part that wouldn’t be amiss in a Rachmaninov prelude and had some recognisable motifs, at least to the CBSO.
Hell and back?
So, all I need do now is say thank you to the players and to Dr. Leigh for making this happen.
George Roberts, Fifths
Jӧrg Widmann is a contemporary German composer, clarinettist and conductor. His music has received great critical acclaim and his reputation is such that he took the position of Composer in Residence at the Lucerne Festival in 2009. He has also received many awards for his work, most recently the prestigious Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music. Widmann currently holds the position of professor of composition at the Barenboim–Said Akademie, Berlin and he is currently finishing his tenure as the 2017-2018 artist in residence at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
180 beats per minute (1993) was composed shortly after Widmann left school and it was inspired by the rhythmic drive and constant pulse changes of “techno beat” music, which was very popular at the time. As suggested by the title, the piece is played at 180 beats per minute throughout, although constant syncopation and pulse changes counter any potential rigid, metronomic elements. The piece is a study on a single chord which is varied throughout the entire piece. About half way through the piece, the first violin announces the subject of a canon, which wanders through all of the instruments whilst still playing beguilingly with oscillating major and minor thirds. In the words of Widmann himself, “The work makes no claims to be more than the sum of its parts – the sheer enjoyment of rhythm.”
Christopher Churcher, Fourths
Monday, 10 December 2018 at 1930
Ruddock Performing Arts Centre
The programme includes performances given by:
Choral Society
Concert Band
Concert Orchestra
Senior Swing Band
KEHS Lower School Choir
KES/KEHS Symphony Orchestra
The concert is presented jointly with King Edward VI High School for Girls
Thursday, 6 December at 13.10
Ruddock Performing Arts Centre
String Quartet:
Samantha Burley, violin; Jenny Liu, violin;
Naina Reddy, viola; Beatrice Beardmore, ‘cello.
Wind Quintet:
Saffron Pougher, flute; Charlotte Chapman, oboe;
Ben Marrett, clarinet; Roshan Bahia, horn;
Nikita Jain, bassoon.
String Sextet:
Charlotte Howdle, violin; Bronagh Lee, violin;
Rosy Heneghan, viola; Naina Reddy, viola;
Beatrice Beardmore, ‘cello. Mark Li, ‘cello.
works by Mendelssohn, Ibert, Widmann
This recital is presented jointly with King Edward VI High School for Girls
