Eleanor Alberga is a highly regarded mainstream British composer with commissions and premieres from the BBC Proms and The Royal Opera. Her work is noted for its emotional impact, depth of craft, and brilliant coloring and orchestration. Born and growing up in Jamaica, her cultural inheritance is wide, including performing with the Jamaican Folk Singers and as a dancer with an African Dance company. Coming to the UK initially on a scholarship to study piano and singing at the Royal Academy of Music, her compositional talents came to the fore while working in the contemporary dance world. She now boasts a rich catalog of works in all genres: her Opera based on an Isabel Allende story, ‘Letters of a Love Betrayed,’ which drew comparison with Debussy’s Pelléas and Berg’s Wozzeck; the string quartets heard on this album; a growing sequence of chamber music Nocturnes featuring horn and oboe; and orchestral music including two violin concertos and a rip-roaring adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as well as her Last Night of the Proms opener Arise Athena. Her early piano music has a deep connection to her Jamaican heritage, and she has also written music for solo voice and for choir.
Alberga now lives in the English countryside with her husband, violinist Thomas Bowes, and together they have founded and nurtured an original festival — Arcadia. arcadiamusic.org.uk
photo: Ben Ealovega
Ensemble Arcadiana is a multi-format group born out of the Arcadia Festival held annually in the English countryside. The festival was founded in 2010 by composer Eleanor Alberga and her husband, violinist Thomas Bowes, and is curated by both of them. Just as at Arcadia, held each year in early October, a select bunch of brilliant and original instrumentalists have come together to make this recording in a spirit of freshness and fearlessness. All five of the performers featured on this release have outstanding careers in various fields. This recording of quartets by Eleanor Alberga is the group’s recording debut.
photo: Eleanor Alberga, Ensemble Arcadiana, Stephen Frost, and Arne Akselberg
Thomas Bowes is one of the UK’s most versatile and accomplished violinists, as a soloist, chamber musician, concertmaster, and artistic director. His concerto appearances in the UK, Germany, and the United States have included highly praised performances of the concertos of Elgar, Britten, Szymanowski, and Walton. At the invitation of the late Lady Walton, Bowes spent three weeks on the Island of Ischia – Walton’s long time home – studying the history and score of the Walton concerto and his subsequent critically acclaimed recording of the work for Signum Classics (along with the Barber concerto) reveals a special connection to Walton’s music.
Bowes’ recording of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin was released in 2018 on the Navona label. Made in the the world famous Abbey Road Studio no 1, it has already received much critical acclaim. The recording was an outgrowth and recreation of an extensive ‘Bach Pilgrimage’ undertaken at the end of the 2012/13 season, comprising 50 concerts in churches across mainland Britain and raising over £20,000 for various charities. A further Pilgrimage of 23 concerts was made in 2018 and his Bach Pilgrimage is now a growing feature of every season. Future events will take him all over the world.
Equally at home in the realm of cinema, Bowes has been in great demand as a soloist and concertmaster in the commercial recording studio. He has worked closely with many of the most eminent film composers. Among well over 150 film credits are such hit-movies as “Skyfall,” “The King’s Speech,” and “The Hunger Games.”
Bowes’ partnership with his wife, composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga, has played a significant role throughout his career. As the duo “Double Exposure” they toured extensively across the United States, made a groundbreaking trip to China in 1997, and gave regular performances and broadcasts in the UK. The Duo established a reputation for adventurous and engaging programming. A further tour of China is planned for November 2019. An enthusiastic champion of Alberga’s music, Bowes gave the world premiere of her first Violin Concerto with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Joseph Swensen. A second concerto is planned for 2020.
Chamber music has always been at the heart of Bowes’ artistic life – he was the founding leader of the Maggini Quartet – and between 2003 and 2015 was the Artistic Director of the Langvad Chamber Music Jamboree in Denmark. More recently, with Eleanor Alberga, he founded the music festival Arcadia in north Herefordshire, England. Central to the ethos of both festivals is fresh, authentic, and vibrant music making for local communities and their audiences.
Bowes is privileged to own and play a violin by one of the great Cremonese makers - a splendid 1659 Nicolo Amati.
photo: Ben Ealovega
Estonian conductor, violinist, and violist Andres Kaljuste recently made his conducting debut in 2018 at the Estonian National Opera and regularly conducts the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Symphony Orchestra. He completed his orchestral conducting master’s degree in 2017 at the Sibelius Academy while simultaneously appeared as the guest-principal viola of the Helsinki Philharmonic.
As a conductor, Kaljuste has worked with several orchestras including Helsinki Philharmonic, Tampere Philharmonic, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Oulu Sinfonia, Pori Sinfonietta, and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. In Autumn 2016, he stepped in at very short notice to conduct Lahti Sinfonia in a program of Vaughan Williams, Barber, and Dutilleux, to critical acclaim. During the same season as the release of this album, he will make his debut with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Joensuu City Orchestra, and will return to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.
Kaljuste previously studied violin at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and later Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. A two-year scholarship followed with the Academy of Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, after which he went on to pursue a busy freelance career working with top UK orchestras such as the RPO, the Philharmonia, and as guest concertmaster of Oulu Sinfonia, Finland.
Kaljuste found his passion for teaching while working at Lilla Akademien, recognized as one of the top music schools in Scandinavia, as conductor of the school's string orchestras and ensembles while also teaching violin and viola.
As a soloist, he has appeared with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Verona Philharmonic, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Belgrade Strings, Vanemuise Symphony Orchestra, and made his debut at Berlin's Konzerthaus in 2010 with Cappella Academica, playing the Brahms violin concerto. andreskaljuste.comv
photo: Kaupo Kikkas
Jacqueline Shave received her formal training at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but drew her particular performance inspiration and love of chamber music from her time at the Britten-Pears School in Snape. On leaving the Academy she became Leader of English Touring Opera, but soon made the decision to dedicate herself to chamber music, leading the Schubert Ensemble and then co-founding and leading the Brindisi Quartet for 15 years, with whom she recorded and gave concerts worldwide.
She is in demand as a guest leader with many of the UK’s leading orchestras and ensembles including the Nash Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Composers Ensemble, BBC Scottish, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. She was appointed leader of Britten Sinfonia in 2005. In 2013 she additionally became leader of the Red Note Ensemble, a contemporary music group in Glasgow, and is the violinist in the Britten Oboe Quartet with Nicholas Daniel.
In 2011 she took a year away to explore other musical pathways, which resulted in Postcards from Home, a world music/jazz album in collaboration with Kuljit Bhamra (tabla) and John Parricelli (guitar). She also presented a complete Beethoven string quartet cycle on the Hebridean island of Harris, and gave a free improvisation concert in a cave on Hestur, in the North Atlantic Faroe Islands. Shave is writing more and more, and recently had a piece premiered in London by Britten Sinfonia and tenor Nicholas Mulroy entitled Three Landscapes for oboe quartet and voice set to poems of Laurie Lee, Clifford Dyment, and WB Yeats. Shave plays on a Nicola Amati violin, from 1672.
Danish American cellist Jonathan Swensen first asked to play the cello at the age of 6, after watching his father Joseph Swensen conduct the Elgar Cello Concerto. After a year of convincing his parents that he would practice the instrument if given lessons, he began his studies. In 2017 he made his concerto debut performing none other than the Elgar, with his father conducting the Porto National Symphony Orchestra in Portugal.
Since this debut as soloist with orchestra, Swensen has performed Shostakovich No. 1 with the Granada Chamber Orchestra in Spain and the Dvořák Concerto with Florida’s Venice Symphony Orchestra. He has been invited to perform the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with Denmark’s Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Haydn Concerto No. 1 with Poland’s Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra, and the Shostakovich Concerto No. 2 with the Copenhagen Philharmonic. He also gives concerts in Copenhagen and other cities in Denmark this season.
Swensen won First Prize in the 2018 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the following special prizes: The Buffalo Chamber Music Society Prize, Embassy Series Prize (Washington, DC), Krannert Center Prize, Friends of Music Concerts Prize (Sleepy Hollow NY), Sunday Musicale Prize (NJ), Germany’s Usedom Music Festival Prize, and the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Concert Prize of YCA, which sponsors his Kennedy Center debut.
He captured First Prize in the 2018 Khachaturian International Cello Competition, and gave a gala concert performance in Yerevan with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. He also received First Prizes at the 2016 Danish String Competition and the 2014 Swedish International Music Competition in Stockholm.
Swensen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Toke Møldruphas, and has been re-engaged at festivals in Denmark including the Copenhagen Summer Festival, Schubertiade of the Schubert Society of Denmark, Fejø Kammermusikfestival, Kerteminde Kammermusikfestival, and Hindsgavl Summer Festival. Swensen is currently pursuing a master’s degree with Professor Torleif Thedèen at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.
photo: Palm Andreassen
Oscar Perks enjoys a varied career as a violinist and chamber musician, while also pursuing an interest in composing and arranging. Since 2014 he has been a member of the Dante String Quartet, sharing the role of first and second violin. Major projects with the quartet have included performances of the complete Beethoven and completed Shostakovich Quartet cycles, and a venture to record all of Stanford’s eight string Quartets.
Having started playing the violin at the age of 5, Perks was awarded a place to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School three years later where he took violin lessons with Hu Kun and Simon Fischer. Perks went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway. He then gained his masters at the Royal College of Music under Lutsia Ibragimova.
Perks has had the opportunity to perform as a soloist at many leading London venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, and Kings Place. His performance of “Above earth’s shadow” by Michael Finnissy was broadcast live on BBC radio three.
In addition to his work as a performer, Perks coaches chamber music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and also teaches violin at the Yehudi Menuhin School. He also directs a summer chamber music festival in Langvad, Denmark, which takes place every year in July.
photo: Aidan Woodcock
Stephen Frost is a film director, composer, and music producer. He has been producing and editing classical music recordings for 30 years, working with some of the most eminent music makers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.
There are two albums of Stephen's music. The first, released on the Chandos label, features his Oboe Concerto, Bassoon Concerto, and a setting of the W. H. Auden poem, "The Lesson." The second, released on the Signum label, includes a setting of original text for Bassoon and Choir in a piece called "Parapraxis." His composition work has also included music for television documentaries and commercials.
His first film, Is Anybody There?, won Best Director at the Rob Knox Film Festival in 2009, whilst 2017 saw the production of his first full-length feature Leave Now as director, writer, and composer, winning Best Feature Film at the Brighton Rocks International Film Festival.
In his earlier years, Frost played keyboards in a New Romantic rock group and bass guitar in a Country & Western band. frostmusic.co.uk
photo: Tracy Russell
Arne Akselberg is a multiple Grammy Award-winning engineer who works regularly with some of the biggest composers and artists worldwide including Leif Ove Andsnes, Ian Bostridge, the Belcea Quartet, Maxim Vengerov, and Sir Paul McCartney.
He has also worked extensively with such classical artists as Yuri Temirkanov, James Galway, Sabine Meyer, Sir Charles Mackerras, Mariss Jansons, David Daniels, and Itzhak Perlman, and his skills and musical taste have caught the attention of major record companies, including EMI, BMG, Hyperion, and Sony.
In addition to his 2007 Grammy nomination for Best Engineered Album, Classical, Akselberg has won three Grammys for the following: Truls Mork's recording of the Britten Cello Suites (2001), Maxim Vengerov's recording of the Britten Violin Concerto and Walton Viola Concerto, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich (2005), and Evgeny Kissin's recording of Prokofiev Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (2009). abbeyroad.com/engineer/arne-akselberg
photo: Ben Ealovega
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