Blog Archives
SEAN SHIBE, GUITAR
Sean Shibe continues to prove himself a truly original mind at the frontier of contemporary classical music.
2024/25 season highlights include a residency at Wigmore Hall with four concerts across the season, including a special programme dedicated to Pierre Boulez’s centenary performing the chamber cantata Le Marteau sans maître. He tours the UK with folk fiddler Aidan O’Rourke; across the UK and Europe with mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska, exploring the many iterations of the Orlando myth through electronics, melodica, protest song and recitation; and with Karim Sulayman for a US tour of their breathtaking duo programme Broken Branches. Other notable engagements include debuts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and a debut tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra performing Cassandra Miller’s new guitar concerto Chanter in thirteen performances across the country. Shibe also premieres an electric guitar concerto by Mark Simpson at the BBC Proms and a solo work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tyshawn Sorey.
Recent engagements include solo performances at venues including, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie de Paris, Konzerthaus Wien, Southbank Centre, Konzerthaus Dortmund, and Alte Oper Frankfurt. Shibe has also appeared at 92NY, Musashino City Hall, Herbst Theatre, The Phillips Collection, and regularly at Wigmore Hall. He has played at numerous festivals such as the La Jolla SummerFest, Aldeburgh Festival, BBC Proms, Heidelberger Frühling, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Mozartfest Würzburg and Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.
Ever keen to explore new cooperative dynamics, Shibe regularly collaborates with soloists and ensembles alike. In recent years, he has worked with the Hallé, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Singers, Manchester Collective, Dunedin Consort, Quatuor Van Kujik, Danish String Quartet, LUDWIG, and conductors Thomas Adès, Krzysztof Urbański, Christoph Eschenbach, Taavi Oramo, Catherine Larsen-Maguire, flautist Adam Walker, singers Allan Clayton, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray and Robin Tritschler, and performance artist Marina Abramović.
SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) is one of Scotland’s five National Performing Companies and has been a galvanizing force in Scotland’s music scene since its inception in 1974. The SCO believes that access to world-class music is not a luxury but something that everyone should have the opportunity to participate in, helping individuals and communities everywhere to thrive. Funded by the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and a community of philanthropic supporters, the SCO has an international reputation for exceptional, idiomatic performances: from mainstream classical music to newly commissioned works, each year its wide-ranging programme of work is presented across the length and breadth of Scotland, overseas and increasingly online.
Equally at home on and off the concert stage, each one of the SCO’s highly talented and creative musicians and staff is passionate about transforming and enhancing lives through the power of music. The SCO’s Creative Learning programme engages people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse range of projects, concerts, participatory workshops and resources. The SCO’s current five-year Residency in Edinburgh’s Craigmillar builds on the area’s extraordinary history of Community Arts, connecting the local community with a national cultural resource.
An exciting new chapter for the SCO began in September 2019 with the arrival of dynamic young conductor Maxim Emelyanychev as the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor. His tenure has recently been extended until 2028. The SCO and Emelyanychev released their first album together (Linn Records) in November 2019 to widespread critical acclaim. Their second recording together, of Mendelssohn symphonies, was released in November 2023. Their latest recording, of Schubert Symphonies Nos 5 and 8, was released on 1 November.
The SCO also has long-standing associations with many eminent guest conductors and directors including Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze, Pekka Kuusisto, François Leleux, Nicola Benedetti, Isabelle van Keulen, Anthony Marwood, Richard Egarr, Mark Wigglesworth, Lorenza Borrani and Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen.
The Orchestra’s current Associate Composer is Jay Capperauld. The SCO enjoys close relationships with numerous leading composers and has commissioned around 200 new works, including pieces by Sir James MacMillan, Anna Clyne, Sally Beamish, Martin Suckling, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Karin Rehnqvist, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Nico Muhly and the late Peter Maxwell Davies.
22 BEETHOVEN LATE QUARTETS 5
Sibelius: Andante Festivo
Beethoven: Quartet in F, Op.135 [Pavel Haas Quartet]
Beamish: Field of Stars for four quartets [world premiere]
Mendelssohn: Octet, Op.20 [Belcea and Castalian Quartets]
Belcea Quartet
Castalian Quartet
Elias Quartet
Pavel Haas Quartet
4×4: Four string quartets join forces to complete 2025’s cycle of Beethoven’s late quartets and play an octet and a … what shall we call it? A hextet? In fact, a hextet is computer terminology for ‘a 16-bit aggregation’: in the absence of anything better to describe a piece for 16 players, we’ll borrow that. These are the string quartets which have made the greatest impact at ENF over the years, all of them more usually to be heard in the great concert halls of the world than here in the Bowhouse – and that makes this occasion all the more unmissable.
With Beethoven’s Op.135 the Pavel Haas Quartet conclude 2025’s cycle of late quartets. It is a wonderful piece not least because, having journeyed far in the preceding four pieces, he returns for his last quartet to something more like the traditional quartet his great forebears Haydn and Mozart knew. As warm and heartfelt as it is profound, it is a poignant, affirmative end to a life’s work. As Beethoven was writing his late quartets, the 16-year-old Felix Mendelssohn was pulling off the astounding feat of writing his octet – a masterpiece which has never failed to delight and astonish players and listeners alike.
21 EUAN STEVENSON TRIO
“In performance, it’s all about class and quality: Stevenson has a beautiful touch, caressing the keys Bill Evans-style but rhythmically perfect too…” [Jazzwise Magazine]
Stevenson relishes an ongoing dialogue with the jazz greats from Ellington to Evans, bringing his own distinctive style and pianistic flair to classics and new discoveries alike. Come enjoy some delightful jazz on a Sunday afternoon.
20 BEETHOVEN SEPTET
Moritz and Leopold Ganz: Duo Concertante: Fantasy on themes from Der Freischütz *
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat, Op. 20
*Alexander Janiczek, violin
Emma Wernig, viola
*Philip Higham, cello
Graham Mitchell, bass
Robert Plane, clarinet
Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn
Ursula Leveaux, bassoon
More than 20 years ago, the very first event took place which would lead to the creation of ENF – a performance in Elie Church. Following its success, one thing led to another and suddenly here we are welcoming back some of the players from that original performance. Beethoven’s Septet is the perfect festive piece for our 20th birthday. In many ways it is the opposite of Beethoven’s late quartets: there is no sense of him striving to write the music of the future – he simply scores a popular hit with irresistible zest and joy. Famously, its runaway success came to irritate him so much he disclaimed authorship on several occasions.
To open we have a proper rarity – and we believe, a Scottish premiere, c. 200 years after it was written! Moritz and Leopold Ganz were brothers and pillars of the Berlin music scene in the 1820s and 1830s. Berlioz, visiting in 1843, wrote “The strings are nearly all first-rate, but one should particularly single out the brothers Ganz (the admirable first violin and first cello)…” Both played in the pit for the opera on occasion, and tapped into the popularity of fantasias on operatic themes in works like the Grand Duo we will hear, prepared especially for the occasion by Alexander Janiczek and Philip Higham.
N.B Sadly, Diyang Mei has had to withdraw from this concert at short notice. WE are very grateful to Emma Wernig for stepping in to complete the septet
19 KATHRYN TICKELL AND THE DARKENING [SOLD OUT]
We’re thrilled to welcome one of the legends of the folk scene to Anstruther. Kathryn Tickell is one of those musicians who connects across all kinds of musical boundaries and brings her own distinctive voice to all she does. She’s performed classical, experimental and many different kinds of traditional work over the years, and comes now with her band, The Darkening [Northumbrian for twilight]: musicians mostly from the North-East of England who take inspiration from the wild, dramatic Hadrian’s Wall country and explore the connecting threads of music, landscape and people: Amy Thatcher (accordion, synth, clogs, vocals), Kieran Szifris (octave mandolin), Joe Truswell (drums, percussion); with Stef Conner (vocals, lyres).
18 SCHUBERT 1828:2 [PAVEL HAAS QUARTET]
Janáček: String Quartet No 1 (‘Kreutzer Sonata’)
Schubert: Quintet in C, D.956
Pavel Haas Quartet
Ivan Vokač, cello
Janáček and Schubert make a wonderful combination that we have experienced many times at a ENF – especially in the performances of the Pavel Haas Quartet. There is something about the sheer theatrical intensity of Janáček that contrast to beautifully with Schubert’s more spacious work. So here we have Janáček telling Tolstoy’s tale of passion, jealousy and murder in music of vivid, almost cinematic immediacy alongside Schubert’s immense, reflective masterpiece. The time-stopping pathos of the quintet’s famous slow movement is balanced by the sheer propulsive joy of the last two movements.
17 NIZAR ROHANA
To close a day of lute, guitar and electric guitar, we go properly ancient and modern. The Oud is the ancestor of all those other instruments: its origins are properly lost in the mists of time. We know it has been played for at least a milennium, and musicians like Oud master Nizar Rohana are the latest in an unbroken chain of musicians who have relished its delicacy, rhythm, subtlety and rich sound world over the centuries. He brings his latest work to the festival in a mesmerising solo performance.
16 SHIBE TRAIL 3: ELECTRIC [SOLD OUT]
One of the truly exciting things about following Sean Shibe’s career over the past decade has been to join him as he delves right back into the past to explore pre-guitar music with lute and also bring things bang up to date with electric guitar. So, over the course of today, he plays music of 5 centuries on lute, guitar and electric guitar in 3 intimate Anstruther venues; close up music. To close the day we’ve invited Nizar Rohana, a master of an instrument that predates them all – the Oud – to end this journey with music that is both contemporary and ancient. Each concert lasts around 40 minutes, allowing time between them to enjoy Anstruther, grab a bag of chips…
For the 3rd concert of the day, Shibe goes Electric. At the heart of this performance is a piece that really put Shibe on the map as a very special artist was Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. Even Reich – who is famously difficult to please – was blown away by his recording. He wrote it for jazz guitarist Pat Metheney, and it’s about the most joyous music we know.