“A  beautiful little Sinfonietta with fanfares” was how Leoš Janáček in a letter to female companion described a composition inspired by a military band they had listened to in a park in Písek, in southern Bohemia. Yet there was nothing “little” about it. Apart from it being the longest purely orchestral work Janáček composed (about 25 minutes’ worth), his Sinfonietta is scored for just about the largest brass section you’ll ever see in any orchestral work including nine trumpets in C, two bass trumpets, and two tenor tubas all underpinned by a pounding two-measure phrase in the timpani. 

The music of fellow countryman Antonin Dvořák in contrast is often filled with a quiet, wistful nostalgia, and an embrace of nature. We hear all of this in the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, a work of profound depth and monumental scale which Dvořák composed in 1887 following his unsuccessful and discarded earlier piano quintet. Contrasts notwithstanding, the compositions of Dvořák and Janáček were deeply inspired by the folk songs and speech patterns of their Bohemian homeland known today as Czechoslovakia.  Such was the first of our two October programmes.

“Tragic”  was Schubert’s name for his 4th symphony, but we don’t know why. We do know that only two of his symphonies were written in minor keys (the other was the “Unfinished Symphony”). The nickname may have more to do with youthful drama then actual tragedy - Schubert was only 19 years old at the time of its composition, by which time this young genius had already written four symphonies and over a hundred musical works in all. Nothing tragic about Robert Schumann’s Three Romances Opus 94. Written on December 7, 11, and 12th 1849, the pieces - according to Schumann himself - were given to his wife Clara, whom he once described as his own "right hand", as a Christmas present. How romantic is that?

Bookending these two works in the second October session was Paul Schoenfeld’s Café Music and Mozart’s Quartet for Oboe and Strings.   In 1985 Schoenfeld was asked to fill in for the pianist at a restaurant which employs a house trio that plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. “My intention, Schoenfeld said, “was to write a kind of high-class dinner music — music which could be played at a restaurant but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall”. Centuries earlier Mozart was invited to Munich to visit Elector Karl Theodor, who had commissioned the opera Idomeneo for a carnival celebration. While in Munich, Mozart renewed an acquaintance with Friedrich Ramm, a virtuoso oboist in the Munich orchestra and the most celebrated oboist of the day. It was for Ramm that Mozart composed the quartet. The year was 1781, the pivotal year of Mozart’s life. This was the year when he cut his ties with his family and hometown of Salzburg and struck out on his own as a freelance musician in Vienna. Reflecting his growing adulthood, the quartet was his first really mature piece of chamber music.

All this and more, including recordings, can be viewed by clicking on the links below.

Bill Squire.

Session Notes 10th October
Wagner - Flying Dutchman Overture
Dvorak - Piano Quintet No.2
Janacek - Sinfonietta
Sibelius - Finlandia
 
Session Notes 24th October
Schoenfeld -Cafe Music
Schubert - Symphony No.4
Schumann - Three Romances Opus 94
Mozart - Oboe Quartet
​

Beethoven once wrote to his publisher: “What is difficult, is also beautiful, good, great, and so forth. Hence everyone will realise that this is the most lavish praise that can be bestowed, since what is difficult makes one sweat”. If this credo manifests itself most powerfully in any one of Beethoven’s works, it might be the piano Sonata Op. 106, nicknamed, “Hammerklavier.”  It is the longest Sonata Beethoven ever wrote, which essentially means that it was the longest sonata anyone had written up to that point. It is certainly his most ambitious Sonata to that time, and his most difficult.

Mozart likewise, once freed in later years from the strict demands of the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, embarked on his most ambitious setting of the Catholic Mass (he had already composed some 15 settings of the Mass up to that time). This was to be a Grand Mass on the scale of JS Bach’s Missa Solemnis, and a wedding present for his new bride Constanze, who herself would sing the soprano role. Alas, for reasons that we will probably never know, it was never to be finished. Discarded before being reworked by Mozart into a cantata, it was discovered and eventually published in its incomplete form some years after Mozart’s death, and even then is almost an hour in length. Needless to say, these two works occupied a complete session for us.

Taking a lighter and less demanding approach concentration-wise and staying with Beethoven and Mozart, our second session took in the forays of both into the world of trios and sonatas. Mozart was said to have composed the “Keggelstatt” Sonata in a bowling alley, hence its nick-name, and Beethoven’s  “Gassenhauer” Trio was so named after a song heard on the streets of Vienna. Then there was a Beethoven take on a Mozart tune – Beethoven “cashing-in” in the surge of popularity for Mozart’s work following his death. All of this can be read about and listened to by clicking on the links below


Bill Squire

Session Notes 12th September
Mozart - Great Mass in C minor
Beethoven - "Hammerkalvier" Sonata

Session Notes 26th September
Mozart - Overture to The Magic Flute
Mozart - Ein Madchen oder Weibchen
Beethoven - 12 Variations on Ein Madchen oder Weibchen
Mozart - Trio in E Flat major K498
Beethoven Sonata in F for Horn and Piano Op. 17
Beethoven - Trio in B Flat major Op 11

As a pianist Camille Saint-Saëns became a protege of Franz Liszt, who declared him “the world’s greatest organist”. Saint-Saens later claimed people celebrated Liszt as “the world’s greatest pianist” in part because that was easier than appreciating his innovations and importance as a composer. Saint-Saëns, however, seemed to have no illusions about his own gifts as a composer or as a musician. He began composing at the precocious age of three and at eleven debuted as a concert pianist, offering as an encore to play any Beethoven sonata the audience could name. The brilliant child grew into a virtuoso musician and composer who poured out elegant, perfectly-proportioned works as naturally, he said, as “an apple tree producing apples”. His 5th and final piano concerto, filled with strange and exotic sounds, he premiered as the soloist in a concert celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his début.

Franz Schubert was an absolute master of melody, composing symphonies, concerts, quartets and more the 600 songs. For all this, his efforts to compose for the musical theatre were haphazard disasters. The collaborations with the libretti were poor and the performances were few. Fortunately, the “Rosamunde” Overture has survived. Even though it was originally written for a different play which didn’t survive,  it has become one of his most popular works.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart penned a staggering total of over 600 compositions throughout his short life, spanning various genres, including orchestral, chamber, piano, and vocal music. As a young 20 year-old in Paris Mozart wrote to his father that he was composing a concertante for a group of elite wind musicians. Although commissioned it never saw the light of performance for more than a hundred years, and doubt has circulated ever since as to whether it was really written by Mozart.  While there may be no solution to the problem of when or for whom it was written, or even whether it is truly by Mozart, there is no mystery about its charm, its melodiousness, or its wide appeal:- a firm reminder that while stories behind musical compositions abound, they are never as captivating as the music itself. You can read some of the stories and listen to the music presented in our July sessions via the links listed below:

11th July

Session Notes (pdf)

Mendelssohn - Overture for Harmoniemusik

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante for Winds:

Bill Squire

“If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed, I shall have done a great service to my country” (Anonymous).

In this vein, Scheherazade, the daughter of the Grand Vizier, persuaded her father to allow her to marry the Sultan who, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, had slain each of his wives after the first night of marriage. Through a clever practice of nightly storytelling Scheherazade won over the Sultan, who spared her life, causing peace to fall on the land and the realm to become safe from losing any more of its young women. Such is the background to Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical depiction of four of the 1001 tales with which Scheherazade beguiled her husband. Hansel and Gretel in Humperdinck’s opera found other ways of dealing with evil intentions, while Saint-Saëns mocked the fear of dying in his “Danse Macabre” depicting Death as a violinist appearing every Hallowe’en playing his fiddle as skeletons rise from their graves and dance until dawn.

Much less dramatic was the second of our May programmes. Debussy in his “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” conjures up the image of a Faun – a half-man and half-goat figure of Greek mythology – drifting off to sleep filled with colourful dreams and wakening to luxuriate in sensual memories. Sibelius’ Violin Concerto marks a turning point in the composer’s struggles with alcoholism and the financial needs to meet his responsibilities as a father of three. Illustrating the beauty of light amid so much wintery darkness of his native land, the character of the piece also has been compared to the character of Nordic people, offering a fascinating window into the inner world of Sibelius’ fellow countrymen. Many performers who have approached the task of bringing the concerto to life have defined it as a piece about both actual nature and human nature. In 1785 (age 29), Mozart dedicated a set of six new string quartets to his friend and mentor Josef Haydn, 34 years his senior. Upon attending the premiere of the new quartets with Leopold Mozart, his protégé’s father, Haydn told him: “before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” Some accolade, but something many of us have long since come to know!  We played just the 2nd of the set of six.

These and all our musical offerings for May may be listened to by clicking on the links below.
​
Bill Squire

Session Notes 9th May

Humperdinck - Prelude to Hansel and Gretel
Rimsky- Korsakov - Scheherazade
Schumann - Cello Concerto
Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre
 
Session Notes 23rd May
​
Debussy - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Sibelius - Violin Concerto
Handel - Let the Bright Seraphim
Mozart -String Quartet No. 15

“May you, dear Spohr, wherever you find real art, and real artists, think with pleasure of me, your friend Beethoven”. In this personal testament to his sometime companion, Beethoven acknowledged a central figure in the development of European concert music. As the nineteenth century progressed Louis Spohr was engaged and feted by the major musical establishments for whom he conducted the steady output of orchestral, solo and chamber works. His reputation clearly rivalled that of Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Berlioz and others.

Time has treated Spohr more shabbily than several of his contemporaries - a contrast from an era (170 years past) when his musical ‘star’ was so much in the ascendant. The story is told of a distinguished visitor - manufacturer and music lover Herr von Tost - arriving one morning at Spohr’s doorstep with an extraordinary proposition: ‘He expressed the wish that everything Spohr should write in Vienna be reckoned as his property for a period of three years, and for which he would be financially rewarded. Spohr was to give him the original manuscripts and make no copies … “they may be performed as often as is possible but the scores must be borrowed from Tost for each occasion and performed only in his presence”.

One such work was “Nonet in F major”, a composition for nine instruments made up of four strings plus flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Tost requested the work to be written in such a way that each instrument would appear in its true character. It was the first composition ever for nine instruments.

Spohr’s “Nonet” was the major focus for our one and only session in April. The remainder of the session comprised a suite from the opera “Carmen” and a Mozart piano concerto with a stunning encore of Liszt’s “Tarantella”. The notes for each and the recordings may be accessed by clicking on the links below.

Bill Squire.


Session Notes

Bizet - Carmen Suite No.1

Louis Spohr - Grand Nonet in F major

Mozart - Piano Concerto No.19 & Liszt - Tarantella
​

There’s a quote by Anonymous: “Music isn’t what I do, it’s who I am”. Because, historically,  societal attitudes towards women designated them as inferior in the worlds of arts and sciences, women who composed music often found their compositions devalued accordingly. Consequently, much good music became “lost” through lack of exposure to the concert-going public. Thankfully, that is now beginning to be reversed.

​Our first programme for the month of March, in recognition of the contribution of female composers to the world of music, featured works by five women from varied backgrounds and circumstances: Maria Antoine Walpurgis who used her political clout to advance her music, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, her royal position and connections; while Louise Farrenc, Professor of Music at the Paris Conservatoire for 30 years in the 19th century not only produced quality compositions but managed to achieve equal pay for men and women at the Conservatoire. Marie Jaëll had the good fortune to study composition with the likes of César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns and achieved recognition through sheer persistence and hard work, while Florence Price persevered against the odds of being both female and Afro-American in the USA in the first half of the 20th century.

Our adventures into these little-known worlds will be balanced by a return to “Old-favourites” – Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky – for the second programme of the month. Who wrote the better music? Look up the notes and listen to the recordings posted below after the session. You might be surprised at the conclusion you come to.

Bill Squire.

Session Notes 14th March
Maria Walpurgis - Overture to Talestri Queen of the Amazons
Princess Anna Amalia - Flute Sonata in D
Maria Jaell - Cello Concerto
Louise Farrenc - Sextet for Piano and Winds
Florence Price - Piano Concerto in One Movement
 
Session Notes - 28th March
Beethoven - Leonora Overture No.3
Mozart - Violin Concerto No.4
Tchaikovsky - Rococo Variations
Beethoven - Wellington's Victory

Yoko Ono, when married to Beatles star John Lennon, created, with Lennon, three albums titled “Unfinished Music”, and Ono herself a book titled “Everything in the Universe is Unfinished”. “I never want projects to be finished”; said Ono, “I have always believed in unfinished work”. I got that from Schubert, you know, the ‘Unfinished Symphony.’”

Whether Schubert’s eighth Symphony was deliberately left unfinished or whether he forgot to finish it, or whether it was really ‘unfinished’ at all, has been debated ever since the work was discovered. Antonin Dvorak nearly didn’t get to complete his Violin Concerto because a world-renowned violinist kept wanting him to make changes to it, So Dvorak called ‘time’ and gave the concerto to another violinist to premiere.

​On the other hand, in the tradition of Christina Rosetti who claimed that the only thing sadder than an unfinished work, is one never begun, Felix Mendelssohn’s 3rd (or Scottish) Symphony, nearly didn’t get started. Having written down notes for it during a trip to Scotland, he embarked on a trip to Italy and was so taken with sights and sounds he found there that he forgot - until he went to write was to become his 4th (or Italian) Symphony.

No such concerns, however, for Mozart – so much music was there in his head! And especially should there be a young woman in the offing, and more so, again, if her father was a man of influence. Finished in seemingly no time at all, Mozart’s 9th Piano Concerto was his first fully mature piano concerto, dedicated to the young woman in question, and one he took as a show piece for a tour of Mannheim and Paris.

Details about our September programme and links to the recordings played can be found below.
 
 
Session Notes  13th September
Rossini - Overture to The Silken Ladder
Mendelssohn - Symphony No.3
Dvorak - Violin Concerto
 
Session Notes  27th September
Smetana - Overture to The Bartered Bride
Schubert - Rondo in A
Schubert - Symphony No.8
Mozart - Piano Concerto No.9
​

​Ayn Rand, Russian - American writer and philosopher - once wrote “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder”?
​
Italian composer Guiseppe Tartini had a dream in which he was invited by the Devil sell his soul in return for which the devil would become Tartini’s servant. In the process Tartini saw and heard the Devil playing him a melody on the violin. That was the easy bit. The hard part came when Tartini awoke and tried to remember the melody devil had played!. The result was his Sonata in G which featured as one of the “pipe-openers” for this year’s musical excursions.

Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky with a little Wagner and Rossini made for some “easy” listening as we welcomed new members to our group.

Not so easy was to bid “Goodbye” to world famous Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa who died during the month.

You can read and listen to our tribute to him along with the notes and recordings for both of our February sessions by accessing the links below:
​
Bill Squire

Session Notes  9th February
Overture to Tannhauser
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.1
Tartini - 'Devil's Trill' Sonata
Mozart - Oboe Concerto
 
Session Notes   23rd February
Rossini - Overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings
Beethoven - Choral Fantasy (Ozawa)
Ozawa - Broadcast to Outer Space 

Too long, strange, complicated, were words that once were not uncommon when it came to describing some of Beethoven’s music. His (one and only) violin concerto proved so difficult at its premiere that the soloist gave up with the piece altogether, choosing instead to improvise. People left the concert feeling confused at best, ‘exhausted’ at worst. The Violin Concerto didn’t sink into utter obscurity, but it was rarely performed in the four decades following its lukewarm debut. When it was performed, reviewers usually talked about how talented the soloist was to pull off such an attempt, rather than praising the concerto itself. Such was our experience as we watched a performance of the concerto so scintillating as to seemingly confine to obscurity the orchestral suite by Australian composer Nigel Westlake and the Mozart symphony that made up the rest of our one and only session for the month (and our final programme for this year). The links to the session notes and links and to the video recordings used are posted below.
​
Bill Squire
 
Session Notes
Westlake - Flying Dream
Beethoven - Violin Concerto
Mozart - Symphony No.40
​

“Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced”. That quote by Japanese writer and translator Haruki Murakami, kind of describes some of the class reactions to the first of our June sessions as we endeavoured to get our musical minds around Karl Jenkins’ composition The Armed Man, commissioned by the British Royal Armourers to mark the transition from the 20th to the 21st century and their move to a new Museum in Leeds.  Dedicated by the composer to the victims of the Kosovo conflict, the work is a 13 movement Mass for peace loosely set within the Christian Mass, with additional texts from Muslim and Hindu sources and secular writers. A mind and body exercise occupying us for the whole of the session.

No such concerns with our second session as we watched a scintillating performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 given in the final round of the 18th Chopin Competition in 2021. The work was bookended in our programme by Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni and Schumann’s Symphony No.4 leaving us in a buoyant mood as the curtain came down on Semester 1.  Semester 2 for us kicks off on Friday 14th July.

Meanwhile you can check out recordings and notes for our June programmes below.  Enjoy!

Bill Squires

Session Notes  9th June 

Karl Jenkins - The Armed Man

​Session Notes  23rd June

Mozart - Don Giovanni Overture

Chopin - Piano Concerto No 1
​
Schumann - Symphony No.4

It has been said that “the most glorious works of art, the ones that bring the purest joy – perhaps they need not be touched or known, but seen only with the heart”.

Both of the major musical compositions for the month of May can be understood a “masterpieces in their own way.

​Debussy’s ‘La Mer’ – an impression of the sea as seen from the heart - is regarded today as a masterpiece of musical impressionism, although that wasn’t always the case. The premiere of the work in 1905 was met with a mixture of boos, whistles and restrained applause. There were no boos and whistles as our group listened to it, and neither was there an enthusiastic reception overall. Masterpiece or not, impressionism is clearly not to everyone’s taste.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 was regarded by Brahms as a “masterpiece of art, full of inspiration and ideas. Beethoven remarked to a pianist friend “we’ll never be able to write anything like that”, while some scholars and musicologists claim it to be one of the greatest piano concertos ever composed. Yet this concerto is written in the minor key - unlike most of Mozart compositions – and so for other listeners a work not easily recognisable as belonging to Mozart. Such was the case with our group’s listening experience.

For those reading this, then, perhaps you can listen to each and form your own opinion. It’s all available (recordings and notes) via the links below. While you are at it, why not check out the rest of the month’s music selections: - something a little more recognisable as Mozart, some Mendelssohn and Haydn, Tchaikovsky and, of course, given the other big event of the month, some Coronation music.


Bill Squire.
 
 
Session Notes 12th May
 
Session Notes 26th May
 
Debussy - La Mer
 
Mozart - Piano Concerto No.24
 
Mozart Symphony No.35
 
Handel - Zadok the Priest
 
Handel - The King Shall Rejoice
 
Handel - Let Thy Hand be Strengthened
 
Elgar -  Pomp and Circumstance March No.1
 
Mendelssohn - Hebrides Overture
 
Haydn - Symphony No. 83
 
Tchaikovsky - Capriccio Italien

There is nothing like “starting with a bang”, as they say. And so our programme for 2023 got under way with “Workers Union” - a modern composition by Louis Andriessen, a highly innovative contemporary composer known for his individualism, political activism, and creativity. He is considered the most important living composer from the Netherlands.

The piece was written for any combination of loud sounding instruments which was in keeping with the composer’s desire to avoid standard instrumental combinations. Andriessen states that “This piece is a combination of individual freedom and severe discipline: its rhythm is exactly fixed; the pitch, on the other hand, is indicated only approximately, on a single-lined stave. It is difficult to play in an ensemble and to remain in step, sort of like organizing and carrying on political action. No two recordings of the work, it is claimed, are the same.

Mozart’s Concert for Two Pianos – one of the most artful and ambitious works of all his piano concertos - served to quickly bring us back in time to the golden age of Viennese music. For what occasion Mozart wrote this piece is not known for certain, but it is claimed that he wrote it for himself to play with his sister. As youngsters the Mozart siblings often performed together. Fitting it was then that the performance our group watched was by two pianist brothers who had grown up from an early age performing together.

A trumpet concerto by Czech composer Johann Baptiste Neruda and a rendition of Gabriel Fauré’s ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, the latter performed by Australia’s very own Gondwana Voices, closed out the session in complete contrast to its beginning.

Our second session was on the day of the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Serendipitously the major work selected was Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony originally conceived to honour Napoleon’s victory over the combined forces of Russian and Austria. The dedication to Napoleon, however, was short lived. When Napoleon declared himself as Emperor of France, Beethoven, in fury that Napoleon showed himself as no better than any despot who had previously ruled in Europe, scratched his name from the title page and changed the dedication to “an heroic person”. Hence today the symphony carries the title “Eroica”, a title that many would want to ascribe to those involved in the defence of Ukraine today. The rest of the programme was given over to a series of short works by Ukrainian composers culminating in a presentation of lively and colourful dance routines by a Ukrainian national dance ensemble.

Here are the links to the notes and recordings:
 
10th February
 
Session Notes
 
Andriessen - Workers Union
 
Mozart - Concerto for Two Pianos
 
Neruda - Concerto for Trumpet and Strings
 
Faure - Cantique de Jean Racine
 
 
24tth February
 
Session Notes
 
Beethoven Symphony No 3
 
Choir - Prayer for Ukraine & 'Oak'
 
Melodia on a Ukranian Theme
 
Impromptu 66 No.2
 
Orchestra - Prayer for Ukraine
 
Ukrainian National Dance Ensemble
 

​Bill Squire.

​And, of course, no music year is ever complete without some reference to Handel’s “Messiah” which is exactly how our year ended up.

​Meanwhile, as TS Eliot observed: “to make an end is to make a beginning”. 2023 will see Music Appreciation widen its source of recordings and music selections with a little bit of innovation. A fascinating year awaits. 

As the year draws to a close, did you know that the original meaning (in English) for “merry” is “strong”? Have a “strong” Christmas.
​
Bill Squire.

Yet another Covid-19 induced lockdown has seen our July gathering limited to one session. There we looked at the 3rd of Bach’s six (and each very different) Brandenburg Concertos; a Mozart piano concerto once thought to have been inspired by the chirping of Mozart’s pet starling; an early concert piece by Austrian-Jewish composer Franz Schreker who had the double misfortune to arrive on the music scene in the late romantic period as the world was beginning to move away from his style of music and to be removed from it with the rise of anti-semitism in the 1930s; and finally Schubert’s fifth Symphony – a work composed at the age of nineteen and full of the cheerful optimism and whimsy of youth that belied the sickness and suffering that was to come his way leading to a premature death at the age of 32.
 
Hopefully by the time our next planned session (13th August) comes around, restrictions will have been eased sufficiently to allow us to come together when works by Elena Kats-Chernin, Brahms, Prokoviev and Haydn will be in the spotlight. If you haven’t enrolled for our second semester and maybe would like to check us out, please feel free to come along.

Bill Squire.

Links to Session Notes and Music: 
 
Session Notes
 
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto 3
 
Mozart - Piano Concerto 17
 
Schreker - Intermezzo
 
Schubert - Symphony 5
 

A bright start to this year’s music with an appreciation of the life and music of J S Bach - the composer of some of the most famous works of the classical repertoire, and who has influenced perhaps more composers than any other figure in music.

Better known during his lifetime primarily as an outstanding organ player and technician, the youngest of eight children born to musical parents, Johann Sebastian was destined to become a great musician. 

Bach’s use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time.
​
Because of the vast number of compositions (1100 or so catalogued – goodness knows how many there are in total) time allowed only for a sampling of his musical output. Hence we named it  “A Dégustation of Bach” and framed our selection of his music around the instruments he composed for and some choral work.

Our second programme in February saw us move down the years (just a little) from the “Baroque” period of Bach to the “Classical” era and the music of Mozart. Another prolific composer - but with only a little more than half the catalogued works of Bach -  so again  it was “smorgasbord” of Mozart music across the various genres he composed for, although with not quite the same volume of music to choose from, we were able to lengthen the time a little for our listening experience of the items presented.

Full programme notes of each of the two sessions together with links to the appropriate “Youtube” site for the music presented in February:

8th February 'Johann Sebastian Bach'

​22nd February - Celebrating Mozart Week - 'Mozart' 


​Bill Squire