A Steinway at St Olave’s!

A lunchtime concert to soothe shattered nerves, calm the mind and reboot your soul!

Phillip Mindenhall (violin) and Frances Brock (piano) will play a selection of well-known, short pieces, including Elgar’s Chanson de Matin, the Swan by Saint Saens, and The Victorian Kitchen Garden by Reade.

Come and join them for a relaxing half hour in St.Olave’s Church!

Whenever I’m choosing new piano repertoire to learn, I’ve always been slightly wary of Mozart – his music has a tendency to sound deceptively simple but can be really tricky to play well. I think it’s partly because of its simplicity – there’s nothing to hide behind. The melodies have to sound so beautiful and refined, but there are also lots of tricky runs and ornamentation to deal with. I guess that’s what you let yourself in for when you decide to learn a concerto!

The concerto I’ll be performing is K. 414 in A major, which comes in at Number 12 in Mozart’s 23 piano concertos. It was composed in Vienna in 1782 as part of a set of three concertos (along with K. 413 and K. 415) written with chamber forces in mind; indeed Mozart also provided arrangements for piano and string quartet. I have to admit that I wasn’t at all familiar with any Mozart’s piano concertos before I started learning K. 414, but it has been a complete pleasure getting to know the music – you can really sense the joy the composer must have felt when writing the piece. The outer movements fizz with exuberance and wit, whilst the Andante middle movement is a tribute to Mozart’s former mentor, Johann Christian Bach (son of the great J.S.!), quoting a theme from one of his overtures. It’s a wonderful piece and I can’t wait to start putting it together with the orchestra.

In a letter to his father Leopold in December 1782, Mozart wrote: “These concertos [Nos. 11, 12, and 13] are a happy medium between being too hard and too easy; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear and natural, without seeming empty. There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that non-connoisseurs, too, cannot fail to be pleased, even if they don’t know why.” I think that quote sums up in a nutshell the reason why Mozart’s music, perhaps more than any other composer, still has the capacity to delight audiences today as much as it has done for over 200 years. I hope you can join us on the 6th – it’d be great to perform this amazing concerto to a full house!

For some years now, Remembrance Sunday has been marked at St Olave’s church by the singing of a Requiem – originally as part of the morning service, but now a stand-alone evening event: a devotion in words and music, with apposite readings interspersed with the music of a Requiem setting. This year the event will take place on Sunday 10 November at 6.30 pm, with the choir singing Brahms’s German Requiem accompanied by Helen Jones and Mark Edwards (piano duet).

Brahms’s German Requiem is an unusual contribution to the genre. The music was begun around 1856, the year in which both Robert Schumann and Brahms’s mother died. The texts of the seven movements owe nothing to any existing liturgy for the departed, being chosen by Brahms from a range of sources (Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha). Christian doctrine is not overtly referred to: there are no pleas for mercy, there is no mention of the Last Judgement, and only the mildest of prayers for the souls of the dead. On the whole the texts concentrate on the consolation of the living, and on everlasting rest – rather than everlasting life, or resurrection to new life.

The Choir will be performing the Requiem in Brahms’s own version with piano duet accompaniment. Published in the same year as the orchestral version, it was used for the first London performance. It subtly changes the nature of the piece: the focus on details of orchestral colouring (which in some movements is significant), is replaced with a much more vivid appreciation of the choir’s role. The work takes on a chamber-music atmosphere, and hints at the sound-world of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes, which are also scored for piano duet and voices.

This beautiful service is open to all, with no admission charge. There are no hymns, and there is no homily or sermon. In quiet devotion we hear the movements of the Requiem, separated with a number of short readings; it is a simple and profound experience. If you haven’t been to the event before, do come and see!