Programme:
J. S. Bach — Toccata in C minor, BWV 911
Brahms — Four piano pieces, Op. 119
Beethoven — Sonata in C minor, Op. 111

This concert will take place at St Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere, GU27 1BP.

Access to the concert is free with a retiring collection for The Hunter Day Centre for Dementia in Haslemere. Doors open for coffee at 10:30.

Tickets are available to reserve via the Tickets page.

There is as yet no known cure for Alzheimer’s and the Hunter Centre in Haslemere provides day care for those with the disease and respite for their carers. Haslemere Concerts (HHH) is bringing these professional piano recitals to support The Centre and its clients whose worlds are closing in on them in a mist of lost memories.

Described by the Telegraph as an artist with “courage and stamina and musicality in abundance” and “an ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand” after the 23-year-old made his Wigmore Hall debut, William Bracken is in high demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and teacher. William is currently continuing studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London where he holds a position as teaching assistant in the Centre for Creative Performance and Classical Improvisation. In January 2024 William made his Carnegie Hall debut.

This concert is kindly supported by HRTCT.

Programme:
Schubert — Wanderer Fantasy in C major, Op. 15
Ligeti — Etude no.16, Book 3 “Pour Irina”
Chopin — Nocturnes Op. 48 - C minor; F-sharp minor
Ginastera — Sonata no.1, Op.22

This concert takes place at St Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere, GU27 1BP.

Access to the concert is free with a retiring collection for The Hunter Day Centre for Dementia in Haslemere. Doors open for coffee at 10:30.

Tickets for this concert are available to reserve via the Tickets page.

There is as yet no known cure for Alzheimer’s and the Hunter Centre in Haslemere provides day care for those with the disease and respite for their carers. Haslemere Concerts (HHH) is bringing these professional piano recitals to support The Centre and its clients whose worlds are closing in on them in a mist of lost memories.

Lithuanian pianist, Milda Daunoraite, began her piano studies at the age of six. She received her formative education at The Purcell School of Music and is currently studying with Tessa Nicholson at the Royal Academy of Music, on a full fees scholarship, where she is a recipient of the ABRSM Scholarship Award. She is supported by The Keyboard Charitable Trust, ‘SOS Talents Foundation – Michel Sogny’ and the Mstislav Rostropovich Foundation.

She has performed at venues such as Wigmore Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Musikhuset Aarhus, the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, at the EMMA World Summit of Nobel Prize Peace Laureates in Warsaw and many others. Milda’s recent performances include a recital in the Laeiszhalle Recital Hall in Hamburg, at the Deal Music & Arts Festival, at the Petworth Festival, Biarritz Piano Festival and at the Palermo Classica Festival.

Milda won the Purcell School’s Concerto Competition which gave her the opportunity to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. She also won First Prize in the international V. Krainev Piano Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine; the ‘Jury‘ Prize in the Pianale International Academy & Competition in Germany; and First Prize in the fourth International Piano Competition in Stockholm.

This concert is kindly supported by HRTCT.

Lucia Porcedda clarinet
Federico Battista Melis piano

Programme:
Gioachino Rossini — Introduzione, tema e variazioni
Maria Theresia von Paradis — Sicilienne
Cecile Hartog — Chateaux en espagne 1&2
Clemence de Grandval — Invocation & Air Slave

This concert takes place at St Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere, GU27 1BP.

Tickets are available to purchase via the Tickets page.

Lucia and Federico perform courtesy of the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Italian clarinettist Lucia Porcedda is one of MMSF PHILHARMONIA 2024/2025 Fellows. She has played with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Opera House, English National Opera, English National Ballet, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Brighton Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Chromatica, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru and Knussen Chamber Orchestra. She was on trial for the associate principal clarinet position with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and clarinettist at Southbank Sinfonia 2022/2023.

Having graduating with honours from the conservatoire of Cagliari (Italy), she then studied with Alessandro Carbonare in Rome and Paul Meyer, Christelle Pochet and Carjez Gerretsen in Paris. Over the years, she has participated in masterclasses around the world with prominent musicians including Romain Guyot, Nicolas Baldeyrou, Calogero Palermo, Herman Stefansson, Florent Héau, Michel Lethiec and Andrew Marriner. Concert engagements have included performances in concert halls in the UK, Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands.

In 2022, she completed her Masters degree with Distinction at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Christopher Richards, Timothy Lines, Benjamin Mellefont, Chi-Yu Mo and Laurent Ben Slimane.

Lucia has always cultivated a great passion for chamber music. In Italy, she founded Duo Motum with pianist Federico Battista Melis, with whom she performed at the Vatican museums in Rome, the Italian Cultural Institute in Lausanne (Switzerland) and music festivals throughout Sardinia. Furthermore with the association “Dimensione Danza” she periodically collaborates with choreographers and dancers, creating and showcasing performances exploring the relationship between sound and movement.

In 2024, she completed the Artist Diploma course at the Royal College of Music in London, where she studied with Peter Sparks, Richard Hosford and Paul Richards. During her year as an RCM student, she was a Hogwood Scholar and was selected as one of the BBC Symphony Orchestra Pathway Scheme 2023/2024 fellows.

Julian Azkoul artistic director & violins
Ariel Lang violins
Kay Stephen viola
Raphael Lang cello
Marianne Schofield bass

Programme:
Caroline Shaw — Entr’acte [Quintet]
Osvaldo Golijov — Tenebrae [Quartet]
Luigi Boccherini (arr. Azkoul) — Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid [Quintet]
Tchaikovsky — Andante Cantabile [Quintet]
Shostakovich — String Quartet no.8 in C Minor [Quintet]

This concert takes place at St Christopher’s Church, St Christopher's Green, Haslemere, GU27 1DD.

Tickets are available to purchase via the Tickets page.

The United Strings of Europe presents a dynamic programme featuring highlights from its critically-acclaimed recordings. A hallmark of the ensemble’s approach, several of the pieces are performed in bespoke arrangements, with the addition of the double bass enriching the ensemble’s sound.

Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, inspired by a performance of Haydn’s music by the Brentano Quartet, is emblematic of the composer’s style and has fast become a modern classic. Structured like a minuet and trio, it suddenly takes you ‘to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition’.

Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile, a gem from his String Quartet No. 1, conjures the intimate setting of a 19th-century drawing room with just the right amount of pathos. The ensemble’s recording of the work in an original arrangement for string orchestra is one of the group’s most popular tracks online.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae is a meditation following the Sept 11th attacks in the USA. Inspired by Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres and a visit to the New York Planetarium, Golijov observed that ‘the compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground’. Like the Earth viewed from afar, the music offers a "beautiful" surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one can hear it is full of pain.

Boccherini’s uproarious Music of the Night of the streets of Madrid, presents scenes from 18th-century Spain ranging from the rounds of the night guard to blind beggars playing in the street. The United Strings of Europe ups the ante with some unexpected stylistic twists and turns.

Dimitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 is a towering masterwork of the latter half of the 20th Century. Inspired by a visit to war-torn Dresden, the work is dedicated to the ‘victims of fascism and war’. It is also an extraordinarily personal work for the composer with a musical motif made up of his initials DSCH permeating the entire work.

Julian Azkoul
Anglo-Lebanese violinist Julian Azkoul is in demand as an ensemble leader, soloist and collaborator, appearing as guest director of the Britten Sinfonia, Camerata, Nordica and Archets du Léman, and guest leader of the Ulster Orchestra, Façade Ensemble, Chineke!, Riot Ensemble, Camerata Venia and Nexus Orchestra. He has appeared as first violinist of the Jubilee and Piatti string quartets and co-led UK orchestras including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Hallé, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Manchester Collective. He is the artistic director of the multinational string ensemble United Strings of Europe, curating programmes and arranging music for the ensemble.

The United Strings of Europe
The United Strings of Europe (USE) creates musical experiences that celebrate diversity and bridge cultural divides. Praised for its original programming and ‘virtuosically expressive’ playing (The Times), the London-based ensemble commissions and arranges music from a variety of cultural backgrounds and performs regularly in Europe and the Middle East. USE’s acclaimed recordings for BIS Records include Renewal - Editor’s Choice at Presto Music and one of Apple Music’s ‘10 Albums You Must Hear’, and Tchaikovsky - BBC Music Magazine’s Orchestral Choice in February 2023. Through the Night showcased the world premiere recording of Daniel Kidane's Be Still alongside new arrangements of works by Maddalena Casulana, Carlo Gesualdo, and Richard Strauss, and garnered them further critical acclaim for ‘dissolving a lot of conventions in both programming and performance. (Gramophone.) Spring 2025 will see the release of Hommages: an album bringing together composers from Europe and the Americas (Golijov, Stravinsky, Tabakova, Mustonen), inspired by dreams and recollections of the past.

Hugo Svedberg cello
Samantha Carrasco piano

Programme:
Beethoven — Cello Sonata no.3 in A major, Op. 69
Bruch — Kol Nidrei
Debussy — Cello Sonata
Fauré — Papillon, Op. 77

This concert takes place at St Christopher’s Church, St Christopher’s Green, Haslemere, GU27 1DD.

Access to the concert is free with a retiring collection for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice.

Tickets are available to reserve via the Tickets page.

Semi-finalist of the BBC Young Musician 2024 Competition and prizewinner at the Haslemere String Competition 2023, Hugo Svedberg comes from Bournemouth and began playing the cello aged six. He currently studies cello with Adrian Brendel and has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Hugo has won several competitions, including the Two Moors Festival Competition, the Bromsgrove Young Musicians Senior Platform and the 2024 Swedish ‘Pole Star’ Prize. He is a music and academic scholar at Canford School in Dorset.

Hugo plays a fine Tecchler cello on loan from a generous sponsor through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

Pianist Samantha Carrasco explores a diverse and flexible repertoire as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and accompanist. Notable performances as a soloist have included Grieg, Schumann, Tchaikovsky No.1, Rachmaninoff No.2, Mozart K466, K467 and K488 and Beethoven 3rd and 5th piano concertos. As orchestral pianist with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, highlights have included performing at the BBC Proms in 2017, Stravinsky’s Petrushka with Carlos Miguel Prieto, and broadcasting Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony live on BBC Radio 3 under Yan Pascal Tortelier. She has also contributed to live broadcasts on the radio and recordings with the BSO for Chandos and Onyx.

Alongside her performing career, Samantha continues to pursue her commitment to education. She participates in BSO education projects, and is an examiner, trainer, moderator and accompanist for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, working nationally and internationally in classical music, diplomas and jazz. She presents teaching and examining seminars on behalf of ABRSM in China, the USA and the UK. Samantha is the Head of Keyboard at Peter Symonds College, Winchester, contributing heavily to the Hampshire Specialist Music Course there. She is also the piano consultant for King Edward VI School, Southampton. She coaches chamber ensembles and adjudicates music competitions as well as hosting masterclasses for pianists, accompanists and ensemble groups.

Programme:
Beethoven — Sonata Op. 31 no.2
Stephen Hough — Sonata no.3
Shostakovich — Selection of Preludes and Fugues
No.5
No.3
No.4
No.7
No.24

This concert takes place at St Christopher’s Church, St Christopher's Green, Haslemere, GU27 1DD.

Tickets are available to purchase via the Tickets page.

Emanuil Ivanov attracted international attention after receiving the First prize at the 2019 Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Italy. This achievement was followed by concert engagements in some of the world's most prestigious halls including Teatro alla Scala in Milan and Herculessaal in Munich.

Emanuil Ivanov was born in 1998 in the town of Pazardzhik, Bulgaria. From an early age he demonstrated a keen interest and love for music. He regards the presence of symphonic music, especially that of Gustav Mahler, as tremendously influential in his musical upbringing during his childhood. He started piano lessons with Galina Daskalova in his hometown around the age of seven. He later studied in and graduated from the Bertolt Brecht language high school in Pazardzhik. Ivanov studied with renowned bulgarian pianist Atanas Kurtev from 2013 to 2018. He is currently studying on a full scholarship at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire under the tutelage of Pascal Nemirovski and Anthony Hewitt.

Ivanov has won prizes in competitions such as "Alessandro Casagrande", "Scriabin-Rachmaninoff", "Liszt-Bartok", "Young virtuosos" and "Jeunesses International Music Competition Dinu Lipatti". He was also awarded the honorary Crystal Iyre and teh Young Musician of the Year Award - some of the most prestigious awards in Bulgaria. In 2022, he received the honorary Silver Medal of the London Musicians' Company and later in the same year became a recipient of the Carnwath Piano Scholarship.

His participation in masterclasses include those of Dmitri Bashkirov, Dmitri Alexeev, Sir Stephen Hough, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Peter Donohoe, etc.

Hagam Shaham violin
Arnon Erez piano
Raphael Wallfisch cello

Programme:
Mozart — Piano Trio in E major, K.542
Shostakovich — Piano Trio no.2, Op. 67
Grieg — Andante con moto, EG 116
Dvořák — Piano Trio no.4 in E minor, Op. 90, B.166 "Dumky"

This concert takes place at St Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere, GU27 1BP.

Tickets are available for purchase via the Tickets page.

"…the performers brought a spontaneity and freshness to the music with the inventive nature of the material really shining through. Overall, this was an evening of first rate music making and the performances of the Arensky and Brahms trios were exceptionally fine.”
Seen & Heard International

Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch was founded in 2009 and comprises three of the finest international instrumentalists performing today: world renowned cellist Raphael Wallfisch alongside the outstanding talents of Hagai Shaham (violin) and Arnon Erez (piano).

Since its formation, the Trio has been invited numerous times to prestigious chamber music series at venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Rotterdam De Doellen, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie.

Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch has an exclusive contract with Nimbus Records with releases to date including the Mendelssohn trios and works by Ravel, Arenski, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov. The trio's most recent release, a recording of Dvorak: Piano Trio no.3 (2023) was described in a 5 star review by BBC Music Magazine as showing "passionate engagement with the work's stirring rhetoric... beautifully nuanced."

HHH Concerts, in association with Haslemere Festival, in aid of the Meath Epilepsy Charity, Godalming

Programme:
J.S. Bach — Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

This concert takes place at St Christopher’s Church, St Christopher's Green, Haslemere, GU27 1DD.

Tickets are available for purchase via the Tickets page.

One of the world’s leading concert pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and as soloist with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Asia. Her interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters of our time.

Born in 1958 into a musical family (the daughter of the Cathedral organist and choirmaster in Ottawa, Canada), Angela began her piano studies age three, performed in public at four and a year later won her first scholarship. In her formative years, she also studied classical ballet, violin, and recorder. From 1963-73 she studied at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music with Earle Moss and Myrtle Guerrero, after which she completed her Bachelor of Music in Performance at the University of Ottawa in the class of French pianist Jean-Paul Sévilla, graduating at the age of 18. She was a prizewinner in numerous piano competitions in Europe, Canada, and the USA, but it was her triumph in the 1985 Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, held in memory of Glenn Gould, that truly launched her international career.

Angela’s award-winning cycle for Hyperion Records of all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times). Begun in 1994, it culminated with her much-awaited recording of Bach’s Art of Fugue in 2014. Her extensive discography also includes solo recordings of the complete Beethoven Sonatas (she is one of very few women ever to record the complete cycle), Scarlatti, Handel, Couperin, Rameau, Haydn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel, Granados and Messiaen. She has won four Juno Awards, including one for her album of Mozart Concertos with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. Other concerto recordings include the complete Bach Concertos with the Australian Chamber Orchestra; the works for piano and orchestra of Schumann with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and Messiaen’s mammoth Turangalila Symphony with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. She is now recording the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, and the first of three double-CD albums will be released in November 2022. A regular in the USA Billboard chart, her new album Love Songs hit the top of the specialist classical chart in the UK and stayed there for months after its release. In 2015, Angela was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s “Hall of Fame”, reflecting her popularity with music lovers around the world.

In 2020 she was awarded two prestigious prizes: the City of Leipzig Bach Medal (being the first woman in its 17-year history to receive the award), and the Wigmore Hall Gold Medal in recognition of some 80 performances over the past 35 years in London’s most prestigious chamber music venue.

During the 2007-2008 season, Angela embarked on her Bach World Tour, performing the Well-Tempered Clavier in 21 countries on six continents. At the same time, she released a DVD entitled Bach Performance on the Piano, sharing her experience of learning and performing Bach with amateurs and professionals alike. From September 2016 to September 2022 (the end delayed two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic) she presented in major cities of the world The Bach Odyssey—performing all the keyboard works of J.S. Bach in a series of twelve marathon recitals—a huge feat which has been undertaken by very few keyboard players. After her performances of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival, the critic of the London Times wrote, “…the freshness of Hewitt’s playing made it sound as though no one had played this music before.”

Conducting concertos of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven from the piano, Angela has led the Toronto Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Lucerne Festival Strings, the Kammerorchester Basel, the Vancouver Symphony, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Salzburg Camerata, the orchestra of RAI Torino, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan, and in 2019 made her debut playing and conducting Bach with the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein.

Along with performing a vast amount of the standard repertoire, Angela has also commissioned new works including two piano concertos: the Second Piano Concerto of Dominic Muldowney (premiered with the BBC Symphony in 2002); and in 2017 “Nameless Seas” by Canadian-Finnish composer Matthew Whittall (with the National Arts Centre Orchestra). Canadian composers such as Oskar Morawetz, Steven Gellman, Gary Kulesha, David McIntyre, and Patrick Cardy also wrote pieces dedicated to her. In 2010 she commissioned seven composers from around the world to write short pieces inspired by Bach which were published in a collection (along with several of her own Bach transcriptions) entitled “Angela Hewitt’s Bach Book”. In February 2022 she was presented with The Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance by the Ontario Arts Council.

Described as “one of the busiest pianists on earth” by London’s Evening Standard (2005), Angela also devotes herself to nurturing new talent. Her masterclasses, both around the world and online, are hugely appreciated, and every few years she gives a week-long masterclass in Italy for gifted pianists. She was also part of Piano Six from 1994-2004: a project which took live music into the remote communities of Canada—giving concerts, masterclasses, and playing for school children across the country. Her writings on music include all the liner notes for her CD recordings as well as several book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement.

In 2005, Angela launched the Trasimeno Music Festival in the heart of Umbria, Italy of which she is Artistic Director. An annual event, it draws an international audience to stunning venues including the Castle of the Knights of Malta in Magione (near Perugia) on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. Seven concerts in seven days feature Hewitt as recitalist, chamber musician, song accompanist, and conductor, working with both established and young artists of her choosing. Involving writers and actors in the programming has been a particular pleasure for her, and she has gone on to perform with many of them elsewhere: with authors Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes in London, Vienna, and New York; and with actor Roger Allam in Venice and at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Her recordings and live performances have featured in such films as The Tree of Life (2011), The Life Aquatic (2004), The Impassioned Eye (2003)—a documentary on Henri Cartier-Bresson—and in 2018 The Children Act (based on the novel by Ian McEwan and starring Emma Thompson).

As an Ambassador for “Orkidstra”– a Sistema-inspired social development program in Ottawa’s inner city, she brings attention to how music can bring children and young adults together through the joy of making music and learning an instrument, as well as how it teaches valuable skills such as commitment, teamwork and tolerance.

Her frequent masterclasses are hugely appreciated. When all concert activity abruptly stopped in spring 2020 due to the pandemic, Angela went online to share daily offerings of short pieces—many of which form the basis of teaching material. Her fans were thrilled, and she was happy to inspire them and stay in touch.

In July 2022 Angela was Chairman of the Jury of the prestigious International Bach Competition in Leipzig (piano category). The upcoming 2022-23 season sees her performing with orchestras in Finland, Denmark, Montreal, Ottawa, Victoria BC, Prague, Germany, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York. Recitals take her to, among others, Barcelona, San Francisco, Seattle, Vienna, Amsterdam, Cambridge, Leipzig, and the famous La Fenice Opera House in Venice. She will give masterclasses for young pianists at the Royal College of Music, London, at the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (Nova Scotia), at Northwestern University (Illinois) and the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. She is also an artist-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall.

In 2006 Angela was awarded an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II in her 80th birthday honours. A frequent guest on BBC Radio, she was invited to be the sole live performer in the two hours of classical music broadcast on BBC Radio 3 immediately following the funeral and committal of Queen Elizabeth II on September 19, 2022. In 2015 Angela was promoted to a Companion of the Order of Canada—her country’s highest honour. She was “Artist of the Year” at the 2006 Gramophone Awards, “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2010 MIDEM Classical Awards at Cannes, and in 2018 received the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Ottawa. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, has seven honorary doctorates, and is a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge.