Robert Plane and the Elias Quartet will give the world premiere of a new work by Judith Bingham in August at the Three Choirs Festival.
Clarinetist Robert Plane looks forward to joining the Elias Quartet as part of the prestigious Three Choirs Festival, taking place this year in Worcester. His collaboration with the quartet has included recitals at Wigmore Hall and as part of concert series including the Gower Festival, East Devon Music and Chamber Music @ Clonter.
Alongside Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor, op. 115, which the musicians performed together most recently in Robert’s debut at the 2023 Schwarzenberg Schubertiade, they will give the world premiere of English composer Judith Bingham’s clarinet quintet ‘Elsewhere’, written especially for Robert and the quartet.
Bingham writes that her new work is “inspired by some of the famous paintings by Botticelli, but also, the small details that so often are unnoticed. Venus, being born in a seashell, is showered with flowers that the west wind Zephyrus and his girlfriend Flora blow in her direction. Blue windflowers, or anemones wait for the breeze to pass over them so that they can open. In Venus and Mars, a wasp’s nest buzzes away behind the reclining lovers. In the angelic Mystic Nativity little devils run for cover along the bottom of the painting, and in Madonna of the Magnificat a tiny silver cathedral shimmers in the distance, a long way off. I cannot know what was in Botticelli’s mind five hundred odd years ago, but I like to think that he is suggesting that everything comes at a price, or is simply cause and effect.”
In 2022, Robert premiered Bingham’s Concerto for Clarinet with the London Mozart Players and Nicholas Cleobury at JAM on the Marsh in Kent. He has tirelessly pursued a particular passion for British clarinet music in concert and on disc, his Gramophone Award-winning account of Finzi’s Concerto and Gramophone Award-shortlisted Bax Sonatas being just two of a large collection of recordings of works by the great English Romantics.
He collaborates regularly with fellow Tashmina artists the Gould Piano Trio, and is a member of Ensemble 360.
The concert will take place at Worcester Baptist Church on 1st August at 2.45pm. Full details including the link for tickets may be found via the link below. Robert’s other engagements this summer include the Sheffield, Corbridge and Penarth Chamber Music Festivals, the last of which will feature Robert’s world premiere performance of Judith Bingham’s, ‘Hodge, Dr. Johnson’s Cat’, with tenor James Gilshrist.
Robert Plane and the Elias Quartet | Three Choirs Festival | 1st August 2024 | 2.45pm
