Timothy Orpen plays Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in a brand new video alongside colleagues from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom Timothy is Principal Clarinet.

The video forms part of the RSNO’s Spring/Summer Digital Season 2021, with members of the orchestra performing as the RSNO Chamber Ensemble.

Tonight there is a further opportunity to hear Timothy as he gives a concert with pianist John Reid for the Barnes Music Society, featuring music by Finzi, Stravinsky, Brahms and more… Tickets still available via the Barnes Music Society website.

The Ferio Saxophone Quartet will perform a double-bill of concerts at Henley Festival on Sunday 19th September.

In the morning they will give an informal performance at 10:30am, as part of the Festival’s ‘Family Sunday’ line-up — then they will give a formal concert at 6:30pm to an audience in black tie dress-code.

Both performances feature the same programme, including works by Piazzolla, Donizetti, Bach, Bizet and Bernstein, and will take place at the festival’s ‘Jazz Club’ in the magnificent Spiegel Tent.

Tickets are available via the Henley Festival website, via the General Admission and Family Sunday sections.

In their role as ‘Featured Artists’, the Solem Quartet will give two prominent concerts at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Cardiff.

Their concerts will take place on 13 and 14 September, and will feature several works by Pēteris Vasks, as well as music by leading Welsh composers. Members of the quartet will also deliver a workshop as part of the Peter Reynolds Composer Studio.

Both concerts take place in Cardiff University Concert Hall, and will be streamed live on the Vale of Glamorgan Festival YouTube channel.

The Solem Quartet will feature live on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ on Wednesday 15 September.

From just after 5pm, Sean Rafferty will chat to the players about their upcoming debut CD ‘The Four Quarters’, which will be released on Orchid Classics two days later on 17 September. The Solems will also perform a selection of short works from the disc live on air, including arrangements by members of the Quartet.

In addition, they will perform the second movement of Pēteris Vasks’s String Quartet no. 3, which will have featured two days earlier in their programme for the Vale of Glamorgan Festival at Cardiff University Concert Hall. This concert will also feature Vasks’s Quartet no. 2 ‘Summer Tunes’ and will be live streamed via the Festival’s YouTube channel.

The ‘In Tune’ broadcast on Wednesday 15 Sept begins at 5pm, and can be heard live either on the radio or online.

Timothy Orpen will be a featured soloist with the RSNO in October, as part of a new concert series by two of Scotland’s leading orchestras.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are launching a series of concerts in Aberdeen, which will be their first live performances in North-East Scotland since the start of the pandemic.

As part of the series, Timothy will perform Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the RSNO at Aberdeen’s Music Hall on Sunday 10 October.

The Solem Quartet’s debut CD ‘The Four Quarters’ is available to pre-order from today!

Released on the Orchid Classics label, the disc is built around music by Thomas Adès and also includes several arrangements by the Quartet members themselves.

Click here to read the full press release.

Louise Thomson looks forward to giving a solo harp recital for Alwinton Summer Concerts in Northumberland on Saturday 21st August.

Her programme will feature a broad range of music from the Baroque to the present day showcasing the versatility of the harp, including works by Scarlatti and Glinka, harp virtuoso composers Ekaterina Walter-Kühne and Marcel Grandjany, and Louise’s own jazz arrangement of Pat Metheny’s Letter from Home. The programme will also feature the Suite for Harp by Welsh composer Huw Watkins, a set of four characterful movements entitled March, Toccata, Lullaby and Gigue.

Tickets are available for £15 via the Alwinton Summer Concerts website.

Tim Horton returns to the North Norfolk Music Festival next week to give a concert featuring solo piano works and a brand new piece for viola and piano.

A regular performer at the Festival, Tim has been invited to give this special recital with Artistic Director and violist Simon Rowland-Jones, whose new work An Elegy for William Birtles will be premiered as part of the programme.

The concert takes place on Friday 20 August at 6:00pm, and tickets are available via the North Norfolk Music Festival website.

Pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi will travel to Germany this month to give a recital at the Rarities of Piano Music Festival in Husum, Germany.

Hiroaki will give two performances of his hour-long programme featuring works by Percy Sherwood, Dorothy Howell, Marce Dupré and Nicolai Medtner. His concerts take place in the Festival’s principal venue: the beautiful Rittersaal in Husum Castle, on Saturday 14 August 2021.

Having run annually since 1987, the renowned Rarities of Piano Music Festival aims “to draw the public’s attention to works that, despite their high quality, have not found their way into the current piano repertoire”. During the one-week Festival, a selection of the performances are recorded and later released as a live CD on Danish label Danacord. Hiroaki previously featured on Vol. 27 of this disc after his performance of music by Ernest Walker at the 2014 Festival.

Huw Wiggin looks forward to performing in his duo partnership with John Lenehan at Absolute Classics in Dumfries and Galloway, at 2:30pm tomorrow (Saturday 7th August).

Their concert programme will feature a variety of original works for saxophone and piano by Paul Creston, Jules Demersseman, Graham Fitkin and Andy Scott. They will also perform Rachmaninov’s wordless song Vocalise, as well as Two Songs Without Words by John Lenehan himself. Also featured are Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folksong in an arrangement by Robert Stanton, and the programme ends with Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue.

The Corvus Consort has been announced as ‘Ensemble in Residence’ at the brand new Whiddon Autumn Festival, which sees its inaugural edition in September 2021.

Set in the picturesque Whiddon Parishes of North Dartmoor in rural Devon, the Festival will feature three days of vocal and chamber music, running 10-12 September. Events will take place in the Dartmoor villages of Chagford, Gidleigh, Throwleigh and Drewsteignton, taking the four villages’ beautiful churches as venues.

In their Ensemble-in-Residence role, the Corvus Consort will feature in several of the Festival’s events, including a double-bill evening concert, two church services, and the Festival’s final celebratory concert.

Every day this week, BBC Radio 3’s ‘Afternoon Concert’ programme features performances by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, including several retrospective broadcasts and a particular tribute to clarinettist Robert Plane.

Rob left his post at BBCNOW last month, after spending 21 years as Principal Clarinet. This week of Radio 3 ‘Afternoon Concerts’ featuring the orchestra includes a celebration of Rob’s tenure by looking back at some recorded highlights. Tune in today just after 3:30pm to hear Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, and tomorrow at 3:45pm to hear Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie. Click here to listen again to Tuesday’s broadcast of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto — more details below.