Welcome to the 40th Anniversary Lancaster International Concert Series
Thanks to the generous practical and financial support of Lancaster
University and the tremendous loyalty and enthusiasm of you, the audience, Lancaster Concerts is celebrating its 40th anniversary. In this special year we are proud to present the new, the exciting, the familiar, the entertaining, the unusual and the provocative in a wide selection of concerts and operas, ranging from the exotic and the intimate to the exhilarating and the spectacular.
The profile and enjoyment of the series have continued to develop with the introduction last season of our pioneering webcasts, watched by people worldwide for over 400 hours to date. By popular demand we will include three further webcast concerts in this 2008/09 season.
We are delighted to focus on some of the most promising and thrilling of today’s young artists – an important strand of this series – including one of the leading young pianists of his generation, the extraordinarily talented pianist Libor Novacek. In collaboration with the Young Concert Artists Trust, we also present the immensely gifted Doric String Quartet immediately prior to a major tour of Japan, and the stunning concerto finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition 2004, flautist Adam Walker.
The season wouldn’t be complete without artists with Lancaster connections, of course, and it is a particular pleasure to welcome the mezzo-soprano Jane Irwin in Mahler, former Lancaster University pianist-in-residence (1993-99) Andrew West, and the Lancaster Singers with our President Denis McCaldin in Mozart.
The BBC Philharmonic, always one of the hottest tickets of the series, returns with Tchaikovsky under its Russian Chief Guest Conductor, Vassily Sinaisky. The Symphony Orchestra of Chetham's School of Music, also celebrating its 40th birthday, marks the occasion with the world premiere of a sparkling new work by jazz pianist Gwilym Simock. Sinfonia ViVA returns with the stunning percussionist Colin Currie in a recent concerto by Steven Mackey, alongside music by two Viennese masters.
Other anniversaries – which run like a thread through the 2008-09 series – include the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn as well as the 75th birthday of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. His chamber opera The Lighthouse, an intense and overwhelming experience, receives a new production from Psappha while Purcell’s glorious setting of the tragic story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and her fateful love for the Trojan Prince, Aeneas, is semi-staged in a collaboration between Manchester Camerata and the Royal Northern College of Music.
A stellar line-up of chamber musicians, led by the Chilingirian Quartet and including the versatile pianist Martin Roscoe, also features the cellist Adrian Brendel with pianist Tim Horton. January sees a rare chance to experience North Indian classical music on sitar, santoor and tabla, while November and February, respectively, promise to be brightened by jovial jazz sets from 6pac and sultry dance numbers by the Argentinian tango king, Astor Piazzolla.
In a new departure for this series we celebrate ‘the most original music thinker of our time’ (New Yorker) in an event devoted to Steve Reich and the exploration of his influence across several artforms in a day-long symposium, culminating in a performance of some of the Counterpoint and Phase works.
I am grateful to all of you who support the series, especially the Friends of Lancaster Concerts, and I hope that you find much to entertain, intrigue and inspire you in this year's programme. I look forward to welcoming you to this special 40th Anniversary Series.
Tim Williams, Director,
Lancaster International Concert Series
