Shall we do fifteen again?
[Music]
Chamber music is one of the most important things we do as musicians.
It requires an intense form of listening. The music is often terribly virtuosic, but
often really intimately composed.
I'm responsible for the orchestras, auditioning players, choosing repertoire, of course conducting
them in the various concerts we do across the year. I'm also heavily involved in new
music. Directing the New Music Ensemble, working with composers, commissioning new music and
of course heavily involved in supervising the chamber music activities that happen here
in the University.
The instruments are just tools for expressing what's going on inside you. So, it's not your
instrument that makes the music, it's you who makes the music through your instrument.
So, if you play something then really sing it inside. Like physically sing it inside,
really hear it clearly in your head. Every single note. Really think about how every
colour should sound and then allow your instrument, use your technique and what you know how to
do to sing out.
There's a wealth of opportunities for students here at the University. There's so much going
on chamber music wise. We encourage all of our students to meet up, to find pieces of
music that they're enthusiastic about, that they want to play, that they want to perform
together, whether that be the more traditional string quartets or unusual combinations of
instruments and wide and varying repertoire.
[Music]
Sorry, I keep stopping you, but I really want to encourage you guys to play together so
if Josh has all the notes - dee da da da, dee da da da, dee da, dee da - it should be
really rhythmic with the cello.
That was beautiful.
Composers have often written their most innovative and deeply personal pieces for chamber ensembles.
One thinks of Beethoven lying on his sick bed writing his final quartet and pouring
in all the emotions and feelings that he was experiencing then or someone like Janacek
who wrote a string quartet called Intimate Letters in which he pours forth all of his
feelings and emotions of being in a really intense love affair. It really deals with
a lot of deep and profound thoughts and feelings and to explore these pieces is a tremendous
experience for any musician. Often these pieces are like dialogues between each individual
musician and it requires a real intense form of listening and of imagination. It's a wonderful
way to get to know people to play music together with friends and share this experience is
a fantastic thing for a musician to do. And a really important one. And of course talking
about orchestral playing, you can't really be a fantastic orchestral player unless you
have the experience of listening in a chamber ensemble as well and that will really help
the way that you perform in an orchestra.
We're lucky to have the country's finest chamber musicians working alongside our students giving
coaching sessions and working with them on the repertoire that they're studying. We also
offer platform sessions where chamber musicians will perform to each other and give positive
and useful feedback on the beautiful performance but also on stage presence, on communicating
with an audience and there's also an opportunity to play in the chamber music concerts. We're
fortunate enough to have one of the great chamber music venues in the country here - the
Barber Institute and the wonderful Elgar Concert Hall and the Dome and all of our musicians
are able to perform concerts in all of these terrific venues. So, we encourage any form
of chamber music here at the University and often in the past concerts have been tremendously
varied. We've had barber shop quartets playing alongside saxophone quartets and then more
serious string quartets have come along and duos with pianos. We've had madrigal groups
singing with racy lyrics from medieval times! All kinds of music we encourage here - there's
also the jazz collective so if any of you jazz musicians who want to get together and
form small jazz groups. If you want to get involved in chamber music activities here,
do get in touch with the University Music team and get in touch with the chamber music
managers from the Music Society and you will find all their details on the Music Society
website.