In France he returns to Le Château de Lourmarin and is invited to play in his home city of Aix-en-Provence at the Cour de l’Hôtel de Ville. In September 2010 Emmanuel Despax will give his third recital at Wigmore Hall under the auspices of the Kirckman Concert Society.       

Wednesday 20 October, 2010  8 pm

Paul Watkins   cello

Paul Watkins has established himself as one of the finest cellists of his generation. He has appeared as a concerto soloist throughout Europe, Australia and the Far East.

Paul performs regularly with the major British orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic. He has made six appearances at the BBC Proms, most recently at the First Night of the 2007 season, in a performance of the Elgar Concerto which was subsequently released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

 In 2004 he made his concerto debut at the Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic. He has recently performed with the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony and London Philharmonic and toured to Italy and Prague with the BBC Philharmonic and to China and the Far East with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  In March 2006 he gave the world premiere of Reflections on a Scottish Folk Song, a cello concerto written by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett in memory of the Queen Mother, with the Philharmonia at the South Bank Centre. 

Alongside his concerto appearances, Paul is a dedicated chamber musician and is a member of the Nash Ensemble of London.  His regular chamber music partners include Jaime Laredo, Daniel Hope, Tasmin Little, Alexander Kerr and Michael Collins, in such venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall in London and the 92^nd Street Y in New York.

Paul also has a busy schedule as a conductor, having won first prize at the Leeds Conductors’ Competition in 2002.  Since that time, he has worked with many orchestras including the London Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony and the London Philharmonic, and this season he made his debut as Associate Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra.

Paul has recorded for Nimbus, Chandos, Bis and Hyperion, and his first CD for Warner Classics received a Grammy nomination.

We warmly welcome back James Cryer, a local musician who has lived in Richmond for most of his life. Of Gibraltarian descent, he was educated at St Paul’s School as a music scholar. His accompanying skills were apparent when he played in front of the Queen Mother at the age of 14. He was taught the organ by Richard Popplewell at the Chapel Royal, winning the Dixon prize for improvisation at F.R.C.O.

 He became organ scholar at Westminster Abbey under Simon Preston where he gave several recitals, and then at St John’s College under Dr. George Guest. He was assistant organist at The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy under Philip Berg, and has played at St James’s Palace, Hampton Court Palace and St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. He has also appeared as soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra.

His accompanying skills have meant that he is in demand as a pianist. He  studied the piano with Patricia Carroll, and has since recorded for Naxos with the clarinettist, John Bradbury which has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM.

 James has appeared at The Barnes Music Society before with Colin Bradbury, John Bradbury, the cellist Adrian Bradbury and the baritone Thomas Guthrie

The Classic Buskers (formerly The Cambridge Buskers) have a knack of communicating their passion for classical music in two of the best ways possible – virtuosity and laughter. The audience comes away from a Buskers' concert on a high, having been both entertained and educated. That's the Classic Buskers' secret – an ability to communicate their love of music, which is after all what performance is all about.

 Michael Copley plays more than 40 woodwind instruments at incredible speeds, ranging from recorders, flutes, panpipes, crumhorns and ocarinas to a Pico Pipe and a rubber trout, accompanied by Ian Moore on a small but perfectly formed accordion, either pink or yellow. Their virtuosity on these instruments is staggering. It's a great show for those who know a little about classical music (listen out for an endless stream of musical jokes) or indeed for anybody who simply appreciates wit and wants to be entertained.

Michael's command of an astonishing number of foreign languages enables him to present the show in the language of whichever country in which the Buskers are performing, an unusual and crucial part of the evening, which helps the audience appreciate the performance even more.

Their repertoire ranges from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Haydn's Trumpet Concerto (with a tiny ocarina taking up the challenge of the solo part) to Beethoven's 9th (the Choral) and Bizet's Carmen. Mozart's Queen of the Night and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries enable Ian to display his unusual vocal talents...

The Buskers have performed in over 20 countries and in 15 languages, from London to Lyons, Paris to Potsdam, Toronto to Tokyo and Vienna to Valencia, and in venues ranging from Seoul's National Arts Centre to Salzburg's Mozarteum, London's Royal Albert Hall to Ljubljana's Cankarejev Dom and  Milan's Teatro Manzoni to Malaysia's Petronas Towers.

Simon Fischer   violin

Raymond Fischer   piano

Programme to include Beethoven, Mendelssohn & Bernard Herrmann

Being conducted by a composer in a powder blue suit and bright yellow trainers certainly creates an impression. Sir Michael Tippett died in 1998 and was such an inspirational musician that when the Tippett Quartet was formed in the same week, they decided to take his name.

 Like their namesake, the Tippett Quartet draw inspiration from the past and future alike. They are committed to combining mainstream repertoire with contemporary works, and have been described as “bold and innovative…extraordinary technical accomplishment with flair and a bright communicative spark” (The Times). Their recent Wigmore Hall recital was greeted with universal critical acclaim for a programme of Haydn, Schubert and Ravel. 2009 saw the release of four new CDs including volume two of the complete Tippett string quartets for NAXOS. he quartet also took part in Peter Maxwell Davies’ birthday celebrations at London’s Southbank. 2010 sees the release of three new CDs including the world premiere recording of Richard Arnell’s String Quartets and Donald Tovey’s works for String Quartet. The latter CD was launched at the English Music Festival in May 2010.

The Tippett Quartet was formed in 1998, the year in which they made their Wigmore Hall debut. They have since performed at the BBC Proms, Cheltenham Festival, Three Choirs Festival, Chichester Festivities, Dartington International Summer School and Lincoln International Festival. They have also performed at King’s Place, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall, The Sage, Gateshead and regularly return to Wigmore Hall. The quartet frequently appears on BBC Radio 3 and has broadcast live performances on Radio Novi Sad, Serbia and Sveriges Radio (Swedish National Radio).

The Tippett Quartet combines clarity of execution and total commitment in their performances; their interpretations are stylistically varied, informed by the breadth of their repertoire. 2007 saw the start of a two-year project to record the complete Tippett string quartets for NAXOS. The quartet’s artistic approach makes them highly suited to the virtuosic demands of this repertoire as described in The Times: “their intent is serious, their execution compelling, their ensemble immaculate”.

 The quartet has premiered works by composers including John Adams, Cecilia Ore, Simon Holt, Robert Walker, Howard Goodall and (Barnes Music Society’s former President) Stephen Dodgson. Their relationship with Stephen Dodgson has led to the release of his complete string quartet chamber music for Dutton Epoch. The Tippett Quartet has released recordings for EMI Classics and for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. They have performed at the Royal Opera House collaborating with the Royal Ballet and had invitations to perform in France and the USA. They have collaborated with artists such as Lawrence Power, David Owen Norris, Melvyn Tan, Ashley Wass and Craig Ogden. The quartet pursues a keen interest in its educational work and regularly visits schools and Universities.

For more information about The Tippett Quartet, please follow this link

Anna-Maria Vera   piano

Ana-Maria Vera was born in Washington, D.C. to Dutch and Bolivian parents. She began her musical studies with her mother at the age of three, made her professional debut when she was eight and has been performing around the world ever since. Acknowledged early on, her gifts were developed with the help of two superb teachers, Ylda Novik and Leon Fleisher. At the age of nine she made her nationally televised debut with the Boston Pops and the legendary Arthur Fiedler, with whom she embarked on several American tours. At the age of eleven she recorded Mozart and Haydn piano concertos with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart, for which Philips awarded her a Gold Record. Later that year she was also invited to perform at the White House for President and Mrs. Carter.

 Vera has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Netherlands Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and with conductors Riccardo Muti, Yoel Levi, Edo de Waart, David Zinman, Eliahu Inbal, David Stern, Sergiu Commissiona, Maximiano Valdes, Michael Schønwandt, Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi and James Conlon. She is equally at home on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing in solo recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Herkulessaal in Münich, Tivoli Theatre in Copenhagen, Salle Gaveau in Paris and at London’s Wigmore Hall. Over the past decade she has devoted much of her artistry to chamber music, developing close duo partnerships with major artists such as Ivry Gitlis, Steven Isserlis and Joshua Bell.

In February 2005, her debut in London’s Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra led to an immediate re-invitation to play with the orchestra in their next season. Reviewers have called her sound 'luminous', likening it to 'pure aural silk', remarking on her 'dazzling pianistic virtuosity' and 'penetrating sensitivity', with one review for her LPO performance of Ravel’s G major concerto stating that 'The two outer movements glittered with fun, humour and superb pianism … the long opening passage [of the 2nd movement], where the piano is unaccompanied, spoke of serenity, distance, of eternity even'.

Ana-Maria Vera is descended paternally from the Andean Aymara civilization and has in recent years organised a series of concerts in Bolivia, taking a select group of world-class colleagues to join local musicians and students to play a full range of chamber and orchestral concerts throughout the country. Memorable occasions have included outdoor concerts at Kalorko, a recently discovered site of dinosaur footprints, the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt desert in the world, and amongst the pre-Incan ruins of Tihuanaku as well as in the theatres of La Paz, Sucre, Potosi and Cochabamba.

For more information about Ana-Maria Vera, please follow this link