A new project for the coming year involves exploring neglected piano repertoire written by women composers, which we’re starting to present in a sequence called Minervan Miniatures. The series of short recordings highlights forgotten gems and unearths overlooked piano pieces, and affords the opportunity to bring women composers into the limelight.
Like a musical cabinet of curiosities, Minervan Miniatures will unfold as a series, and next year will see a series of piano recitals themed around diverse repertoire, performed by Your Loyal Correspondent.
The first three episodes in the series are now online; the first features two preludes by Nannie Louise Wright, combining almost Wagnerian majesty with sonorous textural writing in a series of twelve preludes that demands further exploration:
The second episode presents a trio of tangos, full of flair and vigour, by Maria Ramalho Pires Galvao and Chiquina (Francisca) Gonzaga.
The third piece is the beautifully melancholic Cantico do Pastor by the very, very young Sylvia Regina Portella:
More as the series unfolds; there are some marvellous pieces I’m currently discovering, including a bold statement set of piano preludes that deserves much wider recognition; I’m looking forward to bringing this repertoire to the concert-hall next year.
The second volume in the Magnificat series by Andrew Nethsingha and The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge takes a keen look at settings of the Evening Canticles across the years, from 1932 to 2019 from stalwart composers of the canon in Sumsion and Howells to perhaps lesser-known figures including Sydney Watson (who conducted the first performance of Walton’s epic The Twelve) and Giles Swayne, as well as contemporary titans Arvo Pärt and Julian Anderson.
Filmed during lockdown, the unfolding series brings together image and music in a meditative presentation of both the materials and the methods involved in research, uncovering the hidden beauty in the most mundane of objects in the research laboratory and transforming the process of investigation into an artistic experience, filtered through piano music by Philip Glass, Debussy, John Cage and Tarik O’Regan.
Colyer-Fergusson Hall becomes an immersive platform for highlighting processes operating in both science and music – viral infection and the process of mutation linked to compositional processes in music, together taking the viewer on an odyssey through sub-molecular events at the cellular level.
Pianist, chamber musician and accompanist, Libby’s work has taken her to festivals and concert-halls around the country. She is also Artistic Director of the New Paths Festival, founded in 2016 and which takes place each spring in Beverley, and Co-Artistic Director of Beverley’s own Chamber Music Festival.
