News
News
5 November 2011
TRICYCLE THEATRE
Kilburn high notes
They have always been willing to try new things at the Tricycle. Our north-west London correspondent Toby Teller nips down the road to find out how chamber music snuck into one of the capital's most innovative theatres.
The stage may be set for a play entitled The Absence of Women but Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Sophie Lockett, Eniko Magyar and Gemma Rosefield walk on nonetheless. They are the Honeymead Ensemble, a flexibly-sized group of exceptional young musicians led by violinist Waley-Cohen, on this occasion making its second appearance in a brand new chamber music series at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn.
The theatre is in the north-west London borough of Brent where concerts are few and far between (even the Brent Symphony Orchestra performs for the most part in adjoining Camden or Westminster). And until now the Tricycle has been lauded principally for its programme of socially engaged theatre productions. But one Sunday a month since August the 235-seat space has been turned over, set and all, to Waley-Cohen and her ensemble.
The idea came from Nicolas Kent, who will have been the Tricycle's artistic director for 28 years when he leaves next year: 'I first saw Tamsin a long time ago at the Barbican at a birthday party. She played (she must have been in her late teens) and it was extraordinary. I then saw her at various other occasions and thought, why don't we do a series of concerts? We talked about it and she also pushed a little bit to get me to sit down and do it and it became something we thought we'd try. And it's gone rather better than I could ever have dared hope; in that not only has the music been absolutely wonderful and incredibly well received but also people have come in their droves. We have set up a series that will go through to the middle of the summer to follow this series because of the excitement and success of this one. We're also looking for some money to sponsor it so hopefully we can commission a composer to write something specifically for it, and we can push the boat out a bit and be a tiny bit more experimental. All in all, I couldn't be more excited and I hope that my successor, whoever she or he is, will continue.'
The compact space turns out to be an ideal place to listen to strings, with the instruments sounding remarkably close to the ear. 'I always knew the acoustic was terrific,' Kent says, 'because we've done a couple of opera performances here. We've always been careful about acoustics in this building. I loathe it when you go to a restaurant and you can't hear yourself because of all the hard surfaces. No one seems to understand that a meal, as well as being great food, has to be great conversation. In away that's true of music - it has to be a good conversation between the listener and the performer. Because of the intimacy of the space, here it is a wonderful conversation.'
Waley-Cohen agrees: 'It's actually really great. It's very. very direct, the atmosphere is very intense and you really feel it on stage. I like that directness, there's nowhere to hide. The breathing quality of the bow - you can really bring that across where it's usually lost. So often you play in theatres and you really can't do anything with colour, but here you can. Really, it's like speaking, like telling someone something.'
Kent has left the programming up to Waley-Cohen, but despite the absence of a substantial track record for classical music at the Tricycle, she has not seen the need to programme popular classics - programmes so far have paired Schubert's Death and the Maiden with Janá&k's Intimate Letters quartet, and quintets by Schubert and Glazunov. Nor has she been easy on herself or her colleagues:
We definitely haven't been doing that, I know! We haven't given ourselves an easy time at all, but we're young, we should be up for a challenge. I just love playing this music and I love being challenged, and have chosen difficult works in every sense. I don't really believe in taking the easy option, especially in a theatre like this which is cutting-edge and the audience is quite sophisticated. I think we should have more faith in our audiences, people are really open. Most of the works are emotion ally powerful as well as quite substantial and I think people have reacted well. But I haven't been tempted to programme Einekleine Nachtmusik, no. I don't think that's necessarv There's so much great music.'
Although she has been given a free hand, Waley-Cohen says she is keen to find connections between the theatre's main work and the music she chooses for future programmes. So, for instance, when the theatre mounts a brace of productions under the title. The Bomb - A Partial History. next year, she plans to play Shostakovich's eighth quartet and the septet version of Strauss's Meta morp bosen, both examples of'apocalyptic music', in her words. Other ideas include American (Glass, Copland, Dvoák) and Russian Arensky, Tchaikovsky) concerts.
In the meantime, there is December's candlelight performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations. And before that, on 13 November, the small matter of Brahms's G major sextet and Verklärte Nacht, Schoenberg's depiction of a couple's angsty trudge through a moonlit forest. 'The reason I wanted to do it was the literary connection,' she told me. 'Obviously, it's based on a poem so I thought that was appropriate for a theatre.' Appropriate too that the stage will still be set up for Lee Blessing's Cold War two-hander, A Walk in the Woods. Another happy coincidence, she admits.
18 - 19 CLASSICALMUSICMAGAZINE.ORG
August 2011
The Tricycle Chamber Music series launched this month, on the 14th of August, with "Romance of the Cello", the Glazunov an Schubert cello quintets played by Tamsin, Emma Parker, Sarah-Jane Bradley, Philip Higham and Robert Max. For more information and tickets please visit www.tricycle.co.uk
Tamsin is featured in this months Classical Music Magazine, in connection with the signing with Margaret Murphy management, and the "Premiere of the month", Huw Watkin's Concertino, which she will be premiering at Presteigne, with the festival orchestra and George Vass, at the end of August.
I am delighted to have joined the roster of Margaret Murphy Management, and very much hope this will be a long and fruitful partnership.
February 2011
Tamsin will be playing on BBC Radio 3 In Tune on the 21st February.
I am really thrilled to have been asked to be Artistic Director of two very exciting projects.
This is, of course, in addition to the Honeymead Ensemble Festival in April, which I continue to organise.
The first to take place is the wonderful chamber and new music festival in Florence, Italy, Music at the Bargello. Concerts take place in the breathtaking and inspiring venue of the Bargello Museum Courtyard, surrounded by masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture, which has a beautiful acoustic.
In the previous four years Music at the Bargello has included major events such as celebrations of Elliot Carter's 100th Birthday, with Heinz Holliger performing; a John Cage exposition over 10 hours staged at the Palazzo Vecchio with over 30 of his works being performed by musicians in different rooms; and concerts dedicated to the music of Salvatore Sciarrino, one of Italy's greatest living composers, who attends every year.
This year (2011) the focus will be both on chamber music and new music. The theme will be Tyranny and Freedom, and we are staging Kagel's opera "Der Tribun" in co-production with New York University.
World class musicians will be joining me to play in the festival, including Adrian Brendel, Michele Marasco, Ben Nabarro, Gregorio Nardi, Gemma Rosefield, Ju Ping Song, Huw Watkins and Alfredo Zamarra.
Music in the Bargello concerts will take place between July 5th and 12th 2011; full programme details to follow.
The second project is a very exciting collaboration with London's innovative and inspirational Tricycle Theatre, now celebrating its 30th anniversary "punching above its weight."
Beginning this Autumn, I will be presenting and playing in a chamber music concert one Sunday each month in The Tricycle Theatre, together with other members of the Honeymead Ensemble.
This is the first time The Tricycle Theatre will have a series of concerts in its intimate and contemporary venue, and I am really delighted and excited to be working with Tricycle Director Nick Kent on this new venture.
January 2010
Reviews for Tamsin’s Solo Violin Recital of contemporary music, at London's South Bank in the Purcell Room, in the opening concert of the annual Park Lane Group series.
Tamsin Waley-Cohen, whose solo violin recital opened the Park Lane Group series, held us rapt with daring and undaunted performances of an enticing commission from Richard Causton called Fantasia and Air, and with the UK premiere of Barry Guy's brilliantly imaginative Lysandra.
Times
Waley-Cohen had shown what a fine player she was, projecting George Benjamin's Three Miniatures, Richard Causton's new Fantasia and Air and Fernyhough's daunting Intermedio alla Ciaconna with fearless intensity.
Guardian
Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen was just as fearless, and in her case she was faced with even more formidable challenges, such as Brian Ferneyhough's Intermedio alla Ciaconna, with its thickets of quarter-tones and stratospheric twitterings. She met every bravura challenge with total confidence, but captured the introspective poetry of Kurtag's Hommage a J.S. Bach equally well.
Telegraph
In Tamsin Waley-Cohen's violin recital two fleeting fantasies by Kurtag showed off the woody tone of her Strad, and Barry Guy's Lysandra, borrowing its name from a butterfly, fluttered and swooped to dazzling effect.
Evening Standard
There is no doubt that Tamsin Waley-Cohen is supremely talented. Her technical mastery is allied to superb musicianship and a luminous sound. Not an easy programme; all the works were filled with virtuosic pyrotechnics but entirely unlike the light show pieces one often hears. An entire solo violin recital requires formidable concentration and the ability to engage the audience; Tamsin did exactly that. An intense and theatrical performance, the highlights the rhythmic panache of Barry Guy's Lysandra and the more meditative Hommage a Bach by Gyorgy Kurtag.
Musical Pointers.co.uk
December 2009Review (and more) of Tamsin's concert with Gemma Rosefield at The
Red
Hedgehog in Hampstead.
Go to hedgehoghugh.wordpress.com
and scroll down to December 13
And on an (even) lighter note, go to the Evening Standard link at www.thisislondon.co.uk where there is an interview and photograph in their weekly magazine.
May 30th, 2007After conducting Tamsin in Tchaikovsky's violin concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, renowned conductor Jose Serebrier wrote a few days later "I am still mesmerized by her performance which moved me enormously. Her performance showed great sensitivity, sense of beauty and communication."
March 26th, 2007Tamsin wins the J&A Beare Solo Bach Competition with her performance of Bach's D Minor Partita. J&A Beare Solo Bach Competition
March 1st, 2007Tamsin now has the wonderful 1720-21 Stradivarius violin which used to belong to maestro Lorand Fenyves; it was purchased by a US-based trust which has allocated it for her indefinite use. Tamsin and the violin are now in the process of getting used to each other, and during the coming months, she will start to play it at concerts.