Next Concert...
Late Great Piano Music
Robert Bridge - Piano
Sunday February 4th, 2017 - 4pm

We're delighted to welcome the wonderful pianist Robert Bridge to Acton Hill Church in a program that focuses on the complex late masterworks of two of the great Romantic Era composers for piano - Schubert and Brahms. 

Schubert, his health rapidly collapsing, was only months away from death, when in a frenzy of creative activity he completed his cycle of late piano sonatas in September 1828. Robert is play the second of the trilogy - D959 in A Major. 

The sonatas were largely neglected throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, by critics and performers alike, but are now rightfully acknowledged as master-works of nineteenth-century piano repertoire. 

One important figure who did not​ neglect them was Johannes Brahms. Indeed, Schubert's piano sonatas were an important influence on him. Robert opens his program with the popular Opus 117 Three Intermezzi. Written in 1892, they may be thought of as representing the epitome of Brahms' late style and are among the very last of his piano compositions. 

They continue the story of Clara Schumann, which we explored in last month's program. Brahms had fallen passionately in love with Clara decades earlier, during her marriage to Robert Schumann. In 1892 she was still the secret dedicatee of works such as these. 
 "I am enormously excited with the idea of your Second Sonata; it reminds me of so many happy as well as painful hours. I love it, as I do you." 
Clara Schumann

Full Programme

3 Intermezzi, Op.117 
Johannes Brahms 
​
1 - Andante moderato
2 - Andante non troppo e con molta espressione
3 - Andante con moto
                    
​Sonata in A major D.959
Franz Schubert

Allegro
Andantino
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
​Rondo: Allegretto
​4pm-5pm. Tickets: adults £6.00, concessions £5.00, children £2.00. Tickets available at the door. Crèche facilities available.

Robert Bridge

​​Robert Bridge was a foundation scholar at the Royal College of Music where he won the RCM Chopin prize and was awarded a first class honours in the London BMus degree. He continued his studies in London and Germany with assistance from the Countess of Munster and Leverhulme trusts and gave a highly-acclaimed debut South Bank recital at the Purcell Room for the Park Lane Group where he was described in The Times as “that most gifted of young British pianists”. An invitation followed to join the Koenig Ensemble with whom he gave concerts at the Wigmore Hall, the BBC Lunchtime Concerts and at various festivals in Italy. A subsequent recital for the Park Lane Group of two-piano music with the pianist Jonathan Higgins received outstanding reviews and led to the first of two invitations to perform at the BBC Promenade Concerts at the Albert Hall.
Robert Bridge has accompanied masterclasses for Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Ruggiero Ricci, Steven Isserlis and Gerard Souzay and has made numerous recordings for BBC Radio 3. He has performed concertos with the Milton Keynes Chamber Orchestra, the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra and the Channel Islands Youth Orchestra and has recently given performances of Chopin’s 2nd, Rachmaninoff’s 3rd concertos and Beethoven’s 4th Concerto with the North London Symphony Orchestra. Recent solo recitals have included performances of all the Chopin Preludes and the four Ballades, Ravel’s Miroirs and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He teaches piano to enthusiastic kids and rusty adults, is an Associated Board examiner and organises an annual series of Knitting Concerts in Putney, aka Purls before Wine, where he subjects unwitting audiences to Webern, Tippett, Janacek and Brahms whilst they read, sew, finish their crosswords and sometimes even listen. 

Location

Acton Hill Church
Corner of Woodland Avenue, High Street, Acton, Greater London, W3 9BU
​We are on the corner of the Uxbridge Road and Gunnersbury Lane, W3, opposite Acton police station. Ten minutes walk form Acton Town tube station – District (Ealing Broadway) and Piccadilly lines. Front main entrance is on Gunnersbury Lane, turn right and walk down to the T-junction, turn right and the church is a twenty yards on your right.

Parking in Morrisons’ car park diagonally opposite (up to 1 hour before 4pm and unlimited thereafter). Street parking on Steyne Road (opposite), limited parking in Woodlands Avenue down the side of the church. Beware of the dropped curb at the end as parking tickets are issued on Sundays!