LUMAS WIND QUINTET Wednesday 25th June 2025

Beth Stone (flute) Ewan Millar (oboe)

Benjamin Hartnell-Booth (horn)

Flo Blane (bassoon) Rennie Sutherland (clarinet)

Afro-Cuban Concerto                                Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)

                  I: Afro         II: Vocalise           III: Danza

Valerie Coleman was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. From her early years her interest has been focused on playing the flute and composition, her double BA from Boston University reflecting both these areas of activity. As a flautist she has performed throughout the USA at the highest level, always specialising in chamber music, and her long list of compositions includes works for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensemble and, of course, for flute. She is currently on the staff of the Julliard Schol of Music in New York.

Suite for Wind Quintet                     Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) 

       I: Romance        II: Bureaucrat’s Dance        III: Waltz

Amongst his enormous output of works, it is probably his eighteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets for which Shostakovich is best known outside his native Russia, all these works notable for their emotional strength, their generally serious intent and sure craftsmanship. But there was another side to his creative work exemplified by his orchestral suites, incidental music and film scores (of which there are over thirty). The composing fingerprints are found here too but on a smaller scale and with less intensity. It is from works of this type that this suite has been drawn and arranged for wind quintet: the Romance and the Waltz come from two film scores ‘The Gadfly’ and ‘The First Echelon’ dating from the mid-1950s while ‘The Bureaucrat’s Dance’ is taken from an early ballet score ‘The Bolt’ of 1931.

Wind Quintet Opus 43                              Carl Neilsen (1865 – 1931)

I: Allegro     II: Minuet    III: Prelude – theme with variations.

In the autumn of 1921, the Danish compose Carl Neilsen rang up a pianist friend who was in the middle of rehearsing the Mozart piano and wind quintet and while she was speaking to the composer, he could hear the wind instruments rehearsing their parts in the background. This telephonic inspiration was apparently the genesis of Nielsen’s wind quintet.

Although his principal instrument was the violin (his playing was of a standard to earn him a position amongst the second violins in the Royal Danish Orchestra), his first musical experience was as a member of a military band, wind and brass only of course. He retained a love of the sound of wind instruments all his life – it has been suggested that this chimes with his love of the countryside and the open air – and amongst his very considerable output there are concertos for flute and clarinet as well as a number of chamber works involving wind instruments. Of these the wind quintet is unquestionably the most important.

The work was first performed in Copenhagen in 1922, played by the friends whose overheard playing had inspired it. The character of each player is reflected in their particular part and the composer himself described the five players as “sometimes all talking at once, sometimes speaking alone”. The theme used in the final movement is a hymn tune Nielsen himself had composed some years earlier.

Wind Quintet in Eb Opus 88 No.2             Anton Reicha (1770 – 1836)

   I: Lento – allegro moderato.    II: Scherzo: allegro

   III: Andante grazioso               IV: Finale: allegro molto

Anton Reicha is a most interesting figure, far less widely known than his gifts deserve. Born in Prague, he was brought up by an uncle who was director of the orchestra in service of the Elector of Cologne in Bonn. Anton became a member of the orchestra which was soon joined by another gifted teenager, Ludwig van Beethoven. After spells working in Hamburg and then Vienna, he eventually settled in Paris, where he enjoyed considerable respect as a composer, a theorist and a teacher – amongst his students were Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod and Franck. He published several notable works on the theory of composition, some exploring such highly advanced methods as polytonality and the use of microtones, ideas which were at least a century ahead of their time. His output as a composer was enormous, covering all current genres, but noticeably avoids the experimental techniques he explored in his theoretical writings. He seems to have had a curious aversion to having his works published which meant that after his death they very largely disappeared from circulation. Indeed, there is still no fully definitive catalogue.

What have survived are his twenty-five wind quintets, written in direct response to his awareness that in the early 19th century there was a great dearth of good new music for wind instruments. This he ascribed to contemporary composers’ ignorance of their potential; but being a good player himself, he was able to compose wind music which helped to fill this lacuna. There were considerable advances being made at the time in the design and construction of wind instruments and this fluently, skilfully and engagingly written music was a boon to the newly emerging virtuoso players.

La Cheminée do Roi René                          Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974)

I: Procession     II: Song at Dawn    III: Jugglers            IV: La Maousinglade

V: Jousting on the River Arc  VI: Hunting in Valabre  VII: Nocturnal Madrigal

Darius Milhaud was a highly eclectic composer, drawing inspiration from the different areas where he lived and worked: his native Provence, Brazil and the USA. As well as producing a vast quantity of music (his last published was labelled Opus 443), he was also very active as a teacher with pupils as varied as Steve Reich, Dave Brubeck and Burt Bacharach (to whom he gave the advice “Never be discomfited by a melody”). This suite derives from music he wrote for a film in 1939 and offers vignettes of medieval life but portrayed in his typically urbane and appealing style.

La Nouvelle Orléans                                  Lalo Schifrin (b.1932)

Lalo Schifrin is an Argentine/American pianist, composer and arranger best known for his film and TV scores – ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and ‘Mission Impossible’ are just two of his notable successes. His love for jazz and Latin American music are clearly evident in this brief vivid musical picture of New Orleans in all its colourful variety.

Lumas Winds, who describe themselves as “committed ambassadors for wind chamber music”, were formed in 2018, all the players having been members of the National Youth Orchestra. They have very quickly won for themselves an enviable position on the current musical scene with numerous appearances at leading festivals and music clubs throughout the UK. Their debut album ‘The Naming of Birds’ elicited enthusiastic reviews from ‘Record Review’, Gramophone Magazine and the BBC Music Magazine.

Our next concert, the last of the season, will take place on Wednesday 23rd July when the Fibonacci Quartet will be playing works by Haydn, Janacek and Smetana. This concert will be preceded by our AGM starting at 7.00.