Specialist Musician's Recital - 26th September 2025

A live recording from our first Specialist Musician Recital of the year, held on September 26th 2025.

Our Specialist Music Programme, now in its second year, provides a tailored pathway for gifted students who wish to pursue a future career as professional musicians.

This recital series highlights the students both as soloists and in ensembles, providing a public platform to perform the solo and chamber repertoire developed as part of the programme.


Programme Notes:

Wieniawski was one of the great violin virtuosos of the 19th century, often hailed as the “Polish Paganini.” His Polonaise in D major is a dazzling showcase of both technical fireworks and national pride. Drawing on the stately rhythms of the traditional Polish dance, the work combines elegance with bravura, allowing the violinist to display both expressive lyricism and sparkling virtuosity.

The Bohemian-born cellist and composer David Popper wrote a number of works that remain technically demanding cornerstones of the cello repertoire. His Hungarian Rhapsody is one of his most famous, bursting with drama and flair. The piece is both a tribute to Hungarian folk music and a formidable test of the cellist’s skill.

French composer Édouard Lalo composed his Symphonie Espagnole for the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Despite its title, the work is really a violin concerto infused with Spanish colour and rhythm, and it’s success helped set a fashion in France for music with a Spanish flavour - paving the way for works such as Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, Ravel’s ‘Rapsodie Espagnole’ and beyond.

In Chanson d’Amour - the first of two love song from Fauré this evening - the poet Armand Silvestre describes a passionate outpouring of devotion, the protagonist reveling in the beloved’s every feature - eyes, voice, and presence - celebrating love as both paradise and torment. Fauré’s Le Papillon et la Fleur (The Butterfly and the Flower) straddles the line between humour and tragedy, telling the unrequited love story of flower who has fallen for a visiting butterfly. In the song, the flower - bathed in tears - laments having to watch it’s shadow circle around it’s feet whilst the breeze blows the butterfly away to countless other flowers. Debussy’s Beau Soir evokes a tranquil sunset scene, encouraging the listener to leave the troubles of the day behind and simply to savour the ‘gift of life’ before it slips away.

Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes are among the most fearsome works ever written for piano, each pushing technical limits while also being works of great imagination. No. 8, nicknamed Wilde Jagd (“Wild Hunt”), conjures the image of a furious supernatural chase across a nocturnal landscape. The idea of the Wild Hunt runs deep in European folklore and Greek mythology, where spectral riders sweep across the sky in storms of sound and fury.

The F-A-E Sonata was a collaborative gift to the violinist Joseph Joachim from three friends: Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Albert Dietrich. Its title reflects Joachim’s personal motto, “Frei aber einsam” (“Free but lonely”), with the notes F–A–E used as a musical cryptogram woven into the themes of the sonata. Brahms contributed the third movement, this fiery Scherzo - full of rhythmic drive, bold contrasts, and irresistible forward momentum. At just 20 years old, Brahms had already been hailed by Schumann as “the next Beethoven.” The weight of pressure placed on Brahms’ shoulders led to him being famously self-critical: he destroyed many of his early compositions, endlessly revising others before allowing them to be published. We are grateful that this one survived!

SMP 2025

Sam Barber, School Organist