The Full Works Concert - Tuesday 18 June 2013: 2013 So Far...

In her second concert showcasing 2013's best new releases, Jane Jones features a powerful version of Elgar's Cello Concerto.

Tonight's concert opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. It's a piece that Mozart never published in his lifetime. His widow, Constanze, later sold it in a job lot of his music to a publisher in 1799, to raise funds. We'll hear a new recording from the Chamber Players of Canada. Their performances have been garnering five-star reviews. The 'playing is of the highest quality' said one. 'They breathed into the music a lithe vibrancy that can often elude the big orchestra,' wrote another critic. 

Bach's Cello Suites are an integral part of any cellist's repertoire. But tonight we hear an unusual version of the first suite transcribed for the theorbo - a large, 13-or-14-string early baroque lute. Its player, Hopkinson Smith, has transcribed the pieces himself with the intention to approach ‘what Bach himself might have done'. The suite is brilliantly performed and beautifully recorded.

It's hard for any cellist to approach Elgar's Cello Concerto without drawing comparison with the landmark recording by Jacqueline Du Pré. 41-year old American cellist Zuill Bailey, pictured above, gives it all he's got in an expressive interpretation that's been described as 'robust, responsive, yet earnest and mature'.

The concert finishes with the fine Portuguese pianist Maria-Joao Pires playing Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor D845, performed with great expression, colour and technical brilliance.


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Chamber Players of Canada 

Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suite No.1 in G major (transcribed for theorbo) 
Theorbo: Hopkinson Smith

Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor
Cello: Zuill Bailey
Krzystof Urbanski conducts the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata in A minor D845
Piano: Maria-Joao Pires