Some Things Rich and Strange

Music at Queen Mary University of London invites you to explore rare and lesser-known Twentieth Century masterworks of passionate intensity, and to delve deeper into the world of composition and performance.

This multi-dimensional event brings together members of the London Chamber Orchestra and Queen Mary University of London’s Centre for Digital Music, one of the leading music research centres of its kind in the world.

The audience can choose to explore between Arno Babajanian’s romantically pulsating piano trio of 1952, a talk and/or related film.  In the second half the audiences come together to hear members of the London Chamber Orchestra with pianist Karim Said in romantic works of Twentieth Century Vienna. The concert ends with Schoenberg’s dramatic portrayal of Napoleon Bonaparte using Byron’s text.

Programme:

5.45pm: Five Orchestral Pieces
The Octagon, Queens’ Building
(film: 55 mins)
Frank Scheffer’s 1994 film about Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces with contributions from conductor Michael Gielen, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and pianist/musicologist Charles Rosen.  Includes archival film of Schoenberg.

6pm and 6.45pm: Art Inside Music
Performance space inside G2, Engineering Building
(illustrated lecture/full performance: 40 mins)
Arno Babajanian (1921 – 1983) Piano Trio in F# minor (full performance: circa 23 mins)

Elaine Chew (pianist and Professor of Digital Media), together with Hilary Sturt and Ian Pressland, gives an illustrated guide to how musicians shape time to create the aura of magic that surrounds musical performances. Babajanian’s ethereal second movement is accompanied by Alessia Milo (architect and Media and Arts Technology PhD candidate)’s swirling spectral art created using computer tools developed at QMUL’s world renowned Centre for Digital Music.

6.45pm: Composers’ Secrets
The Octagon, Queens’ Building
(illustrated talk: 40 min)

Composers imbue their music with secrets about themselves – their love lives, passions, fears, seeming crimes, deepest beliefs, and so much more. Dr Paul Edlin tells us about composers such as J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Berg and Messiaen and shines another light into their creative genius.

7.45pm: Ode to Napoleon
The Octagon, Queens’ Building
(music performance: 40 min)

Anton Webern (1883 – 1945) Langsamer Satz (11 mins)
Alban Berg (1885 – 1935) Piano Sonata, Op 1 (7 mins)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951) Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Op 41 (15 mins)
London Chamber Orchestra Chamber Players with Karim Said (piano) and Omar Ebrahim (narrator)

Image credit: Benjamin Ealovega