On Wednesday evening (22Nov23) we had a real treat with the Bristol Ensemble!

Unlike the usual Wednesday evening when we might have a variety of 4 or 5 performances in the evening; this time we had a full evening concert from a small section of our friends at Bristol Ensemble (BE).  Simon Kodurand, Artistic Director at BE on violin lead a performance of three sections with two intervals inspired with the notion of music being fundamentally intertwined with classical art

and science.

He opened the performance with a sonata in Bmin from Francesco Veracini, the Italian baroque composer and violinist - a work in 4 movements.  This was followed by a JS Bach sonata in Amaj for violin and harpsichord - unusual for a sonata not to include the cello as a baseline. 

We believe that this was the first time that we actually had a harpsichord being played in our Performance Hall.  It was an unusual colour green set against the conservative black colour of our two grand pianos on our platform stage - but such a sweet and melodic tone!

In the second part of the concert, the Bristol Ensemble played a beautiful duet for Violin and Cello in Fmaj by another great Italian composer of the late 18C, Felice Giardini and then a French sonata by Jean-Joseph de Mondonville.

And in the final part, we had a folly variations composition by Arcangelo Corelli simply called La Follia.

Ahead of our Wednesday evening performances, a big part of our raison d'etre is to have our artists paint a sketch to a theme set by the Chairman for the evening.  With the presence of the Bristol Ensemble it was no surprise then that the artistic challenge subject was simply: "Ensemble".

Now many of the artists of course had compositions of a musical, string ensemble we are familiar with in the Bristol Ensemble but others created some "outside-the-box" works including a fashion ensemble, kitchen utensil ensemble and even some abstracts.

I love them all !!

Well done Artists and well done Bristol Ensemble !!