Mozart – String Quintet No. 5 in D major, K593

Interval

Beethoven – Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20

Jack Liebeck - violin
Natalie Klouda - violin
Benjamin Roskams - violin/viola
Simon Oswell - viola
Thomas Carroll - cello
Ashok Klouda - cello
Stacey Watton - double bass
Nicholas Korth - horn
Julian Bliss - clarinet
Julie Price - bassoon
The Festival Players

The Festival Finale combines our second new Mozart piece, the first of the two “late” string quintets, the composers last word in the genre, with an old favourite, the Beethoven Septet for strings and winds. Not a piano to be seen, except in the dynamics, but stirring stuff nonetheless to end another Festival.

The recent pandemic has revealed the fragile balance between humans and the microbes that surround us. Key to setting this balance is the immune system and the ability of that system to lay down memories. Although such immunity is typically highly effective, pathogens have also evolved with us to explore and exploit loopholes, allowing them to escape host control. In this talk we will look at the basic building blocks of effective immune responses, how microbes, especially viruses, can set up persistent infections in individuals or across communities – and what we can do about it.

Paul's webpage

Dvořák — Piano Trio No. 2 in G minor, Op. 26 

Ravel — Piano Trio in A minor

Salieca Piano Trio
Amandine Savary - piano
Jack Liebeck - violin
Thomas Carroll - cello

Our resident ensemble introduce the final day of the Festival with Dvořák followed by one of the most striking trios ever written, that of Ravel - a favourite at Oxford May Music.

Natalie Klouda – Piano Quintet

Beethoven – String Trio in G major, Op. 9 No. 1

Interval

Mahler – Symphony No. 4, in G major, arranged for chamber ensemble

Thomas Carroll - conductor (Mahler)
Ailish Tynan - soprano (Mahler)
Amandine Savary - piano
Jack Liebeck - violin
Natalie Klouda - violin
Simon Oswell - viola
Benjamin Roskams - viola
Ashok Klouda - cello
James Trowbridge - double bass
Julian Bliss - clarinet
Daniel Pailthorpe - flute
Emily Pailthorpe - oboe
Alise Silina - accordion
Toby Kearney and Iris van den Bos - percussion

Although we have done chamber music reductions before in the Festival, notably last year’s Mozart piano concerto, a chamber version of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony must be our biggest and most ambitious condensation to date! To warm us up for the big event, we have a contemporary piece by Natalie Klouda and our final great classical music “B”, Beethoven’s early string trio.

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva we can probe our Universe moments after the Big Bang to tackle the questions about its origin, evolution and composition. These include: What is the origin of mass? What constitutes dark matter? How many dimensions of space and time do we live in? Why is the universe composed of matter and not antimatter? The answers have the potential of altering our perception of how Nature operates at the fundamental level.

The discovery in July 2012 of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), one of the most important of this new century, completes the particle content of the standard model of particle physics, a theory that describes our visible universe in exquisite detail. 

This talk will briefly look into the evolution of our universe from the Big Bang, the fundamental particles and their interactions, and the long journey to the discovery of the Higgs boson. The CMS experiment at the LHC will be used as example to outline some of the technological and engineering challenges.

It is known that our current understanding of matter and forces is incomplete. Search is being made for new fundamental physics that should illuminate the road ahead to the cherished goal of a unified theory of all physical phenomena in Nature. The prospects, especially those related to the examination of the properties of the Higgs boson with much larger data samples, will be outlined.

The talk will also touch upon the societal impact of fundamental scientific research, CERN and the LHC.

Jim's webpage

Note change of programme and artist

Soprano and violin:

Three Irish Country Songs - Rebecca Clarke

            - I Know my Love

            - I Know where I’m goin’

            - A Ballynure Ballad (As I was goin' to Ballynure)

Soprano, violin and piano:

The Seeds of Love (Anon.) - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Soprano, baritone, violin and piano:

How Cold the Wind doth Blow (Anon.) - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Baritone and piano:

Three Shakespeare Sonnets - Hubert Parry

            - Farewell thou art too dear for my possessing

            - When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

            - Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Soprano, baritone and piano:

Dirge for Fidele (Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun - Shakespeare) - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Soprano and piano:

La Belle Dame sans Merci (Keats) - Charles Villiers Stanford

A Dream (W. B. Yeats) - Rebecca Clarke

In Faëry (Francis Ledwige) - Dilys Edwards

            1. The Wife of Llew

            2. The Find

            3. A Fairy Hunt

Baritone and piano:

Sleep Song (Trad. Irish, translated P. H. Pearse) - Ina Boyle

Spring Sorrow (Rupert Brooke) - John Ireland 2’

Summer (Helen Douglas Adam) - Charles Villiers Stanford

The Heart Worships (Alice M. Buxton) - Gustav Holst

Soprano, baritone, violin and piano:

Two Vocal Duets (Walt Whitman)

            - The Last Invocation

            - Love Song of the Birds

Ailish Tynan - soprano
Gareth Brynmor John - baritone
Jack Liebeck - violin
Will Vann - piano 

A concert exploring the huge scope of the musical world of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). We hear his songs alongside from those in his circle at the Royal College of Music: Rebecca Clarke, Gustav Holst and John Ireland, from his teachers Parry and Stanford and his own setting of How Cold the Wind Doth Blow, one of most memorable and poignant folk song arrangements, beautifully scored for voice, violin and piano. We also hear the music of his pupil Ina Boyle and Dilys Edwards, who knew Vaughan Williams and studied with his close friend and mentee Herbert Howells. The programme concludes with two gems that had lain forgotten for many years: Vaughan Williams’s Two Vocal Duets, sumptuous settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry for soprano, baritone, violin and piano. The songs will be introduced by the artists throughout.

Shaw – Entr’acte

Haydn – String Quartet in B minor, Op. 64 No. 2

Interval

Montgomery – Strum

Schubert – String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810 “Death and the Maiden”

The Sacconi Quartet -
Ben Hancox (violin)
Hannah Dawson (violin)
Robin Ashwell (viola)
Cara Berridge (cello)

A feast of string quartets from an ensemble who have been making music together for even longer than Oxford May Music has existed. It is a pleasure to welcome them to the Festival with a programme including that great favourite which we last heard in the Festival in 2010, Schubert’s quartet “Death and the Maiden”.

Microscopic photosynthetic algae in the ocean, coccolithophores, have single-handedly generated the km of chalk evident at the earth’s surface and conducive to champagne production. These coccolithophores take the dissolved ions in seawater and turn them in to intricate calcium-carbonate platelets intracellularly before extrusion onto the cell surface. This chalk has acted as a key buffer of the acidity of the ocean for the last 200 million years, such that these algae are a crucial component of the carbon cycle, setting our atmospheric composition. But what controls how much chalk gets made? Are these algae (and their associated buffering) in peril in future acidified oceans? This talk will explore these questions as well as the recent intriguing discovery that the evolutionary tempo of these algae resonates with the cyclic motion of the earth around the sun.

Ros's webpage

Mozart – Horn Quintet in E flat major, K407

Britten – Canticle III “Still Falls the Rain”, Op. 55

Schubert – Quartettsatz in C minor, D703

Schubert – “Auf dem Strom”, D943

Korth – “Midnight Rain”

Nicholas Korth - horn
Toby Spence - tenor
Jack Liebeck - violin
Benjamin Roskams - viola
Simon Oswell - viola
Ashok Klouda - cello
William Vann - piano

An eclectic mix of works mostly starring the horn begins our matinee concerts. The first of two Mozart pieces new to the Festival, the horn quintet, precedes a beautiful Britten song for tenor, horn and piano. Two pieces of Schubert take us into a world premier - Nicholas Korth’s work for tenor, horn, string quartet and keyboard was commissioned by the London Chamber Orchestra and the Guild of Horn Players in 2020.

Bach – Toccata in C Minor, BWV 911

Bach – Toccata in G Minor, BWV 915

Mendelssohn – String Quintet No 2 in B flat major , Op. 87

Interval

Fauré – Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15

Amandine Savary - piano
Jack Liebeck - violin
Natalie Klouda - violin
Simon Oswell - viola
Benjamin Roskams - viola
Ashok Klouda - cello

We begin the Festival with the first of the three great musical “B”s - Bach. One of the other two will also feature later in the Festival! A selection of Tocattas will disperse the weekday cares. Mendelssohn’s mature string quintet brings us into the Romantic world, which, after the interval, evolves into the atmospheric post-Romantic piano quartet of Fauré.

The supply of low carbon energy is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Major breakthroughs in clean energy technologies require advances in new materials and underpinning science. With the aid of 3D glasses, this talk describes the materials science of lithium batteries in electric vehicles and of novel compounds for next-generation solar cells, as well as highlighting the use of computer modelling to gain atomic-scale insights.

Saiful's web page