Lewes music group welcomes The Brompton Quartet

As society spokesman John Hawkins explains: “The Brompton Quartet will be playing quartets by Haydn (dedicated to a Hungarian Count), a quartet by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz and the 3rd quartet by Peter Copley, who studied composition in Poland as well as at the Royal Academy in London.

“Peter Copley was born in Hove but a Polish Government Scholarship took him to the Akademia Muzyczna in Krakòw. This proved to be the beginning of an lasting connection as he has received many commissions, broadcasts and performances in Poland.

“His many works are performed and broadcast internationally, but several have had their first performances in Brighton: the Concerto for Trumpet, Strings and Percussion for the 75th Birthday of the Brighton Philharmonic; A City Awakes in celebration of Brighton and Hove’s elevation to city status; The Midnight Skaters at the 2010 Brighton Festival with Sir John Tomlinson; the Piano Concerto, written for Margaret Fingerhut was performed by her in Brighton and in London; Salamanca 1936, a large-scale oratorio had its first two performances in Brighton and at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel in Greenwich with Sir John Tomlinson and the Brighton Youth Orchestra.

“Copley’s third quartet was first performed by the Brompton Quartet in Brighton as part of his 60th birthday celebrations. East Sussex Academy of Music students will be at the concert on January 27 as part of their curriculum and the Bromptons have also kindly agreed to do a presentation to the students on the day of the concert.

“Grażyna Bacewicz, born in 1909, was a Polish composer and violinist. She began studying at the Warsaw Conservatory and continued in Paris with Nadia Boulanger having been granted a stipend by Paderewski. During World War II, she lived in Warsaw and gave secret underground concerts. Following the Warsaw uprising she and her family escaped the destroyed city and settled in Lublin. After the war she became professor at the Conservatoire in Łódź. From 1954, encouraged by many awards, composition became her only occupation. As might be expected, many of her works are for strings including seven violin concertos, five sonatas, three for violin solo, a quartet for four violins and seven string quartets!

“At the time of the writing of Haydn’s wonderful opus 76 quartets, Charles Burney wrote to the composer praising their innovations: ‘…they are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well already, but of one of highly-cultivated talents, who had expended none of his fire.’”

The members of the Brompton Quartet met at the Royal College of Music. They were winners of the St Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Music Competition 2019 and were selected as a Park Lane Group Artist. As a featured Making Music Artist for 2020-21, the quartet recently completed a series of recitals around the UK and were quartet-in-residence at the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival 2022

Programme: Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in G Major Op 76 No 1; Grażyna Bacewicz: String Quartet No 3; and Peter Copley: String Quartet No 3. Tickets: www.ticketsource.co.uk/nyslewes or at the door.