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Leora Cohen & Paul Wingfield
5 December 2024 @ 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Tickets on the door (cash or card). Under 18s and carers go free
Doors open at 12:15 pm

Performers
Leora Cohen
Violin
Paul Wingfield
Piano
Notes on the performers
Leora Cohen is a British-American violinist. She enjoys a diverse career, performing as a recitalist, soloist and ensemble musician around the world. Leora graduated with a double first class (summa cum laude) from Cambridge University and has been awarded two Diplomas with Distinction by the Royal College of Music in London. Previous professors include Remus Azoitei, Ani Schnarch and Alexander Gilman.
Leora made her debut at 16, performing Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole at St John’s Smith Square in London. Before graduating from high school, she went on to perform a number of concertos and pieces by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Sarasate with London-based orchestras. During her studies at Cambridge, she appeared regularly as a soloist with student orchestras, covering a considerable amount of the Baroque repertoire for solo violin and orchestra. In early 2020, she performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at Cambridge’s main concert hall and was a finalist in the Sir Karl Jenkins Music Competition. During the pandemic, Leora appeared on the Violin Channel in recordings and live performances, including a masterclass with Michael Vaiman playing Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1.
Whilst studying at the Royal College, Leora was a member of the LGT Young Soloists, performing regularly to the Liechtenstein Royalty at their private functions and palaces internationally. With this group, she was also chosen as soloist to open the 2022 Heidelberg Festival, playing Kreisler’s Alt Wiener Tanzweisen. In her final year at the Royal College, Leora was soloist with the College’s Symphony Orchestra, playing Mendelssohn in a public, live-streamed masterclass with Maxim Vengerov.
Since graduating, she has become a regular soloist with the Albion Chamber Orchestra and the Piccadilly Sinfonietta in London.
Leora performs recitals across the UK with Paul Wingfield and Germany with Parvis Hejazi and in Fira Duo with flautist, Liz Meyer. Her creative and unique concert-programming has resulted in a notable enthusiasm for performing recitals. She has endeavoured to include music by female and under-represented composers at every opportunity, expanding her repertoire significantly. Leora also has a distinct approach to, and passion for, contemporary music that is respected by many composers, who have written and dedicated music to her. Leora was a chamber music award holder at Cambridge University and has played chamber music on BBC Radio, and at the prestigious London venues Kings Place and Wigmore Hall.
Leora is a prominent concert master of her generation, taking up her first posts at a young age, leading concerts with the National Children’s Orchestra and the Royal College Junior Department orchestras. She is also a former concert master of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, of the Royal College Symphony Orchestra and of the Cambridge University Orchestra, leading orchestral concerts with significant concertmaster solos under the baton of many renowned conductors, such as John Wilson, Sir Mark Elder, Sir Antonio Pappano, Jac van Steen and Thomas Adés, and collaborating with soloists, such as Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Guy Johnson, Alim Beisembayev and Tom Poster.
As a teenager, Leora was praised for her orchestral leading by distinguished music journalists and concert critics, being described as a leader that “really impressed” and playing solos that were “ a particular delight”. During her concert-master walk onto the stage and bow at the 2017 BBC Proms, Leora was introduced by Suzi Klein live on BBC Radio and television as “a brilliant player with a very bright future ahead of her”. She has continued to receive positive acclaim for her numerous concertmaster appearances in major concert halls globally, on international radio channels and global concert series such as Festival Berlioz.
During her studies, Leora also appeared alongside the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English National Ballet, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. She currently takes on extra work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, English Chamber Orchestra, Brandenburg Sinfonia and Chineke! and leads the Hapax Orchestra.
Paul Wingfield attended Chetham’s School of Music, where he studied the oboe with Sonia Wrangham and Evelyn Barbirolli, and the piano with Charles Hopkins. He lectures in Music at Cambridge University and has published widely on nineteenth-and-twentieth-century music. Paul specialises in Czech Music. He is an expert on Janacek and is on the Board of Editors for the Complete Martinu Edition.
Programme
Programme notes
Leoš Janáçek
Sonata for Violin and Piano
- Con moto
- Ballada
- Allegretto
- Adagio
Violin Sonata, a composition for violin and piano, is a work of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). It was written in the summer of 1914, but it was not Janáček’s first attempt to create such a composition. He resolved to compose a violin sonata already as a student at the conservatoire in Leipzig in 1880, and later during his studies in Vienna. His early sonatas are today lost.
Source: Wikipedia
Vítězslava Kaprálová
Elegie
Elegy was composed in 1939, just one year before Kaprálová’s death. It is composed for solo violin and piano and has made a lasting impression on violinists since its conception. The lamenting opening from the solo violin sets the sombre scene for when the piano enters a few bars later. Elegy plays on traditional Czech folk tunes, as well as tugging at the heartstrings through Kaprálová’s rich textures and use of the violin’s range. The relationship between the two instruments is completely complementary, and as the dynamic grows, the two instruments flourish together.
Kaprálová’s exploration of the violin’s range is one of the highlights of the work, with death- defying high notes and rich lower range notes offering the full Kaprálová experience in one piece of music. After a short reprise of the opening violin statement, Elegy concludes quietly as the two instruments fade away into silence.
Source: Wikipedia
Bohuslav Martinů
Romance for Violin and Piano
Romance for violin and piano is a short occasional composition by Bohuslav Martinů from May 1930, which its author did not mention in any list of his works. The piece was only found in 2022 by an employee of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute, Mrs. Natália Krátká, in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. The library provided the Bohuslav Martinů Institute with its digital copy on September 14, 2022. The manuscript is dedicated by the author to Boris Lipnitzki, a French photographer of Ukrainian-Jewish origin. There is also an unproven hypothesis that this is actually a newly created and newly dated author’s copy of his at present missing Romance from 1910.
Source: Wikipedia
Antonín Dvořák
Romance in F minor, Op. 11
The Romance in F minor, Op. 11, (B. 39) is a single-movement work for violin and orchestra by Antonín Dvořák, published in 1879. Dvořák also wrote an arrangement of Romance with piano accompaniment, a version he dedicated to his friend, the violin virtuoso František Ondříček.
Source: Wikipedia
Bedřich Smetana
From the Homeland
- Moderato
- Andantino
Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his people’s aspirations to a cultural and political “revival”. He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. From the Homeland is a mixture of melancholy and happiness with strong affinity to Czech folk material.