Morello quartet

Performers

Notes on the performers

The Morello Quartet was formed in the autumn of 2019 by four good friends who enjoyed playing chamber music together. Their inaugural concert was part of St. James’ Concert series in Paddington in March 2020. Since then they’ve performed as part of ‘Enescu and Friends’ concert series at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, at the Shipwright Festival in Deptford, the Artisti con Brio series at the Candid Arts Trust and in many places around the UK, including Wandsworth, High Wycombe, North Aston and Aylesbury. Recent engagements include a cross sensory concert at the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall where a three-course meal themed on the programme was served alongside the performance.

The group is passionate about performing varied and diverse programmes combining classical, folk-inspired, and contemporary music.

Anna Caban was born in Poland and studied violin at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice after which she moved to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Since graduating she has been working as a freelance violinist and teacher. She performed as a member of many orchestras, such as the European Union Youth Orchestra, AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, the Modern Music Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra and Opera North. As well as performing she enjoys teaching. She works as a violin and viola teacher for Music Masters and the North London Conservatoire.

Romanian violinist Ana Popescu-Deutsch studied at the Royal Academy of Music where she received BMus(Hons) and MA. During her studies and straight afterwards she was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra and Southbank Sinfonia. A keen performer of Romanian classical and folk music, she continues to direct a chamber music series called ‘Enescu & Friends’ aimed to introduce the audience to George Enescu’s work in the musical context of his époque. Ana also performs with the Scordatura Collective, promoting music composed by women. She performs in diverse orchestral projects and is frequently a guest violinist in other chamber groups. Ana is also a committed teacher, teaching violin and viola at the North London Conservatoire.

Born in the United States, viola player Kesari Pundarika studied at the Royal College of Music with Ian Jewel and the Royal Academy of Music with Martin Outram. She was a member of Southbank Sinfonia, the Britten Pears Orchestra under Marin Alsop, and the Chipping Campden Festival Orchestra. She has also played with the Westminster Opera Company and was principal viola of the Hoeri Musiktage Festival Orchestra in Germany. As a member of the Chineke! Orchestra she has recorded for various labels and has performed at the BBC Proms. She recently performed Beethoven’s Septet with the Chineke! Chamber Ensemble, and also plays with the London Concert Orchestra. As dedicated teacher, she has several private students and teaches at the QYMC in Ealing.

Anil Umer is a freelance cellist, Functional Movement Specialist and Soft Tissue Therapist. Having had to temporarily quit performing due to a shoulder injury, Anil now enjoys working with musicians and athletes to aid them in their own rehabilitation. A committed chamber musician, Anil has performed extensively with various ensembles at venues across the UK including St Martin in the Fields, LSO St Lukes, St James Piccadilly and the Holywell Rooms in Oxford.  A graduate of Exeter College Oxford, Anil was awarded a full postgraduate scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music studying under Josephine Knight and Mats Lidstrom. Whilst there, he was a winner of numerous awards including the Philharmonia’s Martin Musical Scholarship, the Countess of Munster Postgraduate Award and the David Poznanaski String Quartet Prize.

Programme

Programme notes

Florence Price

String Quartet (No. 2) in A minor

1. Moderato
2. Andante cantabile
3. Juba. Allegro
4. Finale. Allegro

Florence Beatrice Price (1887 – 1953) was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.

Source: Wikipedia

Amy Beach

String Quartet, Op. 89

Beach’s String Quartet is a single movement and is one of her more mature works. The significance Beach bestowed on this piece is notable, given that it did not feature a piano part which she would perform, as did many of her other works. Because of the timing of the piece’s composition, there is some evidence that Beach may have been inspired to write the work as part of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s chamber music competition in 1922. Numerous painstaking attempts demonstrate both Beach’s devotion to the composition of this piece and her unfamiliarity with writing in this genre. The final work, completed in Rome, consists of a single movement divided into three sections. The piece uses three different Eskimo or Inuit melodies throughout the work: “Summer Song”, “Playing at Ball”, and “Itataujang’s Song”, taken from Franz Boas’ book on the Alaskan Inuit tribes. Beach integrates these borrowed tunes within a framework of Austro-Germanic extended quasi-tonality and dissonance, first through more straightforward statements of the melodies and then as assimilated into a horizontal harmonic structure. Elements of the melodies are abstracted and developed into contrapuntal lines which propel the work forward in the absence of clear tonal direction. The texture and harmony is fairly stark in places, lacking the lush Romanticism of her earlier works and representing more Modernist inclinations of a developing composer.

Source: Wikipedia

Rhiannon Giddens

At the Purchaser’s Option

Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.

Source: rhiannongiddens.com