Ormonde Ensemble

Performers

Notes on the performers

Ormonde Ensemble are a London-based wind quintet who are quickly establishing themselves on the UK’s professional music scene, both collectively and individually. They are particularly passionate about seeking out, commissioning, and performing lesser-known and underrepresented works, and their diverse range of musical experiences allows them to explore more familiar wind quintet repertoire with a fresh and engaging approach.

The quintet have a wealth of performance experience, giving numerous recitals at prominent venues in London and around the UK. Ormonde Ensemble also share a strong commitment to outreach and education work. In 2022/23, they were fellows on Wigmore Hall’s acclaimed Chamber Tots training programme, in which they delivered exciting, engaging, and original musical workshops for young children. They have experience leading educational projects in schools, and are looking forward to expanding this work over the coming year, with the support of an RCM Accelerate grant.

Individually, the group’s players have an extensive and varied range of professional experiences. These include playing with many of the UK’s major symphony orchestras, including the LSO, RPO, LPO, Orchestra of the ROH Covent Garden, RLPO, Philharmonia Orchestra, CBSO, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC NOW, Ulster Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. The members have also received further professional training through schemes such as the LPO’s Foyle Future Firsts programme and the London Sinfonietta Academy, as well as carrying out outreach and education work around the country with Live Music Now and the RSNO.

Programme

Programme notes

Claude Debussy arr. I.Prince

Deux Arabesques, L. 66

1. Andantino con moto
2. Allegretto scherzando

The Two Arabesques (Deux arabesques) is a pair of arabesques composed for piano by Claude Debussy when he was still in his twenties, between the years 1888 and 1891.

Although quite an early work, the arabesques contain hints of Debussy’s developing musical style. The suite is one of the very early impressionistic pieces of music, following the French visual art form. Debussy seems to wander through modes and keys, and achieves evocative scenes throughout both pieces. His view of a musical arabesque was a line curved in accordance with nature, and with his music he mirrored the celebrations of shapes in nature made by the Art Nouveau artists of the time. Of the arabesque in baroque music, he wrote: “That was the age of the ‘wonderful arabesque’ when music was subject to the laws of beauty inscribed in the movements of Nature herself.”

Source: Wikipedia

Samuel Barber

Summer Music, Op. 31

Samuel Barber received a commission in 1953 from the Chamber Music Society of Detroit to write a piece of music for string instruments and woodwind instruments. He drew from some of his previous work, including the unpublished orchestral piece Horizon (1945), as material for Summer Music. Originally meant to be a septet for three woodwinds, three strings, and piano, Summer Music evolved into a quintet as Barber experimented with some tuning études written by hornist John Barrows for himself and his colleagues in the New York Woodwind Quintet.

Summer Music is Barber’s only chamber composition for wind instruments, and has become a staple of the wind-quintet repertory.

Source: Wikipedia

Isa Gibbs

Dreamery

A new piece composed in 2023 and premiered by the Ormonde Ensemble in September.

Source: Wikipedia

Germaine Tailleferre arr. I.Prince

Quatuor à cordes

1. Modéré
2. Intermède
3. Final : vif

Germaine Tailleferre composed the string quartet in 1919. Isaac has arranged it for quintet.

One of her friends, the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel , pushed her to write a string quartet , for a concert at the end of 1917, which included works by Louis Durey , Georges Auric , Arthur Honegger.

The quartet being unfinished on the scheduled date, the work is presented under the title “Sonatine” and performed by the Capelle Quartet at the Vieux-Colombier .

It was only in 1919 that Germaine Tailleferre finished it by adding her last movement. She dedicates it to Arthur Rubinstein , who was going on tour in Brazil to promote his work. The quartet was then created in 1923 at the Salle Gaveau , again by the Quatuor Capelle

Source: Wikipedia