To close our season, Conway Hall’s Artistic Director of Music Simon Callaghan joins the Berkeley Ensemble in a performance of Elgar’s only Piano Quintet, composed in a particularly fruitful period during which Elgar also produced his Violin Sonata and the famous Cello Concerto.

Before the interval the ensemble will showcase English composer Dorothy Howell (1898-1982), whose music has recently begun to attract the attention it has long deserved, helped in no small part by her featuring in Leah Broad’s new group biography, Quartet. Berkeley Ensemble presents a recital programme exploring Howell in her milieu, with her music alongside works by her teachers at the Royal Academy of Music, Tobias Matthay and John Blackwood McEwen, and that of Edward Elgar, a towering figure of her generation, whose grave Howell tended to in the Malvern Hills. Some of the most wonderful British music to send us off for the Long Summer Break!

Tobias Matthay | Piano Quartet in C Op.20
Dorothy Howell | String Quartet in D minor
Dorothy Howell | Purbeck Pieces
John Blackwood McEwen | selection from Nugae, seven bagatelles for string quartet
Elgar | Piano Quintet in A minor Op.84

Sophie Mather • violin
Francesca Barritt • violin
Dan Shilladay • viola
Gemma Wareham • cello
Simon Callaghan • piano

“a performance of shimmering intensity” – Gramophone