24 June 2022 • 8pm

Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival

St Mary's Church, Rye

​

​

Presumed lost until 1961, when the manuscript turned up amongst other papers in the Prague National Museum, Haydn’s early cello concerto is now considered fully authenticated and has claimed its place as an important work in the cello repertoire. Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations, a pillar of 20th Century string writing that launched Benjamin Britten’s career internationally, precedes Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, a work at the centre of the Baroque canon. Composed, unusually, with a brief Adagio (or violin cadenza) where a slow movement might have been, it is heard here with Sally Beamish’s improvisatory slow movement. The concert concludes with Sally Beamish’s evocation of the beauty and drama of the North Sea. Written in collaboration with soloists in the Celtic tradition (specifically Scottish fiddle and Celtic harp), the score of Seavaigers leaves space for soloists James Crabb and Anthony Marwood to depict their own perilous sea voyage.