Latest News From Keswick MUSIC SOCIETY​

The 3 last concerts of the 2022-2023 season were at Theatre by the Lake on March 14th – Bella Tromba – 5 trombones, May 9th, the Brompton String Quartet and June 6th, PIVA the Renaissance Collective in their programme Measure for Measure – see the review page for more details.

As last year, our attempts to have all our concerts at one venue and on convenient days of the week, in spite of all efforts, have not been totally successful. We have not given up, but are preparing our Autumn programme, which as last year will be held at St. John’s Church Keswick, where the Music Society’s Steinway piano still lives.

The planned dates for 2023-2024 are:

1. October 28 The Alkyona String Quartet

And then we are thrilled to present two amazing pianists:

1. November 25 Lara Melda (programme TBA)
2. January 13 Imogen Cooper (programme TBA)

In February we will transfer to Theatre by the Lake, where our provisional dates are:

1. February 15 TBA
2. February 28 TBA
3. March 20 TBA
4. TBA
5. TBA
6. June 12 TBA

Our spring/summer 2023 season continues at Theatre by the Lake. The next concert is:

Tuesday May 9th   7.30pm    The Brompton String Quartet

The  Brompton Quartet was the winner of the St. Martin-in-the Fields Chamber Music Competition 2019 and is an up and coming ensemble known for its engaging and dynamic performances. The group is made of four exceptional soloists who have a spark of something very special when they come together.

The last concert of the 2022-2023 season will be:

Tuesday June 6th  7.30pm       PIVA      

PIVA are 6 musicians, playing the best of Renaissance music on altogether 40 instruments of the period! They will be presenting their popular programme, ‘Measure for Measure’, focusing on the popular dance and ballad music from the late 16th century which would have been familiar to theatre audiences of Shakespeare’s  day. 

After our successful autumn/winter series of 4 concerts at St. John’s Church Keswick, the second half of the 2022-23 season began on February 14th at Theatre by the Lake with an unusual ensemble – violin and guitar.

Harriet Mackenzie (violin) a multi-faceted virtuoso with “captivating, searing intensity and full of panache” (The Strad) and James Boyd (guitar), one of the finest classical guitarists playing today. Long ago awarded the Julian Bream prize, by Bream himself, in recognition of this extraordinary talent. Together, these two outstanding international musicians performed a variety of arrangements and original works for violin and guitar including music by : JS Bach, Paganini, Barrios, de Falla, Piazzolla.

Next, on March 14th, we heard a performance by BELLA TROMBA, a brilliant all-female trumpet quartet! This exciting group perform chamber music extensively across the UK and abroad. They played dazzling original works`and exciting arrangements of music from the Baroque to the 20^th century, including music by Monteverdi, Bizet, Satie, Imogen Holst and Clara Schumann. 

Keswick Music Society can now announce the new 2022-23 season, a season of two halves.

Under their new arrangements, the Theatre by the Lake cannot give us our usual range of dates and days of the week from September to April, so we will hold the concerts in the first part of our season at St. John’s Church, Keswick, which has excellent acoustics for music. As it’s where our Steinway piano is now kept, these concerts will tend to involve the piano. Tickets will be available online from Theatre by the Lake www.theatrebythelake.com, or from the Box Office 017687 74411 or in person, or on the evening at the door of St. John’s Church.

We will then have 4 Tuesday concerts at Theatre by the Lake on February 14th, March 14th, May 9th and June 6th. These will be bookable from the Theatre Box Office or online as normal.

For details of the St. John’s concerts and of the concerts at the Theatre see Our Concerts and Upcoming Concerts.

 On May 14th, we were back at Theatre by the Lake, with our first concert there since 2020! This was a magical evening: a succession of wonderful arias by composers from Purcell to Sondheim, chosen to tell a complex operatic story of love, dance, loss and harmony and performed by world-class singers with a virtuosic string quintet playing the orchestral music cleverly arranged for string quintet by their director Orlando Jopling – also the cellist.

The four characters suffered and triumphed through a riot of Italian opera and hits from the musicals,  from four centuries of great dramatic music … wit, passion, comedy, tragedy … as in opera, all life was there. The audience, many of them Members of the Society, loved it – see the review on the Reviews Page.

This was the last concert of the Keswick Music Society’s 2021-2022 season. After Covid we are still looking for a permanent venue, and hoping to be able to return to Theatre by the Lake. We will be announcing  our new 2022-2023 programme and our new plans as soon as possible.