Orkney to Inverness

We began our Journey North from London after a performance last Monday evening. After stopping back in Manchester for a few hours sleep we started the 9 hr drive to Thurso on Tuesday Morning. We passed incredible landscapes and the weather, which changed every 30 minutes treated us to a display from snow to blue skies, sleet and rain. After a very smooth drive, we hopped aboard the 19:00 ferry from Scrabster to Stromness on Orkney.

The next morning we visited the Ring of Brodgar which was very inspiring.  Afterwards, we headed to Kirkwall to get ready for our afternoon workshop with some of the local music students.

This took place at King Street Hall, where they had been preparing a number of works. Having been through music services and county orchestras ourselves growing up, we felt humbled to be able to offer our support to the students, many of whom will be applying for conservatoires in the coming months.

That evening we were welcomed onto the stage at Orkney by a sold-out audience. Post pandemic, this has been a rare sight for us and it was a heartwarming reminder of how important classical music is to communities. The acoustic in the venue was resonant and perfectly suited for chamber music. Having programmed Britten’s 3rd string quartet, we were curious to see how it would be received. Very quickly it became apparent how involved the audience was, which really added to the atmosphere of the music.

We boarded the 06:00 ferry back from Stromness to Scrabster and began the drive down to Inverness.

Storm Eunice has been at the forefront of the news so far, with weather warnings making it difficult for some of the regular concert-goers to get out to the venue. Our concert in Inverness yesterday night was a much more intimate, but equally welcoming affair.
Beethoven’s Op.132 quartet in A minor is the central work of our tour, and performing the third movement felt particularly special. One audience member commented that the concert ‘felt like it could have been in somebody’s living room’.

This morning after a fabulous breakfast provided by our host, we set off to Newtonmore through a blanket white landscape. Despite the snow, we have arrived safely and are looking forward to performing this evening.

Long awaited rehearsals

 

Our tour was originally planned to take place in December 2020 which of course had to be postponed due to the pandemic, although we managed to organise a socially distanced online concert in place of it which was a unique experience that allowed us to see each other after many months of lockdowns.

While we were lucky enough individually to get some work with orchestras around the UK, chamber music has been very rare to come by, and more importantly the 7 of us haven’t played together since that online concert!

We were therefore very impatient (and nervous!) to start rehearsals, and rehearse we did, as the three big pieces we’re offering are all difficult in very different ways!

The famous Schubert Quintet is very intricately written which although makes it a constant challenge to show all the beautiful details, the balance takes care of itself, unlike in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence where often a lot of things are going on at the same time. In fact the first version of the piece was, in the composer’s own words “astonishingly bad in all aspects“. Schoenberg’s incredible Verklärte Nacht is somehow a mixture of both which is probably one of the reasons why it is seldom performed.

Given all the above we can’t meaningfully describe how satisfying it felt to finally play together, but with the rehearsals behind us we are now on our way from the rainy (snowy? or sunny?) Glasgow to our first concert in Fort William and we couldn’t be more excited!

Broen Ensemble

A feast of Tunnell Trust Chamber Music talent for 2022 & 2023

NEWSFLASH!

As we all emerge from this very difficult two year period we are delighted to be supporting 54 amazing concerts in Scottish Music Club during 2022 & 2023

Thank you to our Scottish Music Club partners for helping us reschedule ALL the cancelled concerts for our wonderful young musicians

Click the photos below to check out the dates and go along!

 

Please do help us to support these concerts at this vital time of recovery for our young musicians:

30th Anniversary Appeal

If all of you donate £30, together we can do so much more to help our young musicians.

Goodbye to the Isle of Coll

 

We’re writing this from the mainland en route from Oban to Glasgow. It feels strange to notice the busyness of Oban, still far from the pace of life in London, feeling somewhat jarring on our return form the Isle of Coll. Over the course of our time on Coll we fell easily into our new routine; rehearsals, lessons, amazing food, concerts and of course, trips to the beautiful Coll Hotel bar post-performance. No moment was wasted and we’ve come away with a wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to perform. 

It is hard to pin-point specific points of focus during our lessons with the amazing tutors Music Coll introduced us to. In fact, to touch on exact details would detract from the nature and depth of the teaching. Truthfully, the past ten days have left us with pockets of musical knowledge and feeling that will stay with us forever. We studied some of the greatest and most challenging repertoire for Piano Trio (Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn) during our time in Coll. It can be easy to shy away from the masterpieces within the Piano Trio canon for fear of doing the works an injustice approaching them at a younger age. 

Exploring the legacy of these masterpieces alongside the important personal value they hold really was a privilege. This insight gave us a wonderful foundation to delve into the depths of the music and find confidence and assurance in our interpretation. After a year that cultivated a more insular way of life, we are so moved to have had the space to rediscover our identity as a group and as performers. 

Thank you so much to our tutors and to the Tunnell Trust for inviting us to the beautiful Isle of Coll, the past ten days will stay with us for a very long time. 

Eliette, Jasmin, Rosie 

Salomés in Coll

Hello from Haim, Maddy, Kasia, and Shizuku!

After a long and picturesque trip up north from London we have arrived and settled in at the stunning Isle of Coll. We have been enjoying some glorious walks after days filled to the brim with music we love, and cherishing every minute of it. We swam in the sea, hugged some horses, conversed with local sheep, and we got to explore some incredible repertoire with the course’s truly inspirational coaches, and we can’t wait to share the results with the local audience.

The past year and a half has been tough on many musicians including ourselves, so we have been grateful more than ever for the opportunity to be here as a quartet.

We are incredibly excited for our first concert in Coll tonight!

See you there 🙂

Salomés