Ben Goldscheider

It is always a pleasure to welcome Ben Goldscheider back to Luton. He has been playing for us since 2015 and it has been so exciting to witness his remarkable success over the last ten years. He returns on this occasion with one of the country’s finest chamber ensembles, the Heath Quartet, playing Mozart’s ever popular Horn Quintet written for the composer’s great friend, the cheesemonger Joseph Leutgeb.

Heath Quartet

If we are searching for connections with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music, then perhaps Eleanor Alberga’s The Shining Gate of Morpheus will have the richest resonance. It is one of a series of nocturnal chamber pieces that this Jamaica-born composer began some 20 years ago. She enjoyed a period as music director of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and there is no doubting the influence of wider artistic synergy in her compositions – dance works, theatre pieces, song settings and other programmatic works inspired by literature.

The concert ends with York Bowen’s sweeping essay in full blown Romantic chamber music. Arguably out of kilter with his time, Bowen was an unapologetic Romantic; with the benefit of historical perspective it is perhaps easier for us today to respond to his full blown chromatic harmony and overtly dramatic style – we no longer need to make allowance for any such harmless retrospective tendencies.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)