Guest blogger drops in...the 'bulletproof cellist' returns with a new line up!

Last year, we invited the winners of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Dunbar-Gerber Prize to perform.  The Csengele Quartet turned in a cracking performance (here's what Michael Tumelty had to say about it in The Herald!).  We've repeated it with this year's winners - the Jatsszuk Ensemble - which features a familiar face from last year's group in cellist David Munn.  Here are his thoughts on making a return visit with a different group:

The story never changes, just the names and faces…

A busy first week in June is becoming something of a habit for me.  This time last year, I was sitting in sunny Aldeburgh being coached by Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio on a piece that we, the Csengele Quartet, were due to perform the following week in Glasgow.  The piece: Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major.  The performance: Cottier’s Chamber Project 2012.

Twelve months on, I find myself preparing for the same concert series, but with a different group of musicians and a very different programme.

The RCS Játsszuk Ensemble, a group committed to performing lesser-known chamber works, is made up of current RCS students with a distinct Hungarian feel (in fact, I am the only non-Hungarian in the group!)  We have devised a programme of “Opus 1’s”, that is, the first pieces that the respective composers attributed a number to as they embarked on a professional career.

We open the concert with Frank Spedding’s Piano Quartet op. 1 (of course), written in 1951, when he was a student at the Royal College of Music in London.  Despite the sound-world being unmistakably in the 20th century, the piece conveys a distinct romantic feeling and a broad range of tone colours.

This is followed by Miklós Rózsa’s Trio Serenade op.1 (1927) for violin, viola and ‘cello.  This work displays very early signs of the composer’s subsequent career in film music, as there is real drama throughout.  In preparing this rather obscure work, we have continually viewed it ‘through the lens’ of film music, imagining what the camera might be focusing on at any given moment.

The concert concludes with Josef Suk’s über-romantic Piano Quartet (you have hopefully worked out the opus number by now).  The piece was the result of an assignment from his teacher, Antonìn Dvorák, who was so taken with the finished product that he selected it for the graduation awards concert that year.

So the personnel have changed, the programme has changed, but the excitement of performing at the Cottiers Chamber Project is just the same as last year.  As are the stressful rehearsals…