The Elisabeth Frink Music Collection

Friday 29 October, 6:30pm

Book tickets

 

The Bridgepoint Ensemble return to perform a recital of Elisabeth Frink’s favourite music during the Frink ‘Man is an Animal’ exhibition.

Elisabeth Frink’s artistic and cultural interest was as broad as it was deep and of all the artforms that fascinated her, music was perhaps the most enduring. Frink would play music while she worked and an archive of records and tapes discovered in her studio display an eclectic taste that spans Bach and Albinoni, to Kodaly and William Walton, via Gershwin and Stephane Grapelli. She loved baroque styles, chamber music, symphonies, opera and jazz.

The Bridgepoint Ensemble have delved into this archive and have been invited by Messums to give an insight into the music that most inspired Frink.

The concert on 29 October features Sarah Gabriel, one of the most versatile singers in the country; Ruth Rogers, leader of London Mozart Players, soloist and chamber musician, a violinist at the peak of her powers; and the award-winning pianist Viv McLean..

These three wonderful musicians will take the audience through some of the lighter side of Frink’s archive but will also include some classical masterpieces. Beethoven’s much-loved Spring Sonata will follow solo piano and violin Bach pieces. These cornerstones of the repertoire will be intertwined with arias from Handel, Carmen and Porgy and Bess. Songs made famous by Ella Fitzgerald will be partnered by Stephane Grapelli and Heifitz. The programme will also include the breath-taking solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue, a piece that McLean has performed in the orchestral version with the Halle and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

As well as being compelling, moving and exciting performances in their own right, this concert will give audiences a glimpse of the inner thoughts that may have accompanied the creation of some of Frink’s most famous works and will help to complete the picture of one of the greats of 20th century sculpture.

 

The Bridgepoint Ensemble

Sarah Gabriel, soprano
Ruth Rogers, violin
Viv McLean, piano

 

Programme

Bach – E Major Prelude
for solo piano
Bach/Busoni – Chorale prelude
for solo piano
Handel – Meine Seele hort im sehen
for soprano, violin and piano
Beethoven – ‘Spring’ Sonata
for violin and piano

—-interval—-

Puccini- Signore Ascolta
soprano and piano
Bizet- Habanera from Carmen
soprano and piano
Gershwin- Rhapsody in Blue
solo piano
Gershwin – The Man I Love
soprano and piano
Kern/Harbach- Smoke Gets in your Eyes
soprano and piano
Gershwin/Heifitz- It aint necessarily so
violin and piano
Gershwin- Summertime
soprano, violin and piano