Alauna Ensemble 7

The Alauna Ensemble was originally formed to give a performance in Chichester Cathedral of a piano quintet by the late Robert Stewart, composer, pianist,
repetiteur and organ scholar.
The ensemble was reformed six years ago and has performed concerts
in England and Wales,
including concerts in Oxford and London.

Graham Mayger (flute) won a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music, then a French Government Scholarship to study in Paris with Jean Pierre Rampal. Returning to London, he then played with most of the major London orchestras, and for 27 years enjoyed a special relationship with the Northern Sinfonia. He now holds principal flute positions with many freelance orchestras and is a member of the London Harpsichord Ensemble.
He has broadcast as a soloist in many recitals and concertos, including a concerto performance at the Promenade concerts. His recordings for Unicorn of Vivaldi chamber concertos, including the ‘Goldfinch’ have been very highly praised.
He was appointed to the staff of the Royal College of Music at the age of 24; becoming the youngest professor ever to be appointed. Several of his past students now hold important orchestral positions in this country and abroad. He is also professor of the flute at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall.

Vanessa Hammond (oboe) studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Celia Nicklin and George Caird. She is a freelance player, working mainly with chamber orchestras including Southern Sinfonia and London Concertante with whom she has performed concertos by Albinoni, Bach, Telemann and Marcello at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Purcell Room and the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

She also plays the baroque oboe, working regularly with the period instrument groups Bath Baroque, Welsh Baroque and the Corelli Ensemble. Tours with Florilegium and the King's Consort have taken her to Spain, the Canary Islands and Hong Kong

Verity Fielding (clarinet) is a busy freelance clarinettist playing with many orchestras and ensembles, including Welsh National Opera. She is a member of the contemporary music group PM Music Ensemble with whom she has toured extensively, often in a solo clarinet programme.

Mark Kane (horn) studied at the Royal College of Music with Tim Brown and Julian Baker. He follows a busy career as a freelance musician with many orchestras and ensembles, including the Bounemouth Symphony Orchestra. Mark takes a keen interest in chamber music and also composes.

Peter Morgan (bassoon) studied with Roger Birnstingl and Martin Gatt at the Guildhall School of Music and with Mordechai Rechtmann in Tel Aviv. Peter has worked with many of the country's leading orchestras and ensembles and for twelve years, until 1996, was principal bassoon with the Orchestra of English National Ballet.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
La cheminée du roi René

The influence of latin America (Le Boeuf sur le toit) and jazz (La Création du monde) on the music of Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) is well known. But, despite his travels in Brazil and the United States, it is to his native Provence (he was born in Aix en Provence) that one must look for the source of his suite for wind quintet La Cheminée du Roi René (The Chimney of King René).

Written as film music – Cavalcade d’amour, set in mediaeval Aix, never got as far as production – it was refashioned by the composer into a seven movement suite and typifies the composer’s (very French) flair for woodwind writing.

The movements are:

1. Cortège 2. Aubade 3. Jongleurs
4. La Maousinglade (the area of Provence where Milhaud lived, it means, in Provençal, ‘badly arranged’)
5. Joutes sur l’Arc (Jousts on the Arc) - the Arc is a small river near Aix, scene of a work by another of the town’s famous residents: Paul Cézanne’s Les Baigneuses.
6. Chasse à Valabre (a hunting scene set in the castle of Valabre, much used by good king René)
7. Madrigal-Nocturne.

If you’re still wondering about the title: good king René (1409–1480) was, among many other things, Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence from 1434 to 1480. He eventually retired to Aix and surrounded himself by artists and men of letters. The chimney is more elusive, but there may be a clue in a phrase listed in Larousse under cheminée: ‘Se chauffer à la cheminée du roi René’ meaning ‘to warm oneself in the (Provençal) sun’.

Christopher Weeks (b.1948)
Wind Quintet

Wind instruments have long been associated with the outdoors. Perhaps this goes back to the time of our hunting fathers, when a flourish on the cor de chasse or the oboe da caccia would signal the mort (kill); or to arcadian images of shepherds piping; or maybe to the less sanguinary and more courtly serenade (often used interchangeably with its close relatives the serenata, partita, cassation and divertimento). Serenades were originally designed to be sung or played (if one’s vocal equipment wasn’t up to much) at evening beneath the window or balcony of the beloved; they soon, however, became instrumental forms, and the version for wind instruments gained great popularity from the late 18^th century onwards (works by Mozart, Krommer, Beethoven, Pleyel, Hummel, Raff, Dvorák, Gounod, Strauss, Nielsen, Milhaud, etc.).

My wind quintet attempts to draw on these open air traditions: it is serenade/divertimento-like in its mood and its large number of short sections; pastoral in its extended solos for oboe and clarinet, folk-like melodies and bird-song; and the mort is there, too, sounded triumphantly by the horn at the climax of each of the work’s two sections.

The quintet is in one movement and is based, mostly, on five contrasted ideas heard at the beginning. The first section ends a few bars after the first mort and then the whole thing happens again, but differently.

Chris Weeks

Claude-Paul Taffanel (1844–1908)
Wind Quintet in G minor (1900)

i. Allegro con moto ii. Andante iii. Vivace

The composer and virtuoso flautist Paul Taffanel was a major personality in fin-de-siècle Parisian musical life.

As a performer and teacher at the Paris Conservatoire he took the recently created Boehm flute and founded the French school of flute playing, which has been adopted throughout the world.

In 1890 he became chief conductor at the Paris Opera and the Paris Conservatory Orchestra: the first time a wind player rather then a string player had been appointed to these major positions.

At the Opera he gave the French premieres of a number of Wagner operas and Verdi's Otello. At the Societé des concerts he performed the works of contemporary French composers (including his friend Saint-Saëns) and gave the world premiere of Verdi's Sacred Pieces.

In 1879 Taffanel founded the Society of Chamber Music for Wind Instruments (the Societé de Musique de Chambre pour Instruments à Vent), reviving the wind ensemble music of Mozart and Beethoven and others, and encouraging the composition of new works for wind, among them Gounod's Petite Symphonie.

The Wind Quintet in G minor looks back to the mid-19th century and the music of Mendelssohn and Brahms.

The first movement is a dramatic allegro based largely on a dotted motif; the andante starts with an extended cantabile solo for horn accompanied by the other winds; and the work ends with a lively 6/8 vivace.

The work is dedicated to the memory of Henri Reber, composer and member of the Conservatoire.