Upcoming British music performances at Duke

A weekend of British music begins this Friday, Nov. 3, with a performance by The Villiers Quartet at 8:00 p.m. in Baldwin Auditorium.

The Villiers Quartet is quickly establishing a reputation as champions of 20th-21st century British (and American) music. This concert in Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium, part of their 2017 North American tour, features a wonderful balance of the lushly romantic Delius (in its original 1916 version), the lyrical poise of American composer/violinist Andrew Waggoner’s recent score Every Sentient Being, and unusual British pieces from the 1920s (Bush’s Dialectic) and 1950s (Fricker’s Quartet No. 2).

The Villiers are currently Quartet-in-Residence at Oxford University. The Strad hailed them as among the most charismatic and “adventurous” players on the scene. The Villiers Quartet has released several highly-acclaimed CDs on Naxos which are available from the Duke Music Library, most recently a recording of the Delius String Quartet (original and revised versions) and the Elgar String Quartet.

The public is invited to attend a pre-concert talk given by Daniel Grimley (Merton College, Oxford) at 7:00 p.m. in the Library Seminar Room, Biddle Music Building (adjacent to Baldwin Auditorium).

On Saturday, Nov. 4, at 5:00 p.m. in the Nelson Music Room on Duke’s East Campus, British composer Frank Bridge’s Piano Trio No. 2 (1929), widely considered to be one of his greatest chamber works, will be featured in a concert by violinist Hsiao-mei Ku, Professor in the Duke Department of Music and member of the Ciompi Quartet; pianist R. Larry Todd, Arts and Sciences Professor of Music at Duke; and cellist David Meyer of the North Carolina Symphony. Listen to a performance of this piece through the Duke Music Library subscription to the Naxos online streaming service.

These two concerts are part of the symposium, British Music & Europe in the Age of Brexit, presented by the Duke University Department of Music and Franklin Humanities Institute: Humanities Futures.