has promoted annual series of
classical chamber music concerts by professional artists,
many of international renown (see below).
Click on the piano keys to the left for details of each month's concert.
|
|
has promoted annual series of classical chamber music concerts by professional artists, many of international renown (see below).
Click on the piano keys to the left for details of each month's concert. |
|
|
|
Hoylake Chamber Concert Society first presented concerts in 1926-7, and between then and the Second World War gave increasingly successful concerts and recitals over 14 seasons, attracting such prestigious ensembles as the Griller Quartet, and a succession of famous pianists such as Myra Hess, Benno Moiseiwitsch and Egon Petri.
After the War, concerts resumed again with prestigious names: Denis Matthews, Colin Horsley, the Griller and Zorian Quartets, and the Blech Quartet whose leader, Harry Blech was to found the London Mozart Players and conduct them for their first 50 years.
On a number of occasions in the 1940s and 50s our concerts were broadcast by the BBC on the Third Programme, the predecessor of BBC Radio 3.
The increased ease of travel saw the appearance of foreign artists: the Prague Quartet, the Belgian Piano Quartet, and, in the spirit of giving a chance to young artists which is still a major part of the Society's purpose, newly formed quartets began to make their appearance: the Aeolian Quartet in 1948 and the Amadeus Quartet, in the first of many visits, in 1949.
In the half century since those days of austerity, when a season's ticket for four concerts cost £1, and a prestigious quartet's fee would be of the order of 30 guineas (£31.50), the Society has continued to present each season a blend of artists already of international renown, including the Gabrieli and Coull Quartets, Alan Hacker, Amaryllis Fleming, Yfrah Neaman and John Ogdon (who, the minutes record, was pleased with the condition of the piano provided) with the up and coming, many of whom have now become household names, such as the Lindsays, the Alberni, the Chilingirian, the Fitzwilliam, the Endellion and more recently the Belcea Quartet.
