Ensemble 360

A programme of
BRIDGE Phantasy Piano Quartet in F sharp minor
PROKOFIEV Flute Sonata in D Op.94
STRAVINSKY The Soldier's Tale Suite for clarinet, violin and piano

Members of Ensemble 360 perform three very individual pieces providing contrasting perspectives on Music in the Round’s festival theme of war in this lunchtime concert. Frank Bridge’s eloquent Phantasy was completed in 1911, shortly before the storm clouds of war gathered in Europe. Bridge, also Benjamin Britten’s teacher, shared his pupil’s ‘gentle pacifism’. Prokofiev’s Flute Sonata, written in 1942–3, has a melodic richness and ebullience that are all the more remarkable given that it was composed during World War II.

Just a year earlier, in 1941, Prokofiev had told a journalist that he wanted to find 'greater simplicity and more melody’. ‘Of course I have used dissonance in my time,’ he said, ‘but there has been too much dissonance.’ Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale was finished in 1918 at the Swiss town of Morges (on the shore of Lake Geneva, in neutral Switzerland) and the Suite was arranged the following year. Part of Love and War Music in the Round’s Festival of World Class Chamber Music.

This concert will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3.