Boutique Mt Eden Music Festival Returns

28 - 30 September 2018

Eden Arts is proud to announce the concert line-up for the 2018 Mt Eden Chamber Music Festival - three programmes sharing the theme of 'Contrasts'. The Festival in the heart of Mt Eden Village is becoming one of Auckland's newest must-see cultural events and has had audiences thrilled with the concept, programming and quality of performances.

Artistic Director Simeon Broom (violin), who founded the Festival three years ago in collaboration with the Eden Arts Trust, will perform with pianist Rachel Church in the Friday opening. They will perform a programme contrasting two special works for violin and piano written within a year of each other 100 years ago - the Elgar and Debussy Sonatas.

Says Simeon "These striking sonatas are two great pieces of music for this combination, and are works that we both hold with the deepest affection. So different in their English/ French sound worlds, yet both are imbued with anguish, despair and imaginative escapism, still with such a strong sense of joy and hope - in other words, every bit as worthy and important today as they were in 1918".

The Saturday concert profiles a figure widely associated with a universal humanity - Beethoven. This concert contrasts one of his earliest works (Piano Trio Opus 1, No. 2 in G major) with a work that heads towards what became known as 'late' Beethoven, the String Quartet Opus 95, 'Serioso’. The highly regarded Auckland Piano Trio are joined by another musical partnership, Yuri Cho (violin) and David Samuel (viola) for what promises to be an exciting concert collaboration.

The final concert on Sunday afternoon brings together three treasured familiar faces in the Auckland music scene. James Tennant (cello) and Katherine Austin (piano) - returning to the Festival - are joined by Peter Scholes (clarinet) for the Brahms Clarinet Trio, Opus 114. The Festival fittingly finishes with three Hungarian-Romanian dance movements by Bartok, entitled 'Contrasts' and featuring clarinet, violin and piano. Simeon Broom joins Katherine and Peter for this performance.

The hour-long concerts take place in the beautiful historic church of the Mt Eden Village Centre, which has proved to be an ideal acoustic and setting for audiences to enjoy and fully experience the intimacy of the performances. There is a discount for the full 3-concert series and it is recommended you book early due to the limited seating.

The Eden Arts Trust has supported the arts in the wider Mt Eden area for over 30 years.

For more information visit www.edenarts.co.nz

For ticket bookings, email edenarts1@gmail.com

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