Dear Members and Friends, 

On Friday 9th May, the Brodsky Quartet’s Roseland Music Society concert at St Just Church will be preceded at 5.30pm by a 45-minute talk given by Rosamund Bartlett. She is a BBC Proms presenter and writes on Russian literature, music and art. Her books include Wagner & Russia and Tolstoy: A Russian life and she has translated Anna Karenina for Oxford World Classics. Thanks to a generous donation from the Golden Bottle Trust, her talk is free to concert ticket holders.

For those attending, Phoebe Renwick at Renwick’s café, next to the new Interpretive Centre by the church car park, has offered to provide supper between the talk and the concert. People will obviously want to be back at the church in good time to enjoy something from the bar and get a good pew (if they haven’t used the members’ reservation opportunity) so it needs to be something easy to serve. Her proposal is to offer Lasagne (either beef or vegetarian) and salad for £12 a head ordered and paid for in advance. She will be able to provide hot and cold drinks and ice creams for an additional cost on the night but will need at least 20 diners to justify extending her opening hours.

Please email me at roselandmusicsocsec@gmail.com to book. I will respond by Monday 28th April to let you know whether we have enough takers and how to pay in advance.

If you have not yet bought your tickets, as the posters go up and we send a press release out, we expect there to be a lot of demand so do act now to avoid the disappointment of it being sold out.

In case you need further encouragement, read what Krysia Osostowicz, of the Brodsky Quartet, has to say about their programme:

“The Brodsky Quartet and I hugely look forward to our concert tour of beautiful Cornish venues. It grew from Tim Smithies' bold invitation to us to perform a large-scale string quartet by Shostakovich for the Roseland Music Society at St Just in Roseland Church on 9th May. 
 
Although Shostakovich's 8th quartet is the best known, we've chosen his 9th: one of the most exciting works in the entire repertoire, and one of our favourite ones to play. Audiences love it too, even those who fear they might not like Shostakovich. 
 
Opening with a gentle, sighing melody, punctuated with mischievous marches and distant trumpet fanfares, the music travels through a varied landscape - including a playful tribute to William Tell, a desolate lament and a ceremonial folk dance – before culminating in a tsunami of energy which is both terrifying and exhilarating. 
 
None of this could have happened without the inspiration of Debussy's ground-breaking string quartet of 1899. Boldly going where no composer had gone before, Debussy created a new sound-world full of oriental colours and wave-like movement, with textures reminiscent of the great murmurations of birds swooping and wheeling through the Cornish skies.
 
Our concert begins with Haydn, known as the Father of the string quartet -  a ground-breaking composer from an earlier time, with every new work full of surprises, experiments, exquisite moments and musical jokes.
 
Joking aside, it's worth reflecting on the historical context of Shostakovich's work, written under the oppressive shadow of the Soviet regime, with the composer often in fear for his own life, but always seeking to support and protect his friends, family and colleagues. As a friend wrote to me recently: "Shostakovich's music seems to be imbued with these bitter experiences and at the same time shows the most enormous resilience". Shostakovich's quartets represent his most personal utterances; and for us, working on them in these very worrying times, it is an inspiration to experience his courage in the face of tyranny, and the way in which he expresses so many aspects of the human condition.
 
Personally, I am delighted to be together with the Brodsky Quartet, which I had admired for many years before being invited to join them in 2021. The quartet is now in its sixth decade and still going strong, travelling all over the world. Last year we visited Brazil, China and New Zealand, as well as playing in London and Dublin with Elvis Costello.” 


I hope to see many of you there,

Emma