2025 – 2026 Season
8 August 2026 at 2:00pm in All Saints Church, Llangybi Road, Cellan, Lampeter
80th Birthday Concert for John Metcalf
The Nantwen Ensemble with Alys Huws (Harp)
- Paths of Song (2007) for String Quartet
- Mapping Wales (2000) for Harp and String Quartet
- Songs without Words (2023) for String Quintet Song for Strata Florida, Hallelujah, Prelude and Hymn
- Castell Dolbadarn (2004) for Cello and Harp Three Studies after the painting by JMW Turner
John Metcalf, our president and a distinguished international composer, is 80 this year.
You may recall that Lampeter Music Club commissioned from him ‘Mapping Wales’ for String Quartet and Harp to mark the millennium, and ‘Metaphysical Studies’ for piano to mark the bicentenary of St Davids College.
4 June 2026 at 6:00pm in St Peters Church, Lampeter
Can You Sing That Tune?
This isn’t a quiz – it’s a concert packed with soaring melodies and unforgettable tunes played by a piano quintet, featuring Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Sosban Fach, which will give us fresh or surprising insights into some familiar tunes.
Isobel Neary-Adams played the viola at our April ‘Nocturnal’ concert.
Now she is on a mission to get us all singing – or at least humming – their music on the way home. She has curated a concert of tunes, some you might have heard before and others that will be a pleasant surprise.
The concert starts with an arrangement of a Welsh favourite: the beloved traditional song Sosban Fach. Then you will hear Samuel Barber’s mournful Adagio for Strings in its intimate, original String Quartet version.
You might not know the concert’s centrepiece, but Isobel is convinced that it is a piece you will grow to love. Ernst von Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet No.1 uses repeated themes across its four movements, bringing them together in a delightful finale. Isobel says, “It’s one of the few classical pieces I’ve been able to sing tunes from after only listening to it once, and I hope you will have a similar experience”.
Programme
- Traditional song Sosban Fach
- Barber Adagio for Strings
- Ernst von Dohnányi Piano Quintet No. 1
2 April 2026 at 6:00pm in St Peters Church, Lampeter tbc
Nocturnal, an evening programme from a string quintet which is made up of dynamic professional musicians aged under 30.
Anna Tulchinskaya violin
- Philip Glass String Quartet No.3 Mishima
- Emma Jean The Sound of Sleepless Kings
- Terry Riley Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector
- James Weatherley-Buss New piece
Sinfonia Cymru’s violinist Anna Tulchinskaya has curated this concert. You might remember her concert for us last year featuring Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.11.
This concert is all about the shift when the sun goes down. The quiet hum of the streets, the way shadows stretch longer, and the thoughts that only surface in the dark.
Philip Glass’s String Quartet No.3 is characteristic of his trademark hypnotic and meditative music. It formed part of the soundtrack to the 1985 biographical film, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, about the life of a controversial Japanese writer and activist, in which Glass’ music indicates transformations in the characters from light to dark.
Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector takes its inspiration from a conversation with a friend’s seven-year old daughter about a supernatural figure who collects and distributes dreams (think The BFG…). It’s a high energy work, full of leaps and twists and things that go jump in the night.
She’s also bringing music from two composer acquaintances, Emma Jean and James Weatherley-Buss, with their musical interpretations of the early hours.
If you’ve ever found yourself staring out of a window at midnight, lost in thought, this one’s for you.
“In the dark, I listen to the world’s slow rhythms. It’s in the night when I feel most at home in myself.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Review
This was the third concert in our collaboration with Sinfonia Cymru, and consisted of a string quartet with the conventional forces – two violins, viola and cello – but certainly not a conventional repertoire.
As usual with Sinfonia Cymru, they had picked a member of the orchestra – who are all under 30, if you recall – to curate the whole concert. This time it was violinist Anna Tulchinskaya, who explained her thinking in a warm and enthusiastic introduction. She was fascinated by dreams, and had designed the programme as if we were going through a night, one which was, shall we say, enlivened, by a series of disturbed dreams.
As is always the case in such thematic curation, there has to be a slight stretching of boundaries! This was particularly noticeable in that the second piece was the first movement of Ravel’s quartet for strings. This ravishing piece of music made the cut on the basis that Ravel suffered from severe insomnia. Anna did not suggest that he was actually trying to portray dreams, but rather that in his composition he was obsessed by order. Perhaps in compensation.
The concert opened with a lovely, complex, lyrically and rhythmically fascinating piece by a friend of Anna’s, Emma Jean. Its title, The Sound of Sleepless Kings, is attractive in its own right, and I suspect that it played a seminal role in the thinking behind the design of the programme.
It was our first introduction to the beautiful tone and immaculate precision of these gifted players. (Second violin – Catherine Alsey, viola – Isobel Neary-Adams, cello – William Clark-Maxwell.) Despite their youth, all four have impressive CV’s already; and I was particularly struck to learn that they had only played together as a quartet for two days before presenting the same programme the preceding day in Newport. Their ensemble and their concentration was superb.
After the Ravel I mentioned above, they gave us Philip Glass’s String Quartet no.3. This mesmerising six-short-movement work shows off the minimalist technique of the composer at its very best, with endlessly repeated rhythmic patterns modulating, element by element, building all kinds of emotional response – and plenty of dynamic contrasts and shocks. The four players are often playing different rhythms, and as one of them remarked afterwards, ‘If you lose your place, that’s it!’ The precision with which they played these interlocking parts after so short a rehearsal time is amazing. And the tonal beauty and clarity! I was not the only person completely swept up.
The final piece evoked the end of the night, with another lovely title, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector, by Terry Riley. Once again, a feast for the ears. The audience was very appreciative, and we thank Sinfonia Cymru, Anna, and the other players for a memorable concert.
Carol Nixon
Catrin Finch Harp
Aoife Ní Bhriain Violin
Fresh with their new Album ‘Double You’
Saturday 11th October 2025 7.30pm
St Peters Church, Bryn yr Eglwys, Lampeter SA48 7ER
Dublin native Aoife Ní Bhriain is one of Ireland’s foremost traditional fiddle players as well as a classical violinist of international stature.
From the west coast of Wales, harpist Catrin Finch has built an impressive classical career, and broadened her musical range, most notably through award-winning international collaborations.
Their programme Double You features a collection of new compositions that draw inspiration from across the genres, taking you on a fascinating journey across the Irish Sea, inspired by the cultures of their home countries.
Review
Because of uncertainty about the use of the college for events, this concert was booked into Saint Peters church. The church had already been decorated for harvest festival and great trouble had been taken to warm the building as much as possible. There was also a strong turn out for the ‘local girl made good’. As a consequence, there was a delightfully strong sense of community cohesion before, during, and after the concert.
Taken together with the effortless way in which both performers immediately connect with an audience and this was an evening which would be hard to forget. Catrin and Aiofe are a very fine musical team, and there’s an inevitability about their music – as if no other sounds could be substituted.
We were blessed to have them playing for us, a sentiment clearly shared by a majority of the large audience, and a very lovely footnote was the way in which both performers wrote to the club afterwards thanking us for the opportunity to play in Lampeter.
That’s what music is about, surely? Everyone being made to feel good!
Carol Nixon
A wind quintet with music of a seasonal wintery theme. They will be joined by Cor Ysgol Bro Pedr and Cor Dyffryn Arth, with some opportunity for the audience to join in with some familiar tunes.
4 December 2025 at 6:00 PM in Ysgol Bro Pedr School Hall, Lampeter
- Overture to The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, arranged by Linckelmann
- Andante from the Wind Quintet by Gustav Holst
- Prelude in E flat Major by Serge Rachmaninov, arranged by McDermid
- Empress of the Pagodas from Mother Goose by Maurice Ravel, arranged by Linceklmann
- The Holly and the Ivy, arranged by Valerie Coleman
- Umoja by Valerie Coleman
- Trois Pieces by Jaques Ibert
5 February 2026 at 6:00pm in St Peters Church, Lampeter
A Grand Tour by a period string trio playing the music of Mozart and his contemporaries:
Eddie Mead cello
Sofia Gubaidulina Prelude 3 (solo cello)
Marianne Martines Sonata In A major (String Trio)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Excerpts from Divertimento for String Trio
Maria Szymanowska Nocturnes (2) (arr String Trio)
Luigi Boccherini Excerpts from La Musica della Strade Di Madrid
Step into the shoes of an 18th century traveler and join us on a musical Grand Tour through the salons, streets and hidden corners of Europe. Together we’ll hear forgotten melodies come alive in a concert full of rediscovery and delight.
No musical Grand Tour would be complete without a trip to Vienna, where a young Mozart found a kindred spirit in Marianne Martines, another composer of extraordinary talent. Her Sonata in A Major sparkles with wit and elegance, rather like Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio, which sounds like it could have been composed for a relaxing afternoon at a cafe on a piazza.
Next, we travel to Poland, where the poetic Nocturnes of Maria Szymanowska – a pianist and composer celebrated across Europe – offer a moment of lyrical reflection. And in Spain, Boccherini’s La Musica delle Strade di Madrid (Night Music From The Streets of Madrid) brings the vibrant energy of the streets to life.
Our tour guide is Sinfonia Cymru cellist Eddie Mead, and he doesn’t always stick to the usual route. He plays with a haunting solo cello piece by Sofia Gubaidulina, before a detour to Scotland for lively country dance tunes by legendary 18th-century fiddler Niel Gow.
Review
What a tour de force!
This was the second of four Lampeter concerts planned to feature chamber groupings from within Sinfonia Cymru, as part of their double mission: to disseminate good music everywhere in Wales, and to give their young musicians the opportunity to curate their own concerts, and follow their individual musical personalities.
The curator this time was Edward Mead, an outstanding young cellist originally from Porthcawl. His choice of music, the order in which pieces were played, and the transitions between pieces were all brilliant. As any particular style of music reached the point where some in the audience might have felt it was ‘enough’, the style amazingly changed. It takes not only a tremendous musical knowledge to achieve this through the course of an entire hour, but also considerable rehearsal time, so that all the junctions are perfectly co-ordinated.
Though for these musicians, who are clearly talents of the first order, the rehearsals will have been extremely efficient.
Edward was joined by Ezo Sarici on violin and Joseph Lowe on viola, all of them a delight to listen to. All three were playing on gut strings rather than metal, and Joseph was even using a baroque bow, all with the intention of creating a sound-world quite far removed from what we hear normally. This was really worthwhile, though it did entail frequent re-tuning, thanks to the cold conditions.
The church was well-filled, and the applause enthusiastic and sustained.
I look forward eagerly to our next Sinfonia Cymru concert.
Carol Nixon