Discovering Chevalier de Saint-Georges – Study Event and Premiere

Discovering Chevalier de Saint-Georges – Study Event and Premiere

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges
Symphonie Concertante in B flat for violin and cello soloists with orchestra (UK premiere)

Tiago Soares Silva violin
Gen Li cello
Director RBC Strings Bradley Creswick
Speaker Christopher Dingle

Also featuring:
String Quartet in E flat

Tehya Dawson and Kalu Ramirez violins
Sian Cobb viola
Matthew Le Maistre cello

Workshop performance of Symphonie Concertante in C with soloists Charlotte Hand violin and Cara Van Der Berg cello

RBC presents a study event on the extraordinary black French violinist, composer and conductor Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–99), culminating in a UK premiere one of his works. Led by Christopher Dingle, (RBC professor, editor of the Schott Saint-Georges Edition and critic for BBC Music Magazine), the event will introduce the remarkable life and music of the man universally regarded as without peer as a swordsman, who rubbed shoulders with kings and queens, conducted the most highly regarded orchestra of its day and later commanded the first black regiment in Europe.

The first half of the event will feature workshop experimental performances of both the Op.6 Symphonies Concertantes, as well as the String Quartet Op.1, No.2, with lively explorations of the various performance possibilities as well as providing a guide to the key features of these archetypes of Parisian style galant. After the interval, there will be the UK premiere, in fact, the first known performance anywhere, of the Symphonie Concertante in B flat, Op.6, No.2 in the version for violin and cello soloists with orchestra, with Conservatoire students under the direction of leader emeritus of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Bradley Creswick.

Christopher Dingle is Professor of Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, where he is Director of the French Music Research Hub and also a member of the Forum for 17th and 18th Century Music. He is the editor of the Schott Saint-Georges Edition, the first fruits of which have been performed and broadcast by the BBC Philharmonic as part of the AHRC/BBC Radio 3 Diverse Composers Scheme, and he is currently preparing a book on the composer for Routledge.

He is author/editor of books on Messiaen, Julian Anderson and Music Criticism, is Series Editor for the new Routledge Musical Landmarks book series and has written for BBC Music Magazine for more than 30 years. More information on his research into Saint-Georges can be found at www.chevalier-de-saint-georges.org.

Running time approx. two hours and 15 minutes