THE past 15 months have been a difficult time for all involved with music performance. Ilkley Concert Club has not been able to present a concert since March 2020 although we have kept our members and supporters supplied with on-line performances. We are grateful to all the musicians who recorded concerts and made them available to Ilkley Concert Club and are happy that we were able to support them financially in exchange.

However, the King’s Hall is now open again and the Club looks forward to presenting a new season of concerts for 2021—22. This prospect is inevitably tinged with sadness at the recent announcement of the death, at the age of 93, of David Pyett, for many years an outstanding chairman of the Club. Nevertheless this present loss makes us even more determined to bring back chamber music to Ilkley, as David would have wished. We are cautiously optimistic that as near to a normal season will be presented, although we must remain flexible to respond to changes in circumstances if they arise: safety will always be the first consideration.

We are confident we have gathered a wider range than ever of music from the 17th to 21st century to present in Ilkley, performed as ever by top-flight artists. Our season will open on October 6th with a concert of string quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn performed by rising stars the Castalian Quartet. They are joined by Ilkley favourite, Leon McCawley (piano) in a performance of the rarely heard piano quintet by Edward Elgar. This will be followed in November by three well-loved musicians who are soloists in their own right – Emma Johnson (clarinet), Raphael Wallfisch (cello) and Martin Roscoe (piano) – in a programme of works for various combinations of instruments – sonatas by Bax and Poulenc and clarinet trios by Fauré and one of his predecessors at the Paris Conservatoire, the unjustly neglected Louise Farrenc.

The December concert will return to the quartet repertoire with the Doric Quartet, one of the leading string quartets of their generation, playing quartets by Haydn, Bartok and finally Beethoven, whose late op 135 quartet has humour and pathos in equal measure. In January we will present the outstanding German baritone, Benjamin Appl, accompanied by pianist, Simon Lepper. As well as songs in German by Schubert and Mahler, Appl is equally at home in the English repertoire and will give a performance of Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel for the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Vaughan Williams also features in the concert by Natalie Clein (cello) and Katya Apekisheva (piano) in February, bringing Ilkley our second winner of BBC Young Musician. Natalie will give us her much-feted interpretation of Rebecca’s Clarke’s viola sonata as well as Rachmaninoff’s intensely romantic cello sonata – one of the greatest in the repertoire.

Perhaps the high point of the season will be the piano recital by Paul Lewis in March. Paul is one of the foremost interpreters of classical Viennese music and, in a varied programme, will play for us two of Beethoven’s most well-known sonatas – the Pathétique and the Appassionata – together with works by Chopin, Debussy and Sibelius. The April concert will feature a welcome return for Ilkley regulars, the Gould Piano Trio, with Robert Plane (clarinet): as well as trios by Mozart and Ravel they will give us a performance of one of the great works of the 20th century - the Quartet for the End of Time by Messaien.

The season will finish in May with a band of eleven players on the stage of the King’s Hall. The Brook Street Band is named for the street in London where Handel lived for thirty years and they will perform works not only by Handel but by Bach, Muffat and Geminiani featuring violin and recorder solos – a real feast of the baroque!

All Concert Club concerts are planned for the King’s Hall on Wednesdays at 8.00 pm. The brochure and application form for this 75th season is now available on-line at ilkleyconcertclub.org.uk and at Ilkley Tourist Information Office. Season tickets are in high demand so you are advised to get your application in quickly: this can be by post or on-line. However there are always a few tickets available for individual concerts which can be reserved in the month before each concert.