BACKSTAGE WITH…
Ensemble Renard
As part of your concert in Eastbourne, you are paying tribute to John Woolrich. Is he a composer the group knows well?
George Strivens (horn player): We first met John when we were all doing a fellowship year at the Royal Academy of Music and were playing his second set of studies for wind ensemble. We had a wonderful time being coached by him and going on to perform his music. That is what sparked the idea for this concert. The title of The Iron Cockerel Sings, the work that we will be performing, comes from the writings of Adolf Wölfli, and John himself describes it as ‘a short, fast, brightly coloured collage of inventions’ – it’s a very exciting multi-movement piece.
And you’ll be recruiting an extra member to perform it…?
One of the lovely things about it is that it is for wind quintet plus additional bass clarinet, so we will be joined for it by Luke English. The work is intended to be an accompanying piece to Janáček’s Mládí, written for the same instrumentation and which we will be closing the concert with. Inspired by children – its title means ‘youth’ – Mládí is a wonderfully weird and wacky piece, but also hauntingly peaceful at times.
Aside from John Woolrich, will you also be playing works by other composers connected to the group?
Yes. Philip Cashian was head of composition at the Royal Academy when we were there and we did quite a lot of work with the students in his department, so we’re really excited to be playing his Silent Steps. And then there’s Walden by Hans Abrahamsen, from whom we also had coaching. That was a real privilege, as he’s an amazing composer with an incredible mind.
Tell us a little about Ensemble Renard in general…
We are a standard wind quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, but we often join up with other instruments as well. It was, in fact, at the Royal Academy that we first met as students and then we did an extra year as chamber music fellows. We’ve been lucky to be sponsored by the Tunnell Trust, which has enabled us to do a residency on the island of Coll and, since we’ve been able to get together again after Covid, two tours of Scotland. This year, we are Britten Pears Young Artists in Suffolk.
And where does the name come from?
It comes from Stravinsky’s 1916 chamber opera Renard (‘Fox’). A couple of the members of our quintet played in it while students at Oxford and fell in love with the wind writing!