Rautio Piano Trio, Hannah Deans-Williams, Steve Williams

Curated by violinist Jane Gordon, this year’s ‘Transfiguration’ programme features outstanding international artists, rising talent and extraordinary music shaped by change, reflection, conflict and pacifism. The Rautio Piano Trio, with special guests Hannah Deans-Williams, soprano and Steve Williams, clarinet, will perform a programme that brings together the voices of two remarkable women and celebrates creative voice, resilience and the power of artistic expression. At the heart of the programme are two distinctive creative voices that emerged in very different circumstances. Amy Beach forged a path as a composer in a musical world largely closed to women, while Anna Akhmatova gave voice to individual and collective suffering under repression. Separated by time and circumstance, their work shares a profound sense of resilience and a belief in the enduring power of artistic expression. This concert sees the world premiere of Jan Rautio’s Requiem, a setting of Akhmatova’s poetry for soprano and ensemble. Anna Akhmatova was one of Russia’s most important poets of the twentieth century. Her poetry combines emotional intensity with an extraordinary economy of language, exploring love, loss, memory and the passage of time. As Soviet repression intensified, her work became a powerful witness to personal and collective suffering, shaped by war, persecution and the imprisonment of her son. Despite censorship and suppression, Akhmatova continued to write, and her poems were memorised and passed from person to person. Amy Beach was the first successful American woman to make a career as a composer and concert pianist. Largely self-taught as a composer, she overcame the restrictions placed on women in musical life at the time to establish an international reputation. Her music combines the harmonic language of late Romanticism with influences from American folk music and her own experiences as a pianist. Hannah Deans-Williams is a London-based soprano working across Europe as a soloist and ensemble singer, specialising in contemporary music. Steve Williams has performed with many of the UK’s leading symphony, chamber and opera orchestras and ensembles. The Rautio Piano Trio is a London-based ensemble that has performed extensively across the UK and Europe for over a decade. The Trio is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano trios on fortepiano for Resonus Classics. Full Programme: Amy Beach Piano Trio in A minor Op. 150, ‘Requiem’ by J. Rautio for soprano, piano trio & bass clarinet, and Artists in Conversation: Composer Jan Rautio discusses setting Akhmatova’s poetry for his new work, Requiem.