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Welcome to “TBS”!  We run chamber music concerts in Farnham with top professional musicians. All our concerts are open to the public and you can register to attend from this website. We are a registered Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO).

Entrance to our concerts is FREE and our concerts are funded primarily through retiring collections and donations. We especially welcome young people and their attendance is supported by CAVATINA.

Conservatoire Concerts in Godalming, which used to be part of TBS, is now a separate charity, see conservatoireconcerts.org.uk , as is Farnham Sinfonia see  www.farnhamsinfonia.org.uk

The original Tilford Bach Society, with its current Music Director Adrian Butterfield, runs the Tilford Bach Festival and is  a separate charity.

Musicians: Please read: A word to our musicians

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Please always check the website shortly before the concert in case of any last minute changes beyond our control. 

Our Next Concert at the Spire Church

Please note that evening parking charges of £2 have been introduced Mon-Sat in Central and South Street car parks,
but not in Waggon Yard

3-00 pm Sunday 17 November 2024 

Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 6

Piano Four Hands: Ben Schoeman & Tessa Uys

Beethoven: Symphony No 5 in C minor

Beethoven: Symphony No 6 (Pastoral) in F major

Transcriptions by Franz Xaver Scharwenka

In 2010, Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman established a duo partnership after being invited to give a two-piano recital at the Royal Over-Seas League in London. Ever since, they have performed regularly at music societies, festivals and at the BBC, and in 2015 they embarked on their journey with the nine Scharwenka/Beethoven Symphonies transcriptions.

Born in Cape Town, Tessa Uys was first taught by her mother, Helga Bassel, herself a noted concert pianist. At 16, she won a Royal Schools Associated Board Scholarship and continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she studied with Gordon Green.

In her final year she was awarded the MacFarren Medal. Further studies followed in London with Maria Curcio, and in Siena with Guido Agosti. Shortly after this Tessa Uys won the Royal Over-Seas League Competition and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.  During the past decades, Tessa Uys has established for herself an impressive reputation, both as concert performer and as a broadcasting artiste, performing at many concert venues throughout the world and with such distinguished conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Walter Susskind, Louis Frémaux and Nicholas Kraemer.

Also born in South Africa, Ben Schoeman studied piano with Joseph Stanford at the University of Pretoria and then received post-graduate tuition from Boris Petrushansky, Louis Lortie, Michel Dalberto, Ronan O’Hora and Eliso Virsaladze in Florence, Imola and London.

He obtained a doctorate from City, University of London and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He won 1st Prize in the 11th UNISA International Piano Competition, the Gold Medal in the Royal Over-Seas League Competition, the contemporary music prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and the Huberte Rupert Prize from the South African Academy for Science and Art. He has performed at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican Centre and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and Carnegie Hall in New York. Ben Schoeman is a Steinway Artist and a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria.

This piano duo is currently touring countrywide performing all the Symphonies by Beethoven and promoting their new album and the complete six-CD box set.

Scharwenka was born in 1850 near Posen in East Prussia and died in Berlin in 1924. Although he began learning the piano by ear when he was three, he did not start formal music studies until he was 15, when his family moved to Berlin where he enrolled at The Akademie of Tonkunst. He travelled widely as a piano virtuoso and scored a considerable success in England in both this capacity and that of composer. Scharwenka was an inspiring teacher, and a composer of symphonies, piano concerti and an opera, as well as a quantity of instrumental music, including the transcriptions for piano duet for four hands of all the 9 Symphonies by Beethoven.

Historical Background

In the years before recordings, when CDs, iPods, Spotify, and YouTube were unknown and live concerts the prerogative of the wealthy, piano transcriptions were widely admired, making making music such as Beethoven’s symphonies available to a generation of listeners who might not otherwise have come to know them. Amongst the most illustrious of such transcriptions were those by Franz Liszt and the German/Polish composer Franz Xaver Scharwenka.

Tessa Uys has a very personal connection with the music, as her concert pianist mother, Helga Bassel was from Berlin, the city where Scharwenka lived. In the 1930’s along with thousands of Jews she fled the city seeking refuge in Cape Town where her daughter was born. By a stroke of good fortune, she had been able to take not only her beloved Blüthner piano with her but also her collection of piano music including the Scharwenka transcriptions, which were eventually bequeathed to Tessa. In 2004 the piano was returned to the Blüthner factory in Leipzig for restoration and finally gifted to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, thus completing a journey from Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa to a new era back in Germany.

The complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies has never been presented in this format and leading publications such as BBC Music magazine, Gramophone, International Piano Magazine and The Sunday Times have unanimously praised Uys and Schoeman for their “enthralling” and “ground-breaking” recordings of these beloved works.

Please register to attend. It is not essential but helps us to plan and we can contact you in case of any last minute problems

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7-30 pm Saturday 23 November 2024 

Akiko Ono – violin & Svitlana Kosenko – piano

Programme

Schubert: Violin Sonata A major D.574

Faure: Violin sonata No 1 in A major, Opus 13

Smetana: From Homeland

Grieg: Violin sonata No.3 in C minor, Opus 45

Akiko launched her career after winning numerous prizes in prestigious competitions including first prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin, Viotti-Valsesia and Forval Scholarship Stradivarius Japan. She was also a prizewinner of the Concours Reine Elisabeth, Paganini and Szigeti Competitions.

Akiko made her debut with Yehudi Menuhin and the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra at the UNICEF Gala Concert in Germany in 1998. In the same year, she was invited by Vanessa Redgrave, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, to perform at the UN Headquarters in New York to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” where she performed a Bach Partita.

She has performed in many contries and venues including Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Vienna, and the Tokyo Festival Hall.

Akiko sets great value in outreach activities and educational projects and has worked with the Red Cross, UNICEF and Live Music Now, as well as other institutions. She is one of the appointed artists of the Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities since 2006 and is a course leader of the Maiastra Chamber Music. Akiko also leads the Orpheus Sinfonia which supports the finest young musicians emerging from conservatoires across Britain. Every summer, Akiko coaches and plays chamber music with Yutaka Sado’s Super Kids Orchestra in Japan.

In July 2016, Akiko launched a new summer violin course MusicSpace at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, in partnership with Cambridge Summer Music. In demand as a soloist and chamber musician, Akiko is also invited as guest concertmaster by various orchestras such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Nederlands Symphonieorkest.

Born in Tokyo, Akiko moved to the UK when she was 12 to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Subsequently she studied with Dora Schwarzberg and Michael Frischenschlager at the University of Music and performing Arts in Vienna. Akiko is currently professor of violin at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, and the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Svitlana Kosenko was born in Ukraine and studied at Kharkov University of Arts with professor Meinikov and in Germany with Professor Mokatsyan. In 1999, she won second prize in the International Competition of French-Polish Music in Paris.

2001 saw Svitlana take first prize in the Smetana International Competition and was awarded a Special Prize for her performance at the Enescu Competition. In 2012, she won Best Pianist at the Joseph Suder Lieder Competition. Since 2014, Svitlana has been Accompanist in Residence at the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Please register to attend. It is not essential but helps us to plan and we can contact you in case of any last minute problems

Further TBS concerts at the Spire Church

2025

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Other concerts

 

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Donations to support Farnham Concerts

If you do not wish to use Paypal please post a cheque payable to “Tilford Bach Society CIO” to TBS, 1 Adams Drive, Fleet GU51 3DZ or make a transfer to Tilford Bach Society CIO Account at Lloyds  38264060  Sort Code  30-90-89. Please put “Farnham” in the reference box.

Please click HERE to sign a Gift Aid Form increasing the value of your gift by 25%, if you have not already done so. The forms are valid for ALL Farnham and Godalming concerts, including the Sinfonia, and need to be completed only once as they remain valid until you tell us to stop using them.

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Next Godalming Conservatoire Concert

See their website: www.conservatoireconcerts.org.uk

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Major Sponsors

We are hugely grateful to our major sponsors: