The LPO marks 200th anniversary of St John’s Church Waterloo with The Chamber Sessions

Thu 17 Oct, 2024

From January 2025, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) will launch The Chamber Sessions, a series of intimate hour-long 6.30pm concerts at St John’s Church Waterloo.

Following the success of our 2024 chamber concert series, we are delighted to continue this partnership with St John’s as the church celebrates its 200th year, bringing audiences closer to the music and showcasing members of the LPO in a more intimate setting.

The first concert, on 23 January 2025, opens with a quintet that Mozart called ‘the best work I have ever written’ in a letter to his father. While the Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K452 is, indeed, a work of considerable merit, Mozart’s satisfaction with it may have resulted as much from his skill in solving the technical problems of combining the piano with an unusual collection of wind instruments. When the piece was written in 1784, no one had previously written music for the combination of piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon – why it attracted Mozart at this point remains an unsolved riddle. The concert continues with an adventurous quintet romp: Hindemith’s Kleine Kammermusik for winds, and Grammy-nominated American composer Valerie Coleman’s Tzigane, inspired by Middle Eastern scales and gestures that buzz with a wild, free spirit.

On 22 February 2025, an LPO string trio will bring to life a vivid collection of sonic portraits, featuring the captivating music of Andrew Norman. His Companion Guide to Rome draws inspiration from the grand proportions of the city’s churches, the intricate patterns of their floors, the textures of their surfaces, and the lives and legends of the saints they honour. Continuing this sacred theme, the New London Chamber Choir will join the Orchestra for Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel – a meditative soundscape for chamber choir, solo viola, celeste and percussion, written in tribute to the visionary artist Mark Rothko and the Texas chapel displaying his intriguing black-hued paintings.

7 March 2025 sees The Chamber Sessions foreground works by composers of colour, opening with LPO Composer-in-Residence Tania León’s String Quartet No. 2. This free-form quartet is marked by interactive solos with a ghostly sense of tonality and impressions of gestured improvisations. Jessie Montgomery’s Break Away was born out of a series of improvisations riffing on several different styles of music from hip-hop to electronica. The score calls on the quartet to both play with and ‘break away’ from the score at various points, attempting a seamless dialogue between the written notes and the whims of the players. With an eclectic musical palate and crafty compositional technique to match, Brian Raphael Nabors’s Jump draws from combinations of jazz funk, R&B and gospel, with the modern flair of contemporary classical music. Former LPO Young Composer Daniel Kidane’s Foreign Tongues sees the cello pitted against the other string players, aiming to explore the idea of different languages communicating and interacting with each other. Vera, Hannah Kendall’s brilliant early work, rounds off this concert.

London Philharmonic Orchestra Artistic Director, Elena Dubinets, says: ‘We’re delighted to be back at St John’s Waterloo for its 200th anniversary. This very special space creates an atmosphere where smaller chamber works can have the greatest of effects, with audience and orchestra sharing the musical experience more closely than in a traditional concert hall. It’s exciting to be foregrounding the works of composers of colour as part of the series, as well as presenting varied pieces inspired by the hall’s setting and community’

Euchar Gravina, Artistic Director at St John’s Waterloo says: ‘We are very pleased to welcome back the London Philharmonic Orchestra to our historic Grade II* listed venue for a concert series that brings diverse and imaginative programming to our audiences, with a special focus on contemporary classical music. Now in its 200th year, St John’s Waterloo treasures collaborations like these, which enrich our year-round cultural programme and strengthen our role as a bridge between the local community and the cultural institutions in our area.’

The partnership between LPO and St John’s also includes joint Education and Community projects, including accessible participatory musical experiences with the local communities we both serve.

 

Tickets start from £12. To book, please visit the LPO website.