Celebrating 20 years of Ensemble 360

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2025 marks Ensemble 360’s 20th birthday. To celebrate this anniversary we are curating the Sheffield Chamber Music Festival (SCMF) for Music in the Round (MiTR). Collaborations between MiTR, 360 and Helen Grime, Kathy Stott and Steven Isserlis in previous years have been a great inspiration for us all and we are proud to continue this tradition. 

Music in the Round was created in 1984 by the Lindsay Quartet and the first May Festival came into being at the Sheffield Crucible in that year. The early festivals concentrated on retrospectives of individual composers and, subsequently, on geographical areas or historical periods. Since 2022, with the introduction of guest curators, no two festivals are alike – their personalities have produced an individual shape and atmosphere to each festival. The need for an overarching theme now feels redundant. Kathy Stott’s inclusion of tango, with guest bandoneon player, JP Jofre, is a good example of this. That year had music from Schubert to Fauré, Saint-Säens and Rachmaninoff but the inclusion of tango elements as a contrast to the more standard Western repertoire was what made that year uniquely Kathy’s. 

This year the strings will be presenting a concert with Jasdeep Singh Degun, an award-winning sitar player and composer. The experience of immersion in non-Western repertoire and sound worlds can have a profound effect on a performer’s approach to what they play on a more regular basis. From an early age we are encouraged to compartmentalise music of different genres and cultures instead of viewing all music as a fundamental expression of human experiences and emotions. The opportunity to work on and perform unfamiliar music, especially in collaboration with an expert, offers the possibility of addressing this, and enriches one’s own musical development. 

Peter Cropper – the first violin of the Lindsays – envisaged Ensemble 360 as a chamber group but also as a proto-chamber orchestra, making amends for the lack of a professional orchestra in Sheffield. The festival has given us an opportunity to play works for all eleven players. Arrangements of orchestral pieces – Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Brahms Serenade op. 11, for example – have often featured in 360’s programmes. 

One of the works that best encapsulates the chamber and orchestral possibilities of 360 is Broken Consort by Huw Watkins, which we will play on the opening night. It consists of movements for various combinations of instruments, culminating in a piece for the whole ensemble that serves as an apotheosis of all the musical material that has been heard so far. Interludes intersperse the movements in a similar way to the Promenades from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It was our first commission, premiered in 2008, and we are very happy and honoured to revisit this piece as part of our anniversary festivities. 

We are delighted to welcome the Elias Quartet back to this year’s festival. The members of the Elias Quartet were the first to be appointed to the Ensemble in January 2005, along with myself, and it will be a great pleasure to work with them again. They will be playing some of the most important chamber repertoire for strings with 360 this year, including Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht, Strauss Metamorphosen and the Octet by Enescu. They will also perform Brahms’ G major Sextet op. 36. Each member of 360 has chosen a ’desert island’ piece this year and the Brahms is my pick. For me, Brahms’ chamber music represents the apex of musical thought and this work is a good example of this. His music is the perfect marriage of head and heart – absolute compositional perfection and technique in the service of extremely complex emotional worlds. This Sextet is the epitome of this idea. 

Although the Crucible has always been the focal point for the SCMF, we love performing in other venues around the city. A particularly interesting couple of events, for those who don’t mind missing some sleep, are the sunrise concerts. These will take place on both Saturdays at the Samuel Worth chapel. The strings will play Dimitri Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice on the first weekend, at 5 and 7.30 AM. I will play the original keyboard version on the final Saturday at 5 AM. This piece evolves in a way that feels like a form of awakening and eventual repose. The theme is a first step on a journey that results in a recapitulation of the same theme. The final time we hear it we are changed – the contrapuntal complexity, melodic invention and virtuosity gives the theme a new meaning, tinged with the experience of the journey. 

The festival finale is always a highpoint of the week. This year we return to the first programme that Ensemble 360 toured, in the 2005-2006 season. It was conceived as a showcase for the versatility of the Ensemble and comprises Mozart Flute Quartet in D major, the Beethoven Quintet for piano and winds and the Elgar Piano Quintet. On a personal level this programme has huge importance. Not only does it evoke the early excitement of a new venture but it was also my first exposure to the Elgar Quintet, a piece that I have played many times since. The pieces in this programme have become synonymous with my memories of the ensemble’s formation and evolution and my own musical journey. 

The role of Ensemble 360 has been of fundamental importance for the development of the festival. As you might expect from a group of musicians whose professional activities away from Sheffield include roles in major orchestras, collaborations with some of the greatest musicians, and concerts in the world’s best venues, we have built a rich, detailed knowledge of the repertoire and programming. In combination with the inspirational outreach and diversity work of MiTR, which is rooted in the desire and need to bring the best music to as many people as possible, this year’s SCMF will be a celebration of a shared belief in the experience of music as fundamental right for all.

Music in the Round takes place at the Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2025 from 16 to 24 May. Find out more here: https://musicintheround.co.uk/

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