{ Program Notes
by her sisters Lauma and Linda Skride for
performances of the Skride Quartet at the
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and the
Rheingau Musikfestival.
In June 2013, Skride released a
Schumann CD with the Danish National
Symphony and John Storgårds (Orfeo).
Previous recordings include the Stravinsky
and Frank Martin violin concertos with
the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
and Thierry Fischer, a Brahms CD box
with Stockholm Philharmonic and Sakari
Oramo, a Tchaikovsky CD with the City
of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and
Nelsons and a duo disc with her sister.
Ms. Skride was born into a musical
family in Latvia. In 1995, she began
studying at the Conservatory of Music
and Theatre in Rostock. In 2001, she
won the first prize of the Queen Elisabeth
Competition. Ms. Skride plays the Stradivarius Ex Baron Feilitzsch violin (1734),
which is generously on loan to her from
Gidon Kremer.
Baiba Skride last appeared with the
BSO in March 2011, performing Berg’s
Violin Concerto, with Mario Venzago
conducting.
About the concert:
Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams
hymn tunes in the world.” During this
two-year labor of love, he immersed
himself in the music of such Elizabethan
masters as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tallis.
For the hymn text, “When, rising
from the bed of death,” he chose a stately
melody composed by Tallis in 1567. It
obviously made a deep impression, for in
1910 it became the theme of his Fantasy
composed for the Three Choirs Festival
held in Gloucester Cathedral. Vaughan
Williams scored the work for three string
ensembles: a large first orchestra, a small
second orchestra of nine players, and a
string quartet. With them, he created
layers of contrasting sonorities that played
off the cathedral’s vast echoing spaces.
The quartet’s first violinist and violist are
also featured in luminous solos and duets.
At the work’s premiere on September 6,
1910, listeners were too involved in the
other piece on the program, Elgar’s recent
oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius, to pay
much attention. But within a few years,
the Fantasy was being played by orchestras
throughout Europe.
Although the Fantasy
is not specifically
religious music, it seems
to speak to the spirit.
Born in Down Ampney, England, October 12,
1872; died in London, August 26, 1958
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Related to both Charles Darwin and
Josiah Wedgewood, Ralph Vaughan
Williams was the scion of a prominent
English family that expected its sons to
be lawyers and clergymen, not musicians.
His own path to a composing career was
unconventional, and he was almost 38
when he unveiled his first masterpiece,
Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Vaughan Williams spent his 30s
collecting folk songs from all parts of
England. In 1904, he undertook another
project that also influenced his creative
development: the revision of the hymnal
of the Anglican Church, making it, in
his words, “a thesaurus of all the finest
It begins with a preview of the theme
plucked by low strings, followed by a short
winding idea in violas and cellos that will
also play a prominent role. Then we hear
the Tallis theme played in its entirety by
second violins, violas, and cellos. This
melody will not return in full until the solo
violin sings it near the end. The body of
the piece is composed of meditations on
phrases of the theme, new melodies spun
from it, and the richly harmonized winding
idea— all refracted by th HY