SGCO Mozart String Quartet & Dvorak Piano Quintet Concert
Saturday 11th May 2019 at 7:45 pm

Arina Lazgiian is an exceptional young talent. Since her arrival in England in November 2016, she has given some remarkable performances. These include two memorable concerts with the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra (video available on lazgiian.com) of the virtuosic Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto no. 2, the first of which was a gala occasion in memory of Sir David Willcocks. Her solo recitals display her prodigious technique, and the varied and colourful repertoire of her programmes, which have included works by Domenico Scarlatti, Beethoven, Medtner, Tchaikowsky, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovitch, Horowitz and Desyatnikov.

In 2015 Arina graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where she studied under the renowned pianist Professor Vera Gornostayeva. In 2017, At the Royal College of Music, Arina won the Hopkinson Gold Medal for piano in 2017. She was also the Royal College of Music’s nominee for the final of the Jaques Samuel Intercollegiate Piano Competition in the Wigmore Hall. In 2018, as a Future of Russia scholar, she graduated as Master in Performance at the Royal College of Music, and was then awarded the Benjamin Britten Fellowship for 2018/19. This Fellowship supports an exceptional pianist who has been accepted to the RCM Artist Diploma Course. In 2018, she reached the finals of world-renowned Busoni competition which will be decided this coming August in Bolzano, Italy. Meanwhile, she has given recitals for the Keyboard Charitable Trust, and in France, broadcast on France-Musiques’s programme Générations- live!

www.lazgiian.com

The SGCO String Quartet has its origins in a quartet that was formed for a concert tour to Crete in September 2013. The group performed quartets by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Shostakovich and Janacek. The Quartet was very well received and returned for further tours in September 2014 and 2015.

They made their UK debut at St George’s on 8^th March 2014 playing Haydn and Janacek quartets from their Cretan tour. Musicians from the world famous Allegri String Quartet joined them for a performance of Brahms’s melodious masterpiece, the sextet in Bb, to conclude the concert.

The Quartet’s leader is Peter Graham who has been the SGCO’s principal 2^nd violin since the formation of the orchestra in 2004. Peter is a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lucy Curnow is the second violinist and a longstanding member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Dominic Moore, Musical Director and a founding member of the SGCO, is the Quartet’s violist.

Our cellist is Anna Beryl who is a regular guest with the BBC Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestras.

www.sgco.co.uk

The St. George’s Chamber Orchestra (SGCO) was founded in 2004 as the professional orchestra for the South East in order to give local music lovers the opportunity to hear orchestral concerts of the highest standard on their own doorstep, and indeed for the musicians to enjoy making music together on their own doorstep!

The orchestra is drawn from an extraordinarily talented, experienced and versatile pool of musicians, a large number of whom are past winners of prestigious awards and musical competitions in the UK and elsewhere. Many either are or have been members of the leading London orchestras and a significant number are principals in those orchestras. Many others are members of Britain’s best known chamber ensembles.

St. George’s has a long, strong and respected musical heritage, and boasts one of the finest church choirs in the UK. With its spaciousness, good acoustics and warm friendly atmosphere the church is an ideal venue for a chamber orchestra.