Newsletter: Winter / Spring 2026
- West Riding Ensemble
- Jan 3
- 5 min read
Happy New Year!
2026 kicks off early for us on Friday 9th January, with a winter-warmer 'salon' night at Sheffield's stunning Upper Chapel - we really hope to welcome you there.
On March 7th we have a brand new 'concerto grosso' by composer Ian Crew, crafted especially for WRE. The mood of this concert is celebratory, with David and Maria as soloists, an augmented string ensemble, guest conductors, and - as the joint centrepiece - Poulenc's flamboyant Organ Concerto performed by Robert Webb to mark 150 years of the Lewis pipe organ at St Marie's Cathedral.
On April 25th we return to the salon chamber genre as talented young clarinetist Sofia Nikolaeva performs Mozart's beloved Clarinet Quintet with WRE's core members.
More details below!
We've launched a Crowdfunder!
Can you help us grow our work with emerging young musicians?
WRE Salon with Alice Power
Friday 9 January 2026, 7.00pm
The Upper Chapel, Norfolk Street, Sheffield
Our first concert of 2026 gains a special resonance from soloist, Alice Power, 2025 laureate of the Prix Cortot of the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Honouring Alfred Cortot—legendary pianist, editor and teacher, and co-founder of the École—the prize places Alice within a lineage in which Chopin and Franck are touchstones. Cortot himself studied piano in Paris with Chopin pupil Émile Decombes and is widely considered to be one of the composer's finest interpreters, whilst his performances of Franck with violinist Jacques Thibaud are legendary for their supple phrasing and helped cement the sonata's place in the repertoire. This concert’s pairing mirrors Cortot’s own artistic world: the intimacy of Chopin heard at chamber scale, and the poetic architecture of the Franco-Belgian tradition at its peak.
Chopin’s Piano Concerto no 2 in F minor appears here in the original scoring for string quintet, a salon-scale medium Chopin himself favoured, and one that Cortot prized for its clarity and conversational give-and-take (although he himself produced an orchestration and famously recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra and Barbirolli in 1935). In this chamber guise the concerto speaks with heightened intimacy: the strings are true partners in dialogue with the piano—exactly the sort of close-quarters eloquence that Cortot’s legacy celebrates.
David Milsom—founder and artistic director of the West Riding Ensemble—is one of only a handful of global authorities on violin playing in the long 19th-century; his Romantic Violin Performing Practices: A Handbook (2020, Boydell & Brewer) explores the topic in hands-on terms, inviting fellow violinists to revisit practices that were trademarks of Franck’s world.
David and Alice first performed together at the official launch of WRE in September 2024, when the ensemble revelled in a shared passion for Shostakovich’s chamber music. Now they come together again to delve into another common interest with Franck’s violin sonata.
In keeping with the raison d'être of WRE, the quintet line-up for this concert sees talented young students, Maria Nikolaeva, Perris Heath, and Lucas Jordan, working with seasoned musicians in a professional recital. WRE is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to give a professional platform to emerging young musicians in an 'apprentice' model, and pays students a fair fee for their work.
PROGRAMME
FRANCK: Violin Sonata (1886)
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto no 2 (1829), chamber version
Alice Power | piano
David Milsom | violin
WRE Quintet | David Milsom & Maria Nikolaeva, violin; Charlotte Kenyon, viola; Perris Heath, cello; Lucas Jordan, double bass
Celebrating Strings and Organ
Saturday 7 March 2026, 7.30pm
St Marie's Cathedral, Norfolk Row, Sheffield
Here WRE brings together professional players and students of artistic director, David Milsom, in a string orchestra tour de force, featuring two concerti, and one of the most celebrated British string orchestra compositions. Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis stands as a pinnacle of a peculiarly British association with the string orchestra as an ensemble, and is paired in this programme with the poignant Romance for string orchestra by Gerald Finzi.
A total melodic and harmonic contrast is provided by Poulenc’s modernist Organ Concerto, in spite of a gap in time of only 28 years after the Vaughan Williams Fantasia. This work (which also includes timpani) sees the St Marie’s Cathedral Director of Music and organist, Robert Webb, as soloist on the fine, restored but unmodernised three-manual Lewis organ, which is in its 150th birthday year.
The focal point for WRE founders David Milsom and Maria Nikolaeva is performing the world premiere of Vermeer Music, a work written by Ian Crew for them as soloists with a string ensemble. The work uses Baroque forms, including divisions (florid variations), and a fugato, separating the players into ‘concertino’ (soloists) and ‘ripieno’ (ensemble) in the tradition of the Baroque concerto grosso. The work acts as a deep contemplation of the musical relationship of the two soloists, initially as student and teacher, but increasingly as colleagues and collaborators, brought together with the inspiration of several paintings by the Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). This makes for a complex, interwoven texture which links to perfection WRE’s union of scholarship, performance passion, and pedagogy.
In keeping with the raison d'être of WRE, our string ensemble includes a number of students. WRE is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to give a professional platform to emerging young musicians in an 'apprentice' model, and pays students a fair fee for their work.
PROGRAMME
CREW: Vermeer Music Concerto Grosso for two solo violins and string orchestra (2026)
POULENC: Organ Concerto (1938)
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910)
FINZI: Romance (1928)
David Milsom & Maria Nikolaeva | solo violins
Robert Webb | organ
WRE String Orchestra
Conductors: Ian Crew, John Lyon, and Wilf Dingle
WRE Salon | Classical Traditions
Saturday 25 March 2026, 6.30pm
The Upper Chapel, Norfolk Street, Sheffield
In this concert, WRE reverts to its core identity as a project-based chamber ensemble. In 2025, founder members David Milsom, Maria Nikolaeva, Charlotte Kenyon, and George Kennaway undertook a string quartet tour of works by Beethoven, Dvořák, and Shostakovich; now they perform two more favourites of the repertoire: Schubert’s Quartettsatz, and Mendelssohn’s op. 12 string quartet.
In the genial and conversational Mozart Clarinet Quintet they are joined by Maria’s sister Sofia as clarinetist in her chamber music debut with WRE. We look forward to welcoming Sofia to other events in the 2026-2027 season as the ensemble focuses on mixed chamber music for strings and wind.
Join us after this concert for a drinks and nibbles reception, where you can meet and chat to the musicians.
In keeping with the raison d'être of WRE, this concert gives a professional platform to emerging young musicians in an 'apprentice' model, and pays students a fair fee for their work.
PROGRAMME
MOZART: Clarinet Quintet K 581 (1789)
MENDELSSOHN: String Quartet in E flat, op. 12 (1829)
SCHUBERT: Quartettsatz, D 703 (1820)
Sofia Nikolaeva | clarinet
WRE String Quartet | David Milsom & Maria Nikolaeva, violin; Charlotte Kenyon, viola; George Kennaway, cello
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