Oxfordshire String Quartet Concert at Cuddington – On Friday December 13th¬†our string quartet performed two concerts in one day. The first was a lunchtime recital at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square and the second took place at St Nicholas Church in the village of Cuddington (on the border between Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire). You can hear us performing the popular ‘Deck the Hall’ here:

This is the fourth concert we‚Äôve performed at St Nicholas church and it is one of our favourite venues, with a wonderful support team led by David Benson and an equally terrific ticket sales team made up of Myles and Caroline Saker. The church is warm, well lit, with wonderful staging and comfortable seats for the audience members. With an array of interval refreshments on offer, this is the ideal venue for classical music performances.

As rehearsal time was limited, almost half of our programme consisted of carols that we‚Äôd performed earlier at St Martin‚Äôs. You can purchase copies of our two Christmas CDs, ‘I Saw Three Ships and other carols’ and ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and other carols’ by visiting our CD shop here. With a repertoire of almost 80 Christmas pieces though, there was plenty to choose from in order to fill out the rest of the concert. Additional carols were contrasted with pieces from Handel‚Äôs ‚ÄòMessiah‚Äô, Vivaldi‚Äôs ‚ÄòGloria‚Äô, Tchaikovsky‚Äôs ‚ÄòNutcracker‚Äô ballet, as well as audience participation to Leopold Mozart‚Äôs ‚ÄòSleighride‚Äô (the audience taking it in turns to shake some sleighbells in time to the music and passing them on until they reached the back of the church).

A varied and enjoyable evening was had by all and the audience eventually made their way home with their Christmas celebrations having been well and truly started on this mid December evening!