Featuring the poetry of the Romantics – Keats, Shelley, Blake, Leigh-Hunt and their wider circle – this is actually our annual programme ‘Poetry Is Life’, after an anonymous 20th century Russian poet. Now in its eleventh year, our actors - unlike other programmes when they have to read what has been devised for them - are on this occasion invited to read their own choice of poetry on a given theme, and it is immensely popular with them - as with their audiences! Moreover, they all give their services in it, in recognition of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s work and out of their awareness that it is a way of helping, in these more than troubled times, to protect the future of what we all believe in and live for as artists.
The subject of ’Romanticism’, both in its historical and its literary sense, takes up – perhaps surprisingly - the thread from our last event and gives us new insights into the lives, concerns and passions of these great visionary minds, so much loved and yet by no means as familiar to us as we tend to think. Let yourself be entertained, intrigued and inspired by their thoughts, in a cornucopia of beauty ranging from the poignant to the humorous and interwoven with spiritual as well as sensual music – that of SCHUBERT, in well-known and lesser known gems for string quartet and for piano respectively. A real feast!
Alongside no fewer than eight distinguished actors of the National and Royal Shakespeare Theatre companies, the musicians will be the BERGONZI QUARTET – Cordula Kempe, Barbara O’Reilly, Robin Del Mar and Jenny Curtis – with actor / pianist ZUBIN VARLA.
A talk-back session about the programme with some of its performers will take place on
MONDAY 6 MARCH, 11.30 AM
at the KEMPE STUDIO.
Admission free - all concert goers welcome.