Food of Love

Food of Love was Programme VIII of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s 2014 Songs of Apollo season, supported by The Kohn Foundation. Devised by Cordula Kempe, it paired Dvořák’s Cypresses for string quartet with love poetry of four millennia, read by three actors. It took place on Sunday 7 December 2014 at 5.00 pm at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon. It was given in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

Performers

• Bergonzi Quartet
  • Cordula Kempe – violin
  • Barbara O’Reilly – violin
  • David Lewis – viola
  • Kate Setterfield – cello
• Guy Henry – reader
• Jennifer McEvoy – reader
• Oliver Dench – reader

Programme

• Antonín Dvořák – Cypresses for string quartet
• Antonín Dvořák – two Waltzes, Op. 54 (according to the review)
• Love poetry of four millennia – among the readings, Richard II in prison at Pomfret Castle, Solomon’s Song of Songs, Michelangelo, and modern work from W. B. Yeats to Leonard Cohen and Václav Havel, ending with John Betjeman’s A Subaltern’s Love Song (as described in the review)

About the programme

Cypresses – traditionally a symbol of mourning – are Dvořák’s quartet arrangements of songs he wrote at 24 to poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský, inspired by an unrequited first love. The programme had previously been given at Long Lartin high-security prison, where, the review noted, it met with very positive reactions from its audience.

Press

Martin Snape reviewed the concert in the Stratford Herald (18 December 2014) under the headline “Studio offered soloists an ideal setting”, praising Guy Henry’s “rapt” Richard II and the quartet’s “marvellous integration”. The review is among the downloads below.