music centeral
making music in huntly

Season 2012–2013

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Tin Hut, Gartly

Center the Teacher

Ronald Center Centenary 2013

During the centenary year of Ronald Center's birth, Music Centeral hopes to present three concerts in celebration, each of which will include some of his music alongside pieces by other composers past and present. Center's music is very wide ranging in style, and includes solo sonatas, songs, chamber music, choral music and several orchestral pieces. As well as being a composer, Center was a pianist and noted piano teacher who was born in Aberdeen but later lived and worked in Huntly: the broadcaster James Naughtie was among his many pupils.

The first concert, by violin and cello duo High Heels and Horse Hair, took place on 2 April 2013, the centenary of Ronald Center's birth, and included music by Center himself and local contemporary composer David Ward, alongside newly composed pieces by young composers from seven countries. The concert concluded with the Zoltán Kodály duo, one of the established classics of the violin and cello repertoire.

It is hoped that Music Centeral will be able to present two further Center concerts, in November 2013 in association with the Sound Festival, and in March 2014. The November concert will include the first ever complete performance of his String Quartet No.3, which was probably written in the 1960s (there was an incomplete performance in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1979), to be played by the Isla Quartet. The March concert will be a song recital by mezzo soprano Ella Fontaine and pianist Lauren Hibbard, based around Center's art songs and folk song arrangements. Both concerts will also include new pieces by young composers.