Potsdam Baroque Ensemble

Three Whanganui musicians, Annie Hunt (‘cello), Ingrid Culliford (flute), Pamela Dowsett (violin), join Palmerston North harpsichordist Roy Tankersley to present Baroque chamber works in the next concert of the Globe Sunday Matinee Concert series. on Sunday March 31 at 2.30pm.

All four performers have had significant international experience as performers and have also been recognized as noteworthy musicians in New Zealand.

Annie Hunt was born and grew up in Whanganui. She studied at the Guildhall in London and moved to North Wales in 1990 with her partner and son. She was a member of Liverpool Sinfonia and other professional freelance orchestras in Wales. She moved back to Whanganui in March 2017 where she is actively involved in teaching and performing.

Ingrid Culliford spent many years studying and working in London. She returned to New Zealand in 1994 and since then has continued to perform widely, giving recitals, master-classes and concerto performances throughout New Zealand.

For a number of years she was tutor in flute at both Waikato University and the NZ School of Music in Wellington, and also Co-Head of Music at Nga Tawa School and an examiner for the NZMEB (NZ Music Examinations Board). Ingrid has recently been appointed as a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2019 New Years Honours list, for services to Music and Education.

Pamela Dowsett, violin, is a Master’s graduate in violin and piano from Queensland and studied violin with the great Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux in Brussels. She moved to New Zealand in 1980 where she was lecturer in violin and viola at the University of Otago for 13 years.

Pamela lived in France from 2000 until 2005 where she taught at three conservatories in Brittany. Now back in New Zealand she continues her playing, teaching and examining roles and has also ventured into jazz violin.

Roy Tankersley is a music graduate of Victoria University and completed Post Graduate Studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He has been involved in music education at Secondary and Tertiary levels for 40 years, performs on organ and harpsichord and has directed various choirs including 10 years with the Wellington Bach Choir and more recently 13 years with the Whanganui Schola Sacra choir.

In 2005 he was made a Fellow of the NZ Association of Organists and was awarded an Associate of the Royal School of Church Music at Durham Cathedral in May 2010. He was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in New Year Honours 2011.

It is well-known that the great Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer in terms of the number of his musical masterpieces preserved today, but he also managed to have twenty children in his two marriages, four of whom became significant musicians. The concert will include a piece by his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach as well as pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach himself.

The featured work will be four movements from Bach’s “The Musical Offering.” This substantial work is well-known in the history of western music. In the year 1747 Bach performed at Potsdam before the King of Prussia. The King supplied Bach with a theme which Bach developed into a complex piece at the keyboard. Later Bach sent the King his Musical Offering of yet more pieces built from the King’s melody, and four of these are included in the concert. The ensemble’s name comes from the Potsdam connection.

The programme begins with a Concertino by twentieth century English composer Lennox Berkeley, written for the ensemble’s combination of instruments. Berkeley was Professor of Composition in the Royal Academy of Music from 1946 to 1968, and wrote several piano works for the New Zealand-born pianist Colin Horsley, who gave the first performances and made premier recordings of a number of his works.