This page is a link to the recent history of Malvern Concert Club:
- Concert series from the 101st Season, 2003-04, onwards;
- Significant events from the 107th Season, 2009-10;
- Reviews of concerts from the 110th Season, 2012-13.
A season runs from the day after an AGM to the day of the next AGM, in late June/early July.
Click on a button to see concert information, reviews or events.
Concert information
The concert information has been supplied by the Club’s Archivist, Michael Messenger OBE. If you have any information that amends or augments these details (e.g., encores or other events), please inform the Secretary. From the 108th Season onwards, concert details do include encores.
For the history of Malvern Concert Club from Seasons 1 to 100, please see Michael Messenger’s book, Elgar’s Legacy: The Malvern Concert Club 1903-2003.
Concert reviews
We have a regular reviewer for our concerts and their reviews are published here. We have also included other selected reviews when they are available and also for concerts when our regular reviewer is away.
For the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons, our concerts were regularly reviewed by John Rushby-Smith, an eminent recording producer, composer and music writer.
After studying music at Oxford, John Rushby-Smith joined the BBC, and as a senior music studio manager for Radio Three he was involved in numerous BBC SO and Proms broadcasts. He then became an independent record producer, making many award-winning commercial recordings for major companies. He is a composer in his own right and has published and lectured widely on diverse musical topics. He is also an expert on the acoustical properties of concert halls.
From the beginning of the 2014-15 Season to 2020-21, our concerts were regularly reviewed by Peter Johnson.
Professor of Music Peter Johnson, DPhil (Oxford), MA (Cantab), MusB (Cantab), FRCO, is Head of Research at Birmingham Conservatoire, personally establishing its research department in 1993. His DPhil was on early atonality in Webern and Schoenberg, and he has lectured on most areas of music history and musicianship, with specialisms in twentieth century history and analysis, improvisation and the philosophy and aesthetics of music. He has pioneered research on the practice and aesthetics of musical performance, drawing on his considerable earlier experience as keyboard player, choir training and conductor. He has published on several aspects of performance, including intonation in string quartet playing, recordings and the relationship between performer and listener. He has designed a comprehensive performance analysis tool named Span in which processes of spectral and spectrographic analysis are integrated and combined with methods such as tapping in a user-friendly framework designed for musicians. He reviews regularly for several journals and is in the peer review college for the AHRB. He is a widely experienced examiner to PhD level, and has to date successfully supervised thirteen PhDs at Birmingham Conservatoire.
