ZRI

Bradfield Festival of Music

ZRI first performed at Bradfield in 2017, and we are delighted they are able to return. This year they will perform their “Brahms and the Gypsy” programme, featuring the complete Brahms Clarinet Quintet re-scored with santouri (cymbalom) and accordion to bring out the gypsy and Hungarian qualities of this much-loved piece of chamber music. It was ZRI’s debut programme and has toured the UK extensively as well as being recorded to critical acclaim.

Brahms drew on ‘folk’ styles in his writing and indeed his set of 21 Hungarian Dances is one of his most popular works. This approach is also very apparent in the Clarinet Quintet. ZRI will magnify this collision of styles by replacing Brahms’s original instrumentation of string quartet and clarinet with clarinet, violin, cello, santouri (hammered cymbalom type instrument) and accordion.

 “Think of us as a Hungarian gypsy band that can also play Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet.”

ZRI will also perform Hungarian dances, gypsy tunes and Jewish klezmer melodies, the repertoire of the gypsy bands that Brahms loved listening to in the Viennese tavern ‘Zum Roten Igel’ – ‘The Red Hedgehog Tavern’, hence the name ZRI.