All projects

Chamber Music Courses

Inspiring, friendly and flexible weekends of string ensemble coaching

Our weekend courses for string players are generally held in Autumn and Spring. They include small group coaching, string orchestra, technique clinics, optional masterclasses and a performance by the Florians.
It’s aimed at string players of all abilities, and is a relaxed and encouraging setting in which to explore chamber music. We are especially happy to welcome you if you have had only limited experience of small group music-making. It’s often hard to find playing that’s in between your own lessons and a large orchestra: our courses are a friendly and supportive environment in which to delve into chamber music playing.
Or if you’re experienced in groups that’s great too - we hope you’ll go away inspired and enriched by the experience!

Intense performances in relaxed settings

Florian: Up Close takes our performances out of the concert hall and brings them directly to you and your community. First run in Autumn 2019 in London, this project grounds music-making in the relationships between local people. You can get involved both as a host and as a guest!

Building musical imagination with KS2 students

From 2018 we received grants from Arts Council England to run an innovative project in East Cornwall primary schools, helping pupils to develop their musical imagination through listening. The amazing stories they came up with are all available here, alongside live recordings of the pieces we worked on with them. You’ll be amazed at how precisely their narratives map onto the music!

A live show about J.S. Bach, nature, and patterns

In the final years of his life, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a complex, abstract, multimovement piece called Die Kunst der Fuge - or “The Art of Fugue.”
Beginning with an innocuously simple four-bar theme, in each variation Bach weaves patterns of greater and greater sophistication.
In this live talk-performance, premiered at Brighton Science Festival in 2017, the Florian Ensemble explore the power of this notion of transformation, and show how it can be not just an analytical tool, but a creative one. They investigate how the idea of tonal music depends on a fundamental asymmetry, and reveal some of the ways in which Bach exploited these properties with unrivalled sophistication and emotional depth.