ILKLEY Concert Club has this week released the brochure for its 71st season of concerts in the King’s Hall Ilkley, running from October 2016 to May 2017.

The programme for the 2016-2017 season features chamber groups of varying sizes and composition, from a solo pianist to quartets, quintets and a rarer nonet, whhich will perform at eight Wednesday evening concerts.

The season will start with Schubert’s ‘Trout’ quintet and be rounded off with wind music by Gounod and Mozart.

Subscribers to the popular concerts are told to look out for highlights including Chopin Ballades, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in blue, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata and Beethoven’s B flat major quartet with the rarely-heard Grosse Fuge as the final movement.

On October 5, the popular Frith Piano Quartet returns to Ilkley, this time with double bass player Chi-chi Nwanoku, bringing a programme of quintets by Hummel and Schubert as well as Beethoven’s early piano quartet arrangement of his quintet for piano and winds, op 16.

The Coull String Quartet provides the second concert of the series, on November 2, after a gap of more than 30 years. Their repertoire contains both a Mozart and a late Beethoven quartet, sandwiching a selection of the transcriptions of his own songs which Dvo?ák made - called Cypresses.

For its baroque concert in December, Ilkley Concert Club will welcome the London Handel Players featuring their flute and recorder player, Rachel Brown and the rising soprano, Ruby Hughes.

The programme on December 7 combines French and German baroque works for violin and flute with cantatas and arias from the same countries.

The pianist on January 11 2017 will be Alessandro Taverna, a finalist in the 2009 Leeds International Piano Competition. He will be playing Chopin alongside Gershwin, together with heavily jazz-influenced studies by twentieth-century concert pianists, Friedrich Gulda and Nicolai Kapustin.

Wednesday February 15 will see the Vienna Piano Trio play trios by Mozart and Schubert, as well as the trio arrangement of Schoenberg’s late romantic love story ‘Transfigured Night’.

A month later, on March 15, the Ukrainian-British violist Maxim Rysanov and his Russian-born pianist Katya Apekisheva will give a programme of violin sonatas by Schubert and Franck played on the viola, together with pieces written for the instrument by Enescu and Tabakova.

Clarinettist Robert Plane is set to demonstrate his versatility on April 12 by playing both the clarinet and the bass clarinet with the Sacconi Quartet in works by Mozart and York Bowen, while the quartet alone present a Haydn string quartet.

Ilkley Concert Clubs welcomes back the Aurora Ensemble, after their successful debut at the concert club season in 2015, for the final concert on May 3. They will bring with them other wind-playing friends for a programme of octet and nonet music by Mozart, his contemporary Krommer and Beethoven.

They round off the 71st season with Gounod’s delightful Petite Symphonie.

The full programme for Ilkley Concert Club 2016/17 can be found online at concertclub.ilkley.org.

Brochures with application forms are available this week (July 4 to 10) at Booth’s store Ilkley and at local libraries, Ilkley Visitor Information Centre, or by calling (01943) 608585.

Season tickets are always popular, and anyone hoping to buy is advised to get theirapplications in fast. Some tickets will be available for individual concerts which can be reserved in the month before each concert.