Sergei Rachmaninov

Masa Tayama

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2
    Soloist Masa Tayama

Rimsky-Korsakov ‘Scheherazade’ 

In a programme of romantic Russian music, what could be more romantic than this lovely concerto, familar even to non-classical music lovers through its use in the classic film "Brief Encounter"? Before that,"Hamlet" captures the many moods of the Bard's great play. In Rimsky-Korsakov's colourful suite, based on the age-old "Tales of 1001 Nights", the solo violin represents Scheherazade as she tells a series of enthralling stories that will spare her life.

Richard Strauss Alpine Symphony

We ran a day’s workshop on Richard Strauss’s epic 'Alpine Symphony' at Bishop Justus School. Given its scale and complex scoring, this was not a work that we could ever afford to include in a concert performance, but this was a wonderful opportunity to play this Strauss masterpiece. We spent the day working on it with Adrian before an informal performance in the early evening, which was open to the public.

Adrian introduced the work at 5.50pm, followed by an informal performance at about 6.10pm (ending around 7pm).

The session was free, but donations were welcome; no tickets were issued.

Gustav Holst

Arnold 'The Inn of the Sixth Happiness' - Suite

Holst 'The Planets' Suite
    with the choir of Newstead Woods School

Bax’s tone poem dramatically portrays the Cornish castle, high above rocks, battered by the waves. Its Celtic flavour hints at the legend of King Arthur. Sir Malcolm Arnold was a prolific composer, who wrote in many genres including music for over 100 films, winning an Oscar for ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ and an Ivor Novello Award for ‘Inn of the Sixth Happiness’. Holst’s ‘Planets’ Suite was described by him as ‘a series of mood pictures’, and is based on astrological ideas. It uses a huge orchestra, sometimes with enormous power and sometimes with extreme delicacy, making a splendid sonic spectacular conclusion to our season.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
    soloist - Jeanine Thorpe

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

Dvořák wrote some highly colourful symphonic poems, which graphically illustrate rather grisly stories. The Mendelssohn concerto is rightfully one of the most loved of all concertos. The symphony opens dramatically with a foreboding ‘fate’ motif which leads us through gloom, melancholy and recovery to a joyous finale based on Russian folksong.

Anton Bruckner

Strauss Duett-Concertino
   soloists - Massimo Roman (clarinet)
   & Stephen Fuller (bassoon)

Bruckner Symphony No. 7

Schubert wrote much charming, tuneful music in his short life and this overture shows both these qualities. Strauss’s solo clarinet masquerades as a princess and the bassoon as a bear who turns into a prince when they dance together. Bruckner’s symphonies are like magnificent cathedrals in splendour, the famous slow movement of the Seventh being a glorious tribute to his idol, Wagner.

Sir Edward Elgar

Bloch 'Schelomo' - Hebraic Rhapsody
    solo cello - Alice McVeigh

Elgar Symphony No. 2

The season opens with Delius’s seductive and melodious ‘Walk’, a perennial concert hall favourite. In ‘Schelomo’, Bloch personifies the cello as the reincarnated voice of King Solomon, giving the virtuoso soloist a magnificent emotional range. Our symphony celebrates the 150th birthday of arguably this country’s greatest composer with his wonderful evocation of Edwardian England.

Stravinsky The Rite of Spring

This work is a major landmark in the musical world. Its first performance in 1913 caused a riot, but it has now taken its rightful place as a staple part of the symphony orchestra repertoire.

It would be very difficult to include Stravinsky's ballet masterpiece in our formal concert series, as the stage area will not accommodate the forces required (including quintuple woodwind, eight horns, five trumpets, two timpani players etc). We took the opportunity to work on it with our conductor Adrian Brown on Sunday 10th June.

We rehearsed over several sessions during the day, and the final session was open to the public. Adrian  introduced the work at 5.30pm, followed by an informal performance at about 6pm (ending around 6.30). The hall was set up "in the round" to enable us to accommodate the resources required and to allow the audience to get up close to the action!

The session was free, but donations were welcome; no tickets were issued.

Berlioz Royal Hunt and Storm

Mozart (arr Wendt) Marriage of Figaro (Suite)

Leoncavallo I Pagliacci – Prologue
    soloist: Edward Grint

Wagner Ride of the Valkyries & Die Walküre Act 3 extracts
    soloists: Christine Teare and Sir Donald McIntyre

This concert depicts storms – of emotions in Leoncavallo’s tragedy; of the elements pictured by Berlioz around the troubled romance of Dido and Aeneas; of domestic intrigue and upheaval in Figaro; and of the passions of Wagner’s Gods and warrior-maidens. But it also portrays the calm of emotion spent. A spectacular conclusion to our musical season.

Bliss Violin Concerto
    soloist: Bernard Brook

Brahms Symphony No. 1

Beethoven portrays a heroic struggle for freedom from Spanish religious oppression in the Netherlands. Bliss lived through the upheavals of world wars, holding fast to his optimism. Brahms took up the challenge of Beethoven, in a symphony of titanic conflict, resolved in a blaze of light.

Bromley Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the financial support of The Bliss Trust for this performance of the Bliss Violin concerto. Fans of the composer may also be interested in the activities of the Bliss Society.

Arnold Little Suite No. 1

Haydn Trumpet Concerto
    soloist: Matthew Fletcher

Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2

Rachmaninov’s great symphony has a gloriously rich sound of broad tunes, with passionate declamation. Wagner’s early opera celebrated the life of 14th century Roman populist leader Rienzi on the grandest scale. By contrast, Haydn offers a joyful and radiant concerto.

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 K488
    soloist: Tracey Renwick

Shostakovich Symphony No. 10

Shostakovich’s symphony was in part a public reaction to Stalin’s death, and in other ways an enigmatic and private work entwining personal mottos from an emotional relationship. Its dramatic power is complemented by Strauss’s brilliant tone-poem, and the sublime intimate melodies of Mozart’s concerto.

Ludvig van Beethoven

Grieg "Peer Gynt" (selection)

Mozart Horn Concerto No. 3
    soloist - Roy Banks

Beethoven Symphony No. 3 - "Eroica"

Why does some music gain universal popularity and fame? Great tunes, freshness, vitality, romance, drama – all are shown in this concert. Grieg’s spirited portrayal of the adventures of ‘Peer Gynt’ is among the most played orchestral music. Mozart’s humour and high spirits in a showpiece for the French horn has immediate appeal. And on every hearing, the revolutionary drama of Beethoven ‘Eroica’ strikes the listener anew with the shock of a journey from tragedy to triumph.

Sir Edward Elgar

Bach (arr Elgar) Fantasia & Fugue in C Minor

Anthony Payne "Spring's Shining Wake"

Elgar (realized Payne) Symphony No. 3

The idea of this very colourful orchestration of Bach’s great organ work came from a meeting between Elgar and Richard Strauss. After the death of his wife in 1920, many believed that Elgar’s inspiration had faded. However, reviewing the sketches for Elgar’s unfinished last symphony, Anthony Payne found the music ‘leapt from the page’ for his acclaimed and deeply satisfying completion which he will be introducing at this concert. We celebrate Payne’s own 70th birthday with a performance of his serene work, which was inspired by Delius’s ‘In a Summer Garden’.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Sibelius "Pohjola's Daughter"

Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1
    soloist - Alex Afia

Tchaikovsky "The Nutcracker" Ballet - Act 2

Sibelius’s overture tells a story from Finland’s epic poem ‘The Kalevala’ in which an old magician tries to woo an alluring, beautiful maiden. We welcome Shostakovich’s Centenary year with this concerto, which begins darkly with driving energy, and after a subdued slow movement with one of his warmest melodies, ends in a festive finale. By contrast Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker’ offers a fairy tale entertainment with charming and popular dance music.

Gustav Mahler

Mahler Symphony No. 3

with "The Carroll Singers" and Trinity Boys' Choir
mezzo soprano - Miriam Power

In Mahler’s romantic vision ‘a symphony is like the world, it must contain everything’. His third symphony, written at his retreat in the Austrian Alps in 1893-4, was first titled ‘A Summer Morning’s Dream’ and is a wonderful orchestral pageant of nature and human experience. It includes a sublime movement for soloist and chorus, and ends in an exultant finale ‘What Love Tells Me’.

Brahms Violin Concerto
    soloist - Shlomy Dobrinsky

Prokofiev Symphony No. 5

Le Corsair is a concert showpiece, with the swashbuckling pirate, swift and brilliant in adventure, calmed with beautiful expressive melody, providing images of Berlioz’s own passionate personality. In more reflective style, Brahms’s Violin Concerto is full again of lovely melody and rich orchestration, in a work written for his great friend and adviser Joseph Joachim. Finally, a world away in war-torn Soviet Russia, written by Prokofiev in 1944 the Symphony No.5 is a glittering and heroic work, full of sharp wit and flowing song-lines, contending with powerful external forces.  

Tippett Ritual Dances from 'A Midsummer Marriage'

Schubert Symphony No. 9 - ('Great C major')

Glinka’s overture to his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is full of sweeping melodies and driving rhythms, describing the battle against sorcery to win the hand of an enchanted princess. In Michael Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage, the lovers’ path is also attended by magic, portrayed in the Ritual Dances of the seasons, ending with a rapturous climax in the summer fire-dance. The last work, Schubert’s ‘Great’ Symphony No. 9, of striking rhythmic vitality and sheer lyrical beauty, was famously described as ‘heavenly length’ by Schumann.

Bliss Ballet Suite 'Checkmate'

Elgar 'Falstaff' - A Symphonic Fantasy

Scapino, a servant in the Italian Art of Comedy, is the subject of one of Walton’s most popular works. It opens in a blaze of bright light and high spirited mischief, leading on to Scapino the lover in a serenade, before more escapades. The ballet Checkmate by Arthur Bliss (later knighted and Master of the Queen’s Music) depicts a contest on the chessboard between good and evil, through music of fantasy and harmonic freshness. Elgar’s symphonic poem Falstaff takes us back to the theatre, with a portrait of Shakespeare’s larger than life character, a chancer, charmer and braggart, ultimately broken hearted in his rejection and death.

Richard Strauss 'Ein Heldenleben' ('A Hero's Life')

Our first concert of the season contrasts the classical elegance of Mozart with the extravagant expression of Richard Strauss. Of Mozart’s last three symphonies, No 39 is least played, a work of inspiration, joyful exuberance and sombre introspection, that can still surprise and delight. In A Hero’s Life Strauss portrays his life as an epic struggle, between his inner life and love for his wife Pauline, a famously temperamental singer, and the outer world, battling for understanding and recognition of his work against his adversaries – the critics!

Some earlier seasons are here: [ 2001-2 ][ 2002-3 ][ 2003-4 ][ 2004-5 ]

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