Archive

Elgar ‘In the South’

Strauss ‘Four last Songs’
Soloist Janice Watson

Dvořák Symphony No.8

Elgar’s most luxuriant and expansive concert overture shows his facility with music on both the grandest scale and the most intimate. Strauss’s final completed work deals with death, but with a wonderful sense of calm acceptance, and features soaring melodies for the soloist against full orchestra. Dvořák’s symphony has a warm and optimistic tone, full of tunes inspired by the Bohemian folk music that he loved.

Berlioz

Bruch Violin Concerto No.1
Soloist Laura Samuel

Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from ‘Tristan and Isolde’  

Elgar ‘Enigma’ Variations

Our season opens with this brilliant overture, full of imaginative orchestral colour, vitality and melody. The Bruch concerto, justifiably one of the most popular in the orchestral repertoire is followed by Wagner’s powerful picture of doomed love, death and ultimately transfiguration. We end with Elgar’s well known portrait of “my friends pictured within” which was the piece which really secured his international reputation.

Dmitri Shostakovitch Symphony No. 7 (‘Leningrad’)

Adrian introduced the work at 5.50pm, followed by an informal performance at about 6.15pm.

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

Robert Schumann

Philip Rowson

SchumannSymphony No.3

Mozart Flute Concerto No.1 in G major
    Soloist Philip Rowson

Strauss ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ 

Schumann’s “Rhenish” is perhaps his brightest and most optimistic work. Its tunefulness and folk-like character quickly made it one of his greatest successes and its popularity has endured to the present day. Despite Mozart’s well known claim to dislike the flute, he wrote very well for it, including this delightful concerto. Strauss’s tone poem chronicles the misadventures and pranks of a mischievous German peasant folk-hero. We hear him upsetting market stalls, poking fun at the clergy, flirting with girls and mocking academics. But eventually he is captured and sentenced to death for blasphemy!

Gustav Mahler

Hector Berlioz

Eurico Pereira

Berlioz

Ravel ‘Rapsodie Espagnole’ 

Rodrigo ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’ 
    Soloist Eurico Pereira (Guitar)

Respighi ‘Roman Festivals’ 

This programme burns with Mediterranean heat and passion, opening with an exuberant overture, one of Berlioz’s most popular works. Ravel’s Spanish “Rapsodie” has three short movements of sensuous colour and elegance and a dazzling finale. Staying in Spain, the Rodrigo is perhaps the most well known of all guitar concertos, especially its evocative slow movement. Respighi said that “Roman Festivals”, his vivid celebration of ancient Rome, represented his absolute peak of orchestral sonority and colour. It’s certainly that!

Sergei Rachmaninov

Masa Tayama

Tchaikovsky

RachmaninovPiano 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.

Gustav Holst

Bax ‘Tintagel’ – Tone poem 

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

Dvořák‘The Noonday Witch’

MendelssohnViolin Concerto
    soloist – Jeanine Thorpe

TchaikovskySymphony 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.