53rd Season, 2024-25

We are delighted to welcome everyone to the Sinfonia of Leeds 2024-25 season.

Our season commences with a concert presented in association with the Red Violin Festival, so much violin solo playing. Some works rarely heard will make an appearance throughout the season: D’un Matin de Printemps is a charming and joyful piece by Lili Boulanger, sister of the more famous Nadia. Andrew Downes' Towards a New Age is a concert overture commissioned by the British Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Vaughan Williams' prelude to the film The 49th Parallel offers our audience a brief and unusual commencement to the July concert.

The orchestra’s regular diet of large-scale orchestral works is ever-present. The orchestra will play symphonies by Dvorak, Sibelius, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky, and a much lesser-known work by Witold Lutoslawski.

Our soloists this year  are: Madeleine Mitchell, David Greed and Tom Greed in the Red Violin Festival concert;  Luke O’Toole and Celine Saout join us for Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto in January, and Jessica Burroughs returns to play Elgar's Cello Concerto in March.

There really is something for everybody, and we look forward very much to seeing you in Roundhay.

David Greed and Anthony Kraus
Music Directors

Saturday 19 October 2024

7.30pm, St Edmund's Church, Roundhay

Vivaldi - Concerto for 2 Violins in A minor RV522
Bruch - Violin Concerto
Dvorák - Symphony No. 7

Conductors: David Greed & Anthony Kraus
Soloists: Madeleine Mitchell, David Greed, Tom Greed

Our first programme, in association with the Red Violin Festival,  features Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 Violins, played by David and Tom Greed and the Bruch Violin Concerto, featuring RVF Artistic Director, Madeleine Mitchell. 

Dvořák's Symphony No. 7 was completed in March 1885 and first performed in April of that year at St James's Hall in London. Highly regarded by critics and musicologists; Donald Tovey stated that "along with the four Brahms symphonies and Schubert's Ninth, it is among the greatest and purest examples in this art-form since Beethoven".

Madeleine Mitchell & Tom Greed

Saturday 18 January 2025

7.30pm, St Edmund's Church, Roundhay

Lili Boulanger - D’un Matin de Printemps
Mozart - Concerto for Flute and Harp
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

Soloists: Luke O'Toole, Celine Saout
Conductor: David Greed

Lili Boulanger's D'un Matin de Printemps, arranged for full orchestra by the composer from a violin and piano piece in 1918, is almost the last piece she wrote before her tragically early death in that year, at the age of 24. 

Our two soloists join the orchestra for Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp, one of only two true double concertos that he wrote, as well as the only piece of music that Mozart wrote that contains the harp. The piece is one of the most popular such concerti in the repertoire. 

Berlioz's wonderful programmatic Symphonie Fantastique, which tells the story of an artist's self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman, brings the concert to a close.

David Greed

Saturday 5 April 2025

7.30pm, St Edmund's Church, Roundhay

Andrew Downes - ‘Towards a New Age’
Elgar - Cello Concerto
Sibelius - Symphony No. 3

Soloist: Jessica Burroughs
Conductor: Anthony Kraus

Andrew Downes, former professor of composition at Birmingham Conservatoire, has had much of his work broadcast on BBC radio and TV and his concert overture was commissioned by the British Institute of Mechanical Engineering. 

We are delighted that Jessica Burroughs is returning to play the Elgar Cello Concerto, the composer's last major completed work, and a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. We conclude with Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3 which moves away from the overt Romanticism of his previous symphonies to embrace a newfound purity and classicism.

Jessica Burroughs

Saturday 5 July 2025

7.30pm, St Edmund's Church, Roundhay

Vaughan Williams - Prelude ‘The 49th Parallel’
Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4

Conductor: Anthony Kraus & David Greed

As a season finale we present two lesser known works - the Vaughan Williams Prelude  comes from a 1941 British war film (featuring Laurence Olivier) about a German U-boat crew becoming stranded in Canada, whilst the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra was composed a few years later between 1950–54, on the initiative of the artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, Witold Rowicki, to whom it is dedicated.

The orchestra completes the programme and the season with Tchaikovsky's exciting Symphony No. 4.

Witold Lutoslawski

Contact us

Please feel free to email us at: info@sinfoniaofleeds.org.uk

Interested in playing with Sinfonia? Email us at: info@sinfoniaofleeds.org.uk

Support us

If you are interested in supporting Sinfonia or becoming a Patron please email: patrons@sinfoniaofleeds.org.uk

Connect