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".
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.
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.
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.