Cheltenham Concert Series 2017-2018 Concert Series brochure_2017-2018_DPS FOR WEB

2018 ENGLISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Thursday 19 April 2018, 7.30pm, Cheltenham Town Hall Thursday 21 June 2018, 7.30pm, Cheltenham Town Hall Our 2017-18 season ends with a springtime celebration of the best of musical Romanticism. French-Serbian virtuoso Maja Bogdanović, currently winning worldwide plaudits as one of today’s most exciting and compelling young stars, makes her Cheltenham debut with Saint-Saens’ evergreen A minor Concerto and a performance of Tchaikovsky’s stunningly virtuosic Pezzo Capriccioso - a work few cellists dare to attempt. Respighi’s fascination with music of the past found expression in these Airs and Dances, written near the end of his life, from 16th and 17th century Italian lute pieces, but realised for modern chamber orchestras. Mozart’s 29th Symphony, his first truly great orchestral work, launched him into his last 15 years, when all his masterpieces occurred, while the Concerto No.12 (performed by Russian virtuoso Demidenko) dates from 8 years later, kick-started Mozart’s great and final decade of concerto brilliance. The fourth work in this first Cheltenham visit by EUCO, bringing a much-welcome international flavour to our season, is Elgar’s touching and rarely- performed Elegy. His familiar patriotic nobility gives way to a sense of peace and pathos, which characterised the man but far too little of his music. Pre-Concert Talk (6.30pm to 7pm): Presented by a member of the EUCO team. Free entry using your ticket for tonight’s concert. CONDUCTOR Hans-Peter Hofmann PIANO Nikolai Demidenko RESPIGHI Ancient Airs and Dances MOZART Piano Concerto in A major, K414 ELGAR Elegy for Strings MOZART Symphony No.29 ORCHESTRA OF THE SWAN The concert opens with Weber’s Oberon Overture, an effervescent evocation of the world of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its picturesque references to the 3-act opera it precedes, while our season concludes with a performance of Schumann’s uniquely life-affirming Spring Symphony, conducted by one of today’s leading Schumann interpreters, Kenneth Woods, whose recent recording of the work was described by critic Rainer Aschemaier as ‘a revelation…graceful, melancholy and exquisitely romantic.’ EUROPEAN UNION CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Pre-Concert Talk (6.30pm to 7pm): Presented by conductor, Kenneth Woods. Free entry using your ticket for tonight’s concert. CONDUCTOR Kenneth Woods CELLO Maja Bogdanovi WEBER Oberon Overture SAINT-SAENS Cello Concerto No. 1 TCHAIKOVSKY Pezzo Capriccioso SCHUMANN Symphony No.1, ‘Spring’ Friday 25 May 2018, 7.30pm, Cheltenham Town Hall Three monumental works from the heart of the late-18th and early 19th century Viennese Classical tradition come together to form this superb penultimate concert of the series. The first half pairs the Coriolan Overture, full of Germanic, Beethovenian power and grandeur (reflecting the warrior-like tendencies of its eponymous hero) with the rarely-performed and more lyrical Triple Concerto, with its march-like opening and polonaise finale – the first and by far the best-loved of the 30-plus concertos written for this instrumental combination between 1804 and today. Closing the evening is Mozart’s last and longest symphony, completed in a fever of creativity in the summer of 1788. Regal and joyous, it represents the zenith of the Haydn- Mozart symphonic era and features the famous fanfare-like opening and the masterpiece final movement fugue. Pre-Concert Talk (6.30pm to 7pm): Presented by conductor, David Curtis. Free entry using your ticket for tonight’s concert. 10 September 2017 - June 2018 CONDUCTOR David Curtis VIOLIN Hagai Shaham PIANO Arnon Erez CELLO Raphael Wallfisch BEETHOVEN Coriolanus Overture BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello MOZART Symphony No.41, ‘Jupiter’ September 2017 - June 2018 11

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