hiya bucks in Bourne End, Flackwell Heath, Marlow, Wycombe, Wooburn October 2014 | Page 5

Music to Treasure 29th Annual Concert
BOURNE END (BUCKS) ANNUAL CLASSICS CONCERT

Sunday 5th October at 7.45pm

Our concert this year is sponsored by internationally renowned composer and conductor, Alexander Prior.

Alex’s home is in Cookham, where he spends much of the summer composing. He is, though, seen
more often in Europe or the USA. He recently conducted a season of La Traviata for Leipzig Opera
and a season of Martineau’s music in Munich. In June he conducted Nielsen’s 4th in Madrid to great
acclaim.
Bourne End’s programme has, appropriately, something of an international flavour. Tchaikovsky’s
immensely popular ballet suite, Sleeping Beauty and Khachaturian’s incidental music to Lermontov’s
play, Masquerade, though composed nearly a century apart, share the Russian characteristics of
beautiful melodies and lavish orchestrations.
From England we have The Earl of Oxford’s March composed in about 1590 by William Byrd.
It provides a wonderful opportunity for the orchestra’s brass section to shine. In contrast,
George Butterworth, who died in the trenches in the First World War, composed the
hauntingly beautiful Idyll, Banks of Green Willow in 1916, very much reflecting his love
of the English countryside.
Scotland, too, is represented with Hamish McCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the
Flood. The more mature members of the audience will recognise it as the theme music
for the television series Sutherland’s Law.
Two overtures, one Austrian and the other German make up the
remainder of the programme. Suppé is mostly remembered
for overtures to now long forgotten operas of which
Poet and Peasant is one of the most famous.
Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture was
composed as a musical “thank you” to the
University of Breslau, for the award of
an honorary doctorate.

Tickets cost: £10.00
Tel. [phone] or from
BE(B)CA office Tel. [phone]
Bourne End (Bucks) Community
Association - BE(B)CA
Wakeman Road, Bourne End,
Bucks, SL8 5SX.