RTWSO Official Website: Concerts

All concerts take place at 3.00pm on Sunday afternoons in the Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells

7 October - Classical to Romantic

Conductor: Christopher Adey

Programme:
	Overture: Ruy Blas	Mendelssohn
	Piano Concerto No 4 in G	Beethoven
	Valse Triste	Sibelius
	Symphony No 5 in E Flat	Sibelius

	Soloist:
		Paul Lewis, piano

Synopsis:

The RTWSO's 86th season opens with Mendelssohn's most popular works. His fine concert overture Ruy Blas is varied in its moods, and the music is showcased by the brilliance of the orchestration.

It was Mendelssohn who revived the next work from neglect. When Beethoven wrote his Fourth Piano Concerto in 1806, he was extending the boundaries of the Classical concerto form in new and unexpected directions. Each movement uses a different orchestral group. And this innovative piece begins with the soloist rather than the orchestra. In the middle movement the soft-toned piano win an extended argument over a belligerent string group playing in unison. We look forward to Paul Lewis's performance including the high spirits of the finale.

We finish with a great late-Romantic symphony. The work includes the "swan theme" and ends with one of Sibelius's most original ideas - the six widely-spaced fortissimo chords.

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4 November - Orchestral Contrasts

Conductor: Roderick Dunk

Programme:
	Overture: Oberon	Weber
	Clarinet Concerto	Finzi
	Symphony No 5 in D minor	Shostakovich

	Soloist:
		Andrew Marriner, clarinet

Synopsis:

The atmospheric horn call that opens the tranquil introduction to Weber's popular gives no hint of the orchestral fireworks to follow. With strident themes and virtuosic scale passages leading to a brilliant conclusion, it's easy to see why this Oberon has remained so firmly in the orchestral repertoire.

Finzi's Concerto for Clarinet is a complete contract to our overture. The composer weaves beautifully lyrical clarinet phrases amongst spirited outbursts from the orchestra with great ease, providing us with a piece full of colourful mood swings between soloist and orchestra. The style of the string writing is unmistakeably and beautifully 'English'.

The most popular of all Shostakovich's symphonies rounds off this programme. Full of lyricism and typical Russian colour, this Symphony No 5 explores the entire spectrum of human emotion from deep despair to ultimate optimism. It's a positive and uplifting finale to any concert.

2 December - Say It With Music

Conductor: Roderick Dunk

Programme:
	Concerto in D minor for Violin & Oboe BWV 1060	Bach
	Holberg Suite	Grieg
	Concerto in D minor Op 9 No 2 for Oboe	Albinoni
	Symphony No 41 in C 'Jupiter' K 551	Mozart

	Soloist:
		Cynthia Fleming, violin
		Jill Crowther, oboe

Synopsis:

This concert is in honour of the 100th birthday of our president, Roy Douglas, one of Britain's most talented musicians. The programme may feature a birthday surprise, as a prelude to the Christmas season.

The RTWSO leader, Cynthia Fleming, and Jill Crowther will play together in Bach's beautifully haunting double Concerto for Violin & Oboe. Jill, who is a professor of oboe and cor anglais at the Royal Academy of Music, has one great acclaim for her recordings of English oboe concertos.

Grieg's Holberg Suite for Strings serves as a musical sorbet before the ever popular Oboe Concerto in D minor by Albinoni. And to finish this birthday concert, the orchestra performs one of the greatest symphonies in the entire repertoire, Mozart's final symphony - the great 'Jupiter'. The finale of this extraordinary work has never been surpassed for its breathtaking imagination and intricacy of musical construction. All in all, it's a sumptuous birthday feast!

3 February - A Russian Sandwich

Conductor: Roderick Dunk

Programme:
	Overture: Prince Igor	Borodin
	Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor	Bruch
	Symphony No 6 in B minor 'Pathétique'	Tchaikovsky

	Soloist:
		Alexandra Wood, violin

Synopsis:

As the filling in this Russian "sandwich", Alexandra Wood plays one of the most performed concertos of all time, Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1, in a programme devoted to great romantic melody.

Surrounding the concerto in unmistakeably nationalistic style is the music of two Russian composers. The overture to Borodin's opera 'Prince Igor' is the only part of the work to be regularly performed in recent times. However, it's easy to see how some of these wonderful melodies translated so effortlessly to become the popular musical Kismet.

Tchaikovsky's heart-rending 'Pathétique' is altogether different. Rarely did the composer struggle with his own human frailty as in this piece. Through soaring melodies and passionate outbursts of tragic despair and longing, we are led to the very depths of the composer's emotional state at the end of his life. This is a truly great symphony that never fails to touch the listener.

2 March - Celtic Connections

Conductor: Derek Watmough

Programme:
	Irish Rhapsody No 1	Stanford
	Piano Concerto No 17 in G K 453	Mozart
	Symphony No 1 in B flat 'Spring'	Schumann

	Soloist:
		Llŷr Williams, piano

Synopsis:

A Celtic link binds together the first two items in the form of an Irish composer, a former violinist with the RTWSO, and a Welsh pianist.

Dublin-born Stanford's lovely Irish Rhapsody No 1 (which includes THAT tune!) will be dedicated to Olive Hansard, who came from Northern Ireland. Then Llŷr Williams joins us for that most operatic of Mozart's piano concertos. It's the one whose finale consists of variations on a theme chirruped by Mozart's canary or starling. And the spirit of Papageno is never far away.

Appropriately for an early March concert, we will end with Schumann's 'Spring' Symphony, composed within four days in 1841. The inspiration is white hot and the piece bubbles with irrepressible joie de vivre, reflecting his delights at the end of winter and his happiness with his beloved Clara, who would champion his music long after his early death in 1856.

A concert for Olive Hansard

6 April - The Civic Concert

Conductor: Neil Thomson

Programme:
	Nursery Suite	Elgar
	Viola Concerto in A minor	Walton
	Symphony No 5 in D minor	Vaughan Williams

	Soloist:
		Lawrence Power, viola

Synopsis:

One of the few pieces Elgar wrote after 1918, Nursery Suite was written for then-Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret. The suite is a charming, light collection of brief pieces depicting the joys and cares of childhood.

William Walton's Viola Concerto puts the lie to the assumption that a composer must be able to play an instrument to truly understand it. Walton never really mastered performance on any instrument. Yet his understanding of the viola's musical characteristics - its deep, soulful sounds and introspective nature - is evident from this concerto, one of the major solo works for the instrument.

Written in 1943, Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony is his most popular and the one closest to people's idea of his music. It is transparently scored, and his pastoralism lean and incisive with a vitalizing dose of counterpoint. The mood comes from great emotional strength, to which audiences continue to respond.