Saturday 17 May 2025
7.00 pm
Wessex Auditorium
Brentwood School
Middleton Hall Lane
Brentwood
Essex CM15 8EE
Conductor Julia Wilson-James
Featuring Bra-vissima Ladies Choir
Ralph Vaughan Williams Folk Songs of the Four Seasons
Gustav Holst St Paul's Suite
Sue Hughes Requiem for Unsung Heroes
Programme Notes
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Folk Songs of the Four Seasons (1950)
Commissioned by the Womens’ Institute for a performance in the Royal Albert Hall, the first performance had a choir of 3,000 women together with the London Symphony Orchestra. It works better with smaller forces! It has a prologue and four movements grouped into the seasons, each of which uses a number of folk songs appropriate to the season.
Prologue: To the Ploughboy
Spring: Early in the Spring, The Lark in the Morning, May Song
Summer: Summer is a-coming in and The Cuckoo, The Sprig of Thyme, The Sheep Shearing, The Green Meadow
Autumn: John Barleycorn, An Acre of Land
Winter: Children's Christmas Song, Wassail Song, God Bless the Master
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
St Paul’s Suite (1913-1922)
Holst was the music master at St Paul’s Girls’ School at Hammersmith in London for nearly 30 years and this suite for strings was written for and dedicated to the school’s orchestra. It has become a key work in the string orchestra repertoire. It has four contrasting movements based on traditional English and Irish melodies.
Sue Hughes
Requiem for Unsung Heroes for female voices and orchestra (2025) (First performance)
Words from the Latin Requiem Mass, with poems by Moira Cameron, Masha Bennett and Mary Elizabeth Frye. Music (and programme note) by Sue Hughes.
1. Requiem Aeternam
2. Ode to the Unsung Heroes (Moira Cameron)
3. Kyrie Eleison/Christe Eleison
4. Dies Irae
5. Lacrimosa
6. They were Brave (Masha Bennett)
7. Sanctus and Benedictus
8. Pie Jesu
9. Agnus Dei
10. In Paradisum/Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep (Mary Elizabeth Frye)
The idea to write this Requiem came about in the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic. There are myriad accounts of those who selflessly gave of themselves during this time, some giving the ultimate gift of their lives in the service of others. The Requiem for Unsung Heroes is written in honour of these people. Subsequently I have become aware of others who, quietly and unassumingly, have given of themselves in service without regard for their own welfare and safety. The Requiem is also for them.
Saturday 8 February 2025
Conductor: Florian Cooper
Trombone: David Cox
Ralph Vaughan Williams Overture to "the Wasps"
Derek Bourgeois Trombone Concerto
Alexander Borodin Symphony No 2
Programme Notes
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Overture to “The Wasps” (1909)
The Wasps is a satirical comedy on Athenian jury trials by the fifth century BCE playwright Aristophanes. Vaughan Williams wrote the incidental music for a production of the play in its original Greek at Cambridge. We will perform the lively overture, complete with wasp effects, for which no knowledge of the plot is required.
Derek Bourgeois (1941-2017)
Trombone Concerto (1988)
Derek Bourgeois was a prolific English composer particularly for brass and wind band. His 116 symphonies are rarely played but his trombone concerto has become a staple of the trombone repertoire. Its three movements are in a deliberately varied style, starting with a nod to the pre-trombone baroque era before a romantic second theme, an alternatively contemplative and passionate second movement and a lively rondo finale.
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
Symphony No 2 (1869-1877, revised 1879 and 1886)
Borodin was the illegitimate son of a Georgian nobleman who registered his birth as the son of one of his Russian serfs, one Borodin, whence his name. His father provided generously for him and his mother and he had a good education. He became a surgeon and internationally renowned research chemist. Music was also a big part of his life. He studied composition with Balakirev and became a prolific composer.
His second symphony has a dramatic energy and lyricism despite his on and off work on it from 1869. He fitted it in around his research and teaching work, including lobbying for and founding a medical school for women, and his diversion onto other compositions, notably his opera Prince Igor. He thought he had finished it in 1875 but when he was asked about performing it in 1876 couldn’t find the full score. He eventually found the score for two movements but had to re-orchestrate the others from his piano score. After the first performance in 1877 he re-orchestrated parts of it in 1879 and again in 1886, in both cases with his friend Rimsky-Korsakov. It is in four movements.
David Cox (trombone) was born in Southend-on-Sea and took up the trombone at the age of 9. He was a student at Brentwood School from 2009 to 2016, during which time he attended the Junior Guildhall School and joined the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
He attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied with Eric Crees, Peter Gane and Simon Wills. During this time he was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Following this David moved to continental Europe, firstly to study with Fabrice Millischer (Paris Conservatoire) and then with Matthias Gromer (Bayreuth Festspiele Orchester), with whom he is studying his masters degree at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.
Since moving to Germany, David has performed with the German State Philharmonic Rhineland-Palatine, Baden-Baden Philharmonic, and Freiburg Philharmonic, where he recently completed a contract as Co-Principal Trombone. David joins the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra for their 24/25 Season as Tenor/Bass Trombonist.
Saturday 19 October 2024
Modest Mussorgsky A Night on Bare Mountain
Pyotr Tchaikovsky Variations on a Rococo Theme
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade
Conductor: Bradley Winand
Cello: Chloe Winand
Leader: Charles Clark
This concert is dedicated to the memory of Leigh Thomas, our principal oboe for many years, who sadly died earlier this month.
Programme Notes
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
Night on Bare Mountain (1867, arr 1886 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)
After Mussorgsky’s early death from chronic severe alcoholism, his friend Rimsky-Korsakov edited and completed many of his works for publication. This vivid musical depiction of a witches’ sabbath on Bare (or Bald) Mountain, a mountain near Kyiv, has become one of Mussorgsky’s best known pieces, even though the version normally performed (as tonight) is largely a composition by Rimsky-Korsakov based on a reworking for chorus by Mussorgsky of his early work. Audience members may remember the scary animated sequence that accompanied the work (in an arrangement by Leopold Stokowski) in the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1983)
Variations on a Rococo Theme (1877)
Cello soloist: Chloe Winand
Mozart was Tchaikovsky’s idol and this work for solo cello and orchestra is a homage to the earlier composer. The theme on which the variations are composed is rococo in style but was composed by Tchaikovsky. The work had an unhappy early history. It was written for the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, one of Tchaikovsky’s fellow professors at the Moscow Conservatoire. While Tchaikovsky was away, he rewrote much of the cello part, re-ordered the sequence of the variations (ditching one entirely) and sent his revised version to the publishers without telling the composer. Furious but faced with the fait accompli,Tchaikovsky acquiesced and it is this version that is usually performed. The light scoring allows the virtuoso solo part to come through the orchestral textures.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Scheherazade (1888)
Solo Violin: Charles Clark
Scheherazade is a great orchestral showpiece of dazzling drama, colour and emotion.
Inspired by the Middle Eastern folktales of the 1001 Nights in which the fierce sultan, bruised by earlier deceptions, is diverted from his usual practice of executing his bride after their first night by Scheherazade, the daughter of the sultan’s vizier and the last surviving virgin at court. She recounts such an intriguing bedtime story that he wants to hear the continuation the following night, for 1001 consecutive nights. By the end, the sultan relents from his cruel intentions and, as in the best folk tales, they live happily ever after.
Rimsky-Korsakov dallied with titles and a synopsis for the four movements but in his final edition, decided for no titles and to let the music speak for itself. The sultan is represented by a stern orchestral motif, first heard at the beginning, and Scheherazade by the solo violin that intervenes periodically in different moods, returning at the end to have the triumphant last word.
Saturday 18 May 2024
Hector Berlioz Harold in Italy
Jean Sibelius Symphony No 1
Conductor: Brian Lynn
Viola: Martin Wray
Saturday 10 February 2024
Conductors Florian Cooper & Sophia Assitzoglou*
Cello Alex Lockyer
Dvorak Cello Concerto
Hits from Stage Shows
Saturday 14 October 2023
Conductor Bradley Winand
Horn Jonathan West
Faure Suite Masques et Bergamasques
R Strauss Horn Concerto No 2
Beethoven Symphony No 2
Saturday 20 May 2023
Conductor Grig Cuciuc
Jack Marks Coronation Suite (premiere performance)
Smetana Vltava from Ma Vlast
Dvorak Symphony No 8
Saturday 4 February 2023
Conductor Florian Cooper
Guitar Tom Hodgkinson
Butterworth The Banks of Green Willow
Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez
Mendelssohn Italian Symphony
Saturday 15 October 2022
Conductor Bradley Winand
Flute Katie Bartels
Haydn Symphony No 103 (the Drumroll)
Mozart Flute Concerto No 1
Beethoven Symphony No 8
Saturday 25 June 2022
Conductor Florian Cooper
Violin Elodie Chousmer-Howelles
Glazunov Violin Concerto
Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5
Saturday 21 May 2022
Conductor Brian Lynn
Grieg Peer Gynt Suites
Dvorak Symphony No 9 (From the New World)
Saturday 26 March 2022
Conductor Art Wangcharoensab
Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings
A Brass Medley
9 October 2021
Conductor Bradley Winand
Grieg Holberg Suite
Mahler Adagietto from Symphony No 5
Schubert Symphony No 5
