Saturday 8 February 2025

7.00 pm
Wessex Auditorium
Brentwood School
Middleton Hall  Lane
Brentwood
Essex CM15 8EE 

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

7.00 pm

Bishops Hill Adult Community College

Rayleigh Road

Brentwood
Essex CM13 1BD

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

7.00 pm

Bishops Hill Adult Community College

Rayleigh Road

Brentwood
Essex CM13 1BD

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
Singers         See below

Dvorak           Cello Concerto

Hits from Stage Shows 

Loesser            Crapshooters Dance, arr Fergus Marr

Cole Porter      Love for Sale, arr Arthav Gupta

Lloyd Webber Phantom Medley (soloists Bessie Taggart & Ed Bond)

Sondheim        Green Finch & Linnet Bird (soloist Kate O'Hanlon)

Sondheim*      Being Alive, arr Sophia Assitzoglou (soloist Ben Walsh)

Queen              We Will Rock You Medley, arr Lauren Eley

Menken           Beauty and The Beast, arr Bob Veale

Bernstein        Glitter and be Gay (soloist Hannah Walker)

Sondheim       Children Will Listen, arr Sophia Assitzoglou (soloist Murray Peat)

Styne               Gypsy Overture, arr Alex Lockyer

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