Woking Symphony Orchestra

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NEWS & UPCOMING EVENTS
             
Sat. 16th Jan. 2010

H.G.Wells - 3:30 pm      

Excerpts from:

Haydn      Cello Concert in C
Adams      A Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Bartok      Hungarian Sketches
Falla        A Three Cornered Hat

Full 2009/10 Season - Click Here

SITUATIONS VACANT

We currently have vacancies for Cellos of a good (i.e. circa Grade 8) standard.

Please call (07788) 101740for further details

WSO at the HG Wells

2009/2010 Season's Highlights

The 2008-9 season presented some challenging works for both orchestra and audience, most particularly the 5th Symphony of Carl Nielsen and the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.

We live in the 21st century so the music of “last century” is that of the 20th century, only ten years ago it would have meant the music of Brahms and Tchaikovsky. I feel that it is the duty of an orchestra such as WSO to perform masterpieces from the 20th century as they are as much a part of our musical heritage as the music of  Beethoven and Brahms. Having said that our first concert in November is unashamedly popular in its repertoire featuring the Piano Concerto of Grieg (with Woking Young Musician of the Year runner-up Gamal Khamis as soloist) and Tchaikovsky's dramatic and colourful 4th Symphony.

To address the balance, the March concert features two twentieth century masterpieces  both of which in many ways sound like romantic music, Strauss's sublime and valedictory Four Last Songs and Sibelius's final symphony, his Seventh. The soprano in the Strauss is Olivia Robinson who made a great impression this season with her performance of the song finale of Mahler's 4th Symphony and we are also featuring the winner of Woking Young Musician 2008. Emmanuel Bach who will be playing The Fantasy on Themes from Gounod's Faust by the Polish violin virtuoso Wieniawski.

Another great violin concerto features in our June concert, Prokofiev's 2nd which has one of the most magical slow movements in the entire violin repertoire and will be played by the dazzling virtuoso Geoffrey Silver. The concert also includes the first great English symphony, Elgar's First which lifted English music from the lengthy slumber that it had fallen into since the death of Purcell.

Roy Stratford, Conductor

For further details of this season's programme, please follow this link