Sunday with the Orchestra of St John by Christopher Morley - 30th September
It looks a typical concert-programme on paper: overture, concerto, symphony. But what a sparkling programme this is from Bromsgrove’s Orchestra of St John!
The overture is The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, written when its composer Hamish McCunn was only 19. It is gloriously melodious (some gorgeous stuff for the cellos), and is totally exhilarating in effect. Older listeners among us might recognise it as the title-tune to the wonderful 1970s BBC TV series “Sutherland’s Law”, starring the great Iain Cuthbertson as a shrewd Scottish procurator-fiscal.
There are obvious echoes of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture in McCunn’s piece, and the great German composer (even more of a young prodigy than his Scottish counterpart) is here represented by his Violin Concerto, a work which took the genre into an entirely different direction from that decreed by the world’s greatest, that by Beethoven. Charlotte Moseley, who already has most of the world’s most famous concertos under her bow, is soloist in this performance, and she will return after the interval selflessly to serve as concertmaster in Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony.
Conductor Richard Jenkinson has recently rounded off a complete cycle of the nine Beethoven symphonies with OSJ, and has now embarked on a a similar trawl through all four of the Brahms symphonies. Tonight, though, he revisits this perhaps most famous work in the history of the repertoire.
The concert is given in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Derek Fradgley Memorial Fund. The MNDA provides support and information for all those affected by the disease, and the DFMF seeks to increase opportunities for children & young people within the Stourport on Severn area to learn and be inspired by music.
*The Orchestra of St John performs at St John’s Church, Bromsgrove on Sunday September 30 (7.30pm). Tickets £15 & £10 (children free) from www.osjbromsgrove.org
It looks a typical concert-programme on paper: overture, concerto, symphony. But what a sparkling programme this is from Bromsgrove’s Orchestra of St John!
The overture is The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, written when its composer Hamish McCunn was only 19. It is gloriously melodious (some gorgeous stuff for the cellos), and is totally exhilarating in effect. Older listeners among us might recognise it as the title-tune to the wonderful 1970s BBC TV series “Sutherland’s Law”, starring the great Iain Cuthbertson as a shrewd Scottish procurator-fiscal.
There are obvious echoes of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture in McCunn’s piece, and the great German composer (even more of a young prodigy than his Scottish counterpart) is here represented by his Violin Concerto, a work which took the genre into an entirely different direction from that decreed by the world’s greatest, that by Beethoven. Charlotte Moseley, who already has most of the world’s most famous concertos under her bow, is soloist in this performance, and she will return after the interval selflessly to serve as concertmaster in Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony.
Conductor Richard Jenkinson has recently rounded off a complete cycle of the nine Beethoven symphonies with OSJ, and has now embarked on a a similar trawl through all four of the Brahms symphonies. Tonight, though, he revisits this perhaps most famous work in the history of the repertoire.
The concert is given in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Derek Fradgley Memorial Fund. The MNDA provides support and information for all those affected by the disease, and the DFMF seeks to increase opportunities for children & young people within the Stourport on Severn area to learn and be inspired by music.
*The Orchestra of St John performs at St John’s Church, Bromsgrove on Sunday September 30 (7.30pm). Tickets £15 & £10 (children free) from www.osjbromsgrove.org