Surrey Mozart Players showcase two hugely talented pupil soloists from the Menuhin School playing pieces including Prokofiev’s haunting and deeply felt G minor Violin Concerto.
Prokofiev’s haunting and deeply felt G minor Violin Concerto plays alongside two great symphonies from composers marking their own graduation to maturity: Mozart’s magnificent Symphony No. 31, ostensibly written to show off the strengths of the huge and fabulously hyped Paris Orchestra — it actually shows a composer able to tailor a work that intentionally provokes great excitement in his foreign audience. An audience that duly erupted into appreciative cheering at the precise moments predicted by Mozart.
Mendelssohn’s joyful Symphony No. 1 (already his 13th essay in the form) is a phenomenal work by any standards, but from a 15-year-old! Six years later Mendelssohn still felt proud enough of this teenage work to include it in his Philharmonic Society showcase in London, but here he also incorporated an arrangement of the Scherzo of his even earlier Octet into the symphony.
