As we begin our 2018-19 season we welcome a new conductor, Michael Coleby.
The programme for Michael’s WSO début spreads across four centuries, with a strong representation of music appropriate to a Christmas concert. It begins with the Chacony in G minor written in the late 17th century by PURCELL, who produced enough outstanding music in his short life – 36 years – to remain a contender for the title of Britain’s greatest composer. The piece is a series of 14 variations on an underlying theme.
In the style of Renaissance music, though written in 1925 by an Old Etonian called Philip Heseltine, better known as Peter WARLOCK, is the Capriol Suite, a much-loved fixture in the string orchestra repertoire. From the 19th century we have Two Elegiac Melodies byGRIEG; originally settings of poems by a Norwegian poet, they are, as their title suggests, full of poignant longing. Elegiac also describes another item in our programme, one of the relatively rare instrumental works by that giant of Italian opera, PUCCINI. This is I Crisantemi (the chrysanthemums), written on the death of the Duke of Savoy, originally for string quartet, though later arranged for string orchestra.
As always, our programme includes a concerto, and this time you may be forgiven for thinking it is by Bach. In fact it is the Viola Concerto in C minor by the 20th-century French composer Henri CASADESUS, who had a knack for writing music in the Baroque style, and in this case the concerto is a tribute to J S Bach. Indeed, the score carries a joint attribution to Bach and Casadesus. Our soloist is Thomas Balch, who is studying at the Royal Northern College of Music.
The programme’s first nod to Christmas is the Christmas Concerto by Giuseppe TORELLI, a contemporary of his near-namesake, Corelli, and like him an accomplished writer of the ”concerto grosso”, in which a small group of
