The Winter Concert

Exeter Symphony Orchestra

The Exeter Symphony Orchestra (ESO) and conductor Arturo Serna are delighted to announce a concert of music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Brahms.

For this year’s Winter Concert, we’ve chosen much-loved pieces from the opera, ballet, and concert hall, by three great composers, contemporaries of one another, who took their inspiration from art and literature to produce expansive, lyrical melodies which exemplify the Romantic Era of classical music.

The Rienzi Overture (WWV 49) by Richard Wagner was an immediate hit when premiered in 1842. The full work lasted 6 hours but we will he playing the prologue which is much shorter, yet full of fanfares and memorable tunes.

In much lighter vein, the Nutcracker Suite (Op 71a) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was another immediate success when first heard in St Petersburg in 1892. The familiar tunes we look forward to playing have long since become enchanting, seasonal favourites.

Our last piece, the Symphony No 2 in D Major (Op 73) by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), is accepted as the most cheerful of his four brilliant symphonies and often described as his ‘Pastoral’. It took Brahms just 5 months to compose, unlike his first which had taken a marathon 14 years to complete. This masterpiece further develops the symphonic legacy of Beethoven; the finale in particular is seen as his most athletic and ebulliently festive movement ever, and it ends in a brilliant blaze of brass.