Journey Through Time

Vale Royal String Orchestra

Tom Newall, our conductor for the concert, will lead us on this Musical Journey Through Time at St Peter’s Little Budworth. From Biber (1673), to Britten (1933), via Telemann, , Mozart, Sibelius, and Barber.  That’s FIVE centuries of music, through the eyes of SIX composers – and all in the course of an evening.

Our timeline starts with Biber’s Battalia, composed in 1673, it is a descriptive set of movements composed for a pantomime to capture the moods of a group of soldiers during the Thirty Years War.  From the gathering of the army, humour in the camps (with lusty drunkenness and ‘out of tune’ playing), feelings of uneasiness waiting for the battle, inspirational lecture from the General, Bravura then Praying prior to battle, the Battle (imitation of cannon shots using a special pizzicato technique) and finishing with Lament of the Wounded.

Telemann’s suite Don Quixote is a whimsical suite for strings about the knight-errant and his servant Sancho Panza composed in 1761. The suite starts with the awakening of the knight, his infamous attack on the windmills, sighs of love for a princess, misadventures of Sancho Panza, the lolloping gallop of knight’s old horse, the intermittent progress of Sancho Panza’s donkey and finishing with the knight asleep dreaming of his next adventure.

An arrangement for string orchestra of Mozart’s well known Ave Verum Corpus composed in 1791, carries us to the late 18th century.

The Romance in C, by Sibelius, (1903) opens the 20th century for us.  A more personal evocation, conjuring up a range of emotions that perhaps describe the troubled lifelong journey of Sibelius and his long-suffering wife, Aino.

We cross the Atlantic for the slow movement from Samuel Barber’s String Quartet (Op11, 1936). Better known as his Adagio for Strings, this arrangement for string orchestra is an intense work, often played at solemn events.

The final work in the concert is