Friday 17 April 2009 at 7.30 p.m.
Mendelssohn - Incidental music to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Gordon Jacob - Oboe Concerto
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 'Eroica'
Andrew Morley - conductor
------------------------------------------------
Our April concert features a sparkling opening in the youthful Mendelssohn's music for Shakespeare's evergreen comedy. Only 17 years old when he composed it, Mendelssohn produced an enduring classic, one of whose movements, the famous Wedding March, is probably one of Mendelssohn's most-played works.
Gordon Jacob is probably best known these days as a writer of a quantity of music for wind band, but he was very highly respected in his day, writing music for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. His early oboe concerto from 1933 is a delightful piece, written for the great English virtuoso Leon Goossens, and performed tonight by St Paul's Sinfonia's co-principal oboe, Uchenna Ngwe.
Finally tonight comes one of the highest peaks of the entire symphonic repertoire. Having composed two comparatively restrained early symphonies that owe a great deal to the examples of Mozart and especially Haydn, Beethoven broke the mould definitively with his third symphony, nicknamed 'Eroica'. In size and ambition, it dwarfed anything else Beethoven had written up until that point. Famously, Beethoven dedicated the work to Napoleon, but when Napoleon moved from being a hero of the people to declaring himself Emperor, Beethoven ripped off the dedication and retitled the work Sinfonia eroica - per festeggiar il suovenire d'un gran uomo - 'Heroic symphony to celebrate the memory of a great man'.
| <<<previous |
------------------------------------------------
Tickets £10/£8 - available on the door before each concert
