Traditional pre-season ‘Popular Classics’
Havant Symphony Orchestra once again brings an evening of beautiful music to
Hayling Island Community Centre!
The Orchestra have had a great year working with young conductor Tom Griffin
as holder of their Bob Harding Bursary. His last outing with the
Orchestra will be to conduct this concert and to introduce to us his colleague
Robert Douglas (Professor of Piano at the Royal Marines School of Music) as
soloist in the Piano Concerto No 1 by Beethoven. This lovely piece shows
Beethoven already stretching the boundaries of the work produced by his
predecessors, Mozart and Haydn. It had its premiere, played by the
composer himself, in Vienna in 1795.
The concert will begin with another Viennese classic, the popular Overture to
‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss Jr. The Strauss family
were, of course, famous as composers of waltzes and this overture (in English
‘The Bat’) is full of wonderful tunes from the opera which was also
first performed in Vienna, but almost one hundred years later than the
Beethoven, in 1874.
Robert Schumann was inspired to write his Symphony No 3 in 1850 whilst
living and working in Germany’s
Rhineland. He gave it five movements, like Beethoven’s
‘Pastoral’ Symphony, and it expresses the sights and sounds of life
on and beside the river Rhine. It was only four years later that
Schumann threw himself into the Rhine, apparently in a suicide attempt, but
this music comes from a much happier place and is delightful to listen
to!
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