Joint Concert with Basingstoke Choral Society

Sat 13 November 2010  7:45pm - The Anvil, Basingstoke

Conductors:   Stephen Scotchmer and David Gibson

Programme:

This concert gives you a chance to hear the superb combination of the Basingstoke Symphony Orchestra and the Basingstoke Choral Society in this joint venture.

The concert opens with the iconic Wagnerian overture from Die Meistersinger.

Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of his Violin Concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, seeking his advice with the concerto. The work itself was one of the first violin concertos of the Romantic era and influenced the compositions of many other composers

The first of the two choral works Song of Destiny by Brahms was written in 1871. It is a musical response to Holderlin’s poem Schicksalslied, although it seems to be slightly at odds with the the poem’s sombre tones; a contradiction that Brahms was clearly aware of, writing to a friend ‘I am saying something the poet does not say’.

Puccini was considered the finest opera composer of his generation, and Messa di Gloria is an early work showing all the flashes of brilliance that would be the hallmark of his later works.