Seventh Concert Season : 2012

7.30 pm Saturday FEBRUARY 11 in KELSO OLD PARISH CHURCH
TONY KIME & CATHERINE CORMIE violins
Beethoven : Name Day overture Bach : Concerto for 2 violins
Respighi : Ancient Airs & Dances suite no. 2
Delius : La Calinda Nino Rota : Symphony no. 3
Name Day is probably Beethoven’s worst overture, but we thought you should hear it once, whereas Bach’s Double Concerto is an evergreen masterpiece. Respighi delivers ‘early music’ in very palatable form, with plenty of satisfying colour and excitement. Nino Rota wrote much film music (The Godfather, War & Peace, Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet) as well as a wide range of other works; in the 1920s the conductor Toscanini and others called him ‘the Italian Mozart’. His is an interesting voice.
 
 
7.30 pm Saturday MAY 19 in St ANDREW’S CHURCH, KELSO
MOSAIC Director Grace Payne
CATHERINE FISH soprano
Sir William Sterndale Bennett : The Naïades overture
Debussy : La damoiselle élue Beethoven : Soll ein Schuh nicht drücken ?
Beethoven : Symphony no. 1

Bennett was a Yorkshire composer, now largely forgotten, but once much admired by the likes of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Debussy’s ravishingly beautiful early tone poem with voices sets a poem by Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The charming but obscure Beethoven aria was written in 1795 for somebody else’s not very comic opera, called The Beautiful Shoemaker’s Wife. You heard it here first.


7.30 pm SUNDAY JUNE 10 in YETHOLM PARISH CHURCH
PHILIP CULL oboe
Schubert : The Twin Brothers overture Richard Strauss : Oboe Concerto
Delius : Summer Night on the River / On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring
Haydn : Symphony no. 102 in B flat

Riches indeed ! Strauss’s concerto was written in 1945, when he was 81 and surrounded by a ruined Germany, yet the music is utterly bright and life-enhancing. Plus an obscure bit of Schubert, two miniature tone poems by another Yorkshireman and one of Haydn’s great late works.

7.30 pm Saturday JULY 7 in KELSO OLD PARISH CHURCH
DOMINIC BARBERI baritone
Handel : Saul overture Cimarosa : Il Maestro di Cappella
Mozart : Così dunque tradisci concert aria K432
Haydn : Symphony no. 86 in D
Cimarosa’s short one-man comic opera deserves to be much better known, as do most of Mozart’s many concert arias. Haydn’s rarely played 86th symphony reveals deep intensities of feeling


7.30 pm Saturday SEPTEMBER 22 in THE TAIT HALL, KELSO
‘SPOON NIGHT AT THE PROMS’
The EILDON SINGERS, The ROXBURGH SINGERS
The JEDFOREST INSTRUMENTAL BAND
The YETHOLM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
and some rather surprising guest soloists
including Arnold : Scottish Dances & A Grand, Grand Overture
McKenzie : Rule, Britannia! overture Grieg : Orchestral Songs
Parry : Blest Pair of Sirens Handel : Zadok the Priest
an especially subverted ‘Last Night’, with added fun.
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3.00 pm SUNDAY OCTOBER 21 in MOREBATTLE CHURCH
Mozart : Gran Partita in B flat, K361
About the origins of this astonishing work we know very little. Even in Vienna, the Imperial capital, it was unusual for a wind ensemble to have more than six players; this piece is twice the length and size of any contemporary work of its kind. We do know Mozart thought highly of it.

7.30 pm Saturday NOVEMBER 3 in St ANDREW’S CHURCH, KELSO
MARIE OKA violin
with The Abbey Consort & soloists
Mozart : Violin Concerto in G, K216
Mendelssohn : Symphony no. 2 in B flat ‘Hymn of Praise’
The conductor’s favourite Mozart violin concerto (and why ever not?) is followed by Mendelssohn’s rarely heard great symphony-cum-cantata. It was written in 1840 for performance in Leipzig to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, and its ten movements are alternately moving and exciting.


7.30 pm Saturday DECEMBER 15 in KELSO OLD PARISH CHURCH
STEPHEN TEES viola
Mozart : Symphony no. 26 in E flat Telemann : Viola Concerto in G
Mozart : Thamos, King of Egypt entr’actes K345
William Alwyn : Pastoral Fantasia for viola
Hindemith : Tuttifäntchen suite
We rarely hear any Mozart symphonies numbered lower than 29, but this is a strong piece, despite being written when he was only 17. Telemann’s viola concerto is a favourite solo, but Alwyn’s charming Fantasia is little known. Mozart’s Thamos entr’actes probably haven’t ever been heard in Kelso before, but Hindemith’s unrecognisably genial music for a children’s Christmas puppet play rather surprisingly has, and it bears repetition.