13 October 2008

SYMPHONIA ACADEMICA

This season’s contribution from Bedfordshire’s professional orchestra brings a string band in a programme of Scandinavian music – some well-known and some delightful discoveries.  The orchestra has a regular date with the Music Club each year and now, with the band’s expanded remit with the University of Bedfordshire, it is one of its very few Luton engagements.

Programme

Einojuhani Rautavaara    The Fiddlers & Suite for strings

Sibelius    Suite for violin & strings Op 117

Dag Wirén   Serenade for strings

Carl Nielsen   Little Suite for strings

Grieg    Holberg Suite

Einojuhani Rautavaara was born in 1928 and is the leading Finnish composer of his generation. His music is played all over the world. The Fiddlers was composed in 1952 for piano solo and orchestrated in 1972. The Suite for strings dates from about the same time.

Sibelius’ Suite is one of his last works, written some time in the late 1920's. As is always the case with Sibelius' music, its freshness and originality are immediately apparent. It certainly doesn't deserve the neglect to which its composer consigned it. Upon completion Sibelius set it aside after scribbling "not to be published" on the manuscript. We are indeed fortunate to hear it this evening for it is a beguiling work that shows its creator in all his romantic glory and writing for an instrument for which he had a special fondness.

The Dag Wirén is the composer’s most popular work and one of the most frequently played Swedish musical works all over the world. In Britain the last movement became immensely popular in the 1960s when it was used as the signature tune for the BBC TV arts programme Monitor. Older listeners will recognise it at once and glow with nostalgia!

The Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s captivating Little Suite was his Op 1 and his first major success, performed in Tivoli in Copenhagen in 1888.

Grieg’s popular suite, properly called From Holberg’s time, was a centenary tribute to the Norwegian poet and is a pastiche of 18th century dance suites.

This concert is sponsored by The University of Bedfordshire 

For further information visit www.symphonia-academica.co.uk