Concert 1 2020 Enchanted Worlds

Our first concert for 2020 Enchanted Worlds will be lead by guest conductor Andrew Stokes. click here for his bio.

To download a poster for printing click here

To book tickets at TryBooking click here. Tickets also available at the door.

The performance will whisk you away for a mystical evening of magical music! Relieve the timeless story of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows told through the lush and captivating orchestration of Johan de Meij. The suite in four movements successively describe: “The River” which flows through the habitat of the animals like a lifeline; “Ratty and Mole” – The bright energetic Rat and the melancholy doubter Mole are inseparable and have many adventures.

Their opposite characters are illustrated by separate musical themes; “Mister Toad” is indeed a unique case. Time after time, he runs into tricky situations, and with his indomitable passion for fast – preferably stolen – cars he causes quite a lot of damage; “The Return of Ulysses” – After
Toad Hall, the majestic residence of Mister Toad, is recovered from the weasels and stoats, our friends get ready for a banquet. They celebrate the victory with a triumphant parade.

“Kyrill: Storm of the Century” by Otto Schwarz remembers the devastation wreaked upon Europe a decade ago. One of the most affected areas was Schmallenberger Land in the Sauerland (central-eastern Germany) where massive trees were snapped like toothpicks and people returned home to find rubble where their homes once stood.

In the year prior to the premier of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony, the Soviet newspaper Pravda published a vicious denunciation of Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Shostakovich’s response to the Pravda review was to immediately withdraw his Fourth Symphony, which he was then rehearsing. With his 5th Symphony, which a reviewer famously called “a Soviet artist’s response to just criticism,”
Shostakovich mollified government critics and simultaneously reasserted his artistic integrity. Tonight we perform the final movement, Allegro non troppo which opens with a firestorm, announced by pounding timpani and a blazing brass fanfare. Shostakovich returns to this theme again and again, and unleashes his seemingly endless power of invention with defiant abandon.

The concert will also feature music from the Star Wars Universe, works by Pendulum by Australian composer Natalie Williams and Theme from “Green Bushes” by Percy Grainger, and will conclude with a journey through Europe on the Orient Express by Phillip Sparke.