concert

Big Noise Chorus Christmas Cracker Concert

Event Date: 
03/12/2015 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Southernhay URC Church, Southernhay East, Exeter, EX1 1QA

This year, the Exeter Big Noise Chorus annual Christmas Concert, on Thursday 3rd December, will raise deaf awareness by teaching audience members to sign popular Christmas songs alongside their usual toe-tapping musical score. Big Noise Chorus believe everyone should be able to enjoy Christmas to the fullest and have applied this approach to their upcoming performance. The concert will not only be raising money for Exeter Deaf Academy, but also raising deaf awareness by teaching the audience how to sign songs in British Sign Language and incorporating a signing choir. This means the...

15 years of music in aid of National Trust

For many pupils, parents and National Trust supporters, the beginning of the Festive Season is heralded by the Exeter School Concert in aid of the National Trust in Exeter Cathedral.

For the fifteenth year running, the concert showcases the school's senior orchestral groups, brass and choirs in the magnificent Cathedral setting.

This year, highlights within the programme promise to be performances of Sibelius' impressive 'Finlandia' by the Symphony Orchestra, whilst the more intimate Chamber Orchestra will play excerpts from Warlock's 'Capriol Suite'.

Two of Britten...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Enigma

Event Date: 
07/05/2016 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Exeter Cathedeal

A work dazzling in its ingenuity, technical skill and range of expression Enigma Variations was an immediate popular success and transformed Elgar from a moderately successful provincial composer to a national and international figure. Musically, the original theme is remarkable in that it has the same rhythm whether it is played backwards or forwards and the two halves of the phrase suggest two different keys, one major and one minor which builds much drama into the melody.

Brahms’ concerto stands as one of the largest and most challenging works in the solo violin repertoire. It...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Fire & Ice

Event Date: 
21/04/2016 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

The Second Symphony, from its first performance to today, remains one of Sibelius’ most popular works. Its importance at the time was also due to the Finnish struggle for independence and early reactions to the work included some efforts to read into it an overtly nationalistic, patriotic programme. Much attention was focused on the heroic finale, of course, but also on the long, anguished slow movement, music of great passion and pain, surging along in dramatic waves toward a grim conclusion.

Walton’s Cello Concerto is introspective and reflective. Wistful romanticism and lush...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - English Serenade

Event Date: 
07/04/2016 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

Hauntingly beautiful and compellingly emotional, Britten’s Serenade is an insightful and imaginative setting of poems which span five centuries of English verse, united under a loosely connecting theme of evening, the night-time and sleep. The music is immediately gripping, the tenor's penetrating vocal lines matched in spades by the wonderful horn calls. It is without question a genuine masterwork of the 20th century.

Mozart’s Symphony No.39 opens grandly, with a darkly dramatic introduction in which orchestral texture and harmonic dissonance increase to near breaking point. This...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Firebird

Event Date: 
03/03/2016 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

One of the most impressive calling cards in the history of music, The Firebird is a work of such brilliance that it could only have been written by Stravinsky, mixing the orchestral mastery of his Russian mentors with the rhythmic vitality of the revolutionary about to burst out of his shell. The musical language shifts between exotic, chromatic gestures to illustrate the supernatural dimension and the sing-song simplicity of folk song for the mortals creating a dazzling, evocative atmosphere.

A Moorish exoticism is also present in de Falla’s set of symphonic impressions of the...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - New Year Johann Strauss Gala

Event Date: 
02/01/2016 - 3:00pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

See in the New Year in style with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s traditional celebration of Johann Strauss, the King of Waltz. Don’t miss your chance to hear his waltzes, marches and polkas as they should be heard – played by a full symphony orchestra! Following on from his hugely successful debut at the BSO with the New Year Gala in 2013, the Orchestra is delighted to welcome back charming Viennese conductor Aleksandar Marković for what is sure to be a festive afternoon looking towards the excitement of the New Year. He will be joined by stunning soprano Rebecca Bottone.

BOOK...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Last Night of the Christmas Proms

Event Date: 
22/12/2015 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

Kick off Christmas with our fun-packed concert for all the family, featuring seasonal classics old and new, all wrapped up with a sprinkling of magic and sparkle. A rollercoaster of Christmas favourites lies in store, including Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

All this plus a selection of popular songs from the best of West End and Broadway musicals, including Beauty & the Beast, Gypsy Overture, The Girl from 14G, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Chess and Company.

...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Sibelius 150

Event Date: 
11/12/2015 - 7:30pm

The incidental music for The Tempest, the tone poem Tapiola and the Seventh Symphony were Sibelius’ last significant compositions. Possibly the most ambitious and extraordinary symphonies in the repertoire – a work of great confidence and affirmation – the Seventh is more a sort of giant rondo. Comprising one seamless flow of thematic development it builds from a few melodic scraps towards a final upward sweep and trombone hymn that seems to reach out to infinity.

Contrastingly, Tapiola is dusky, mysterious and brooding – evoking the god of the forest and a seemingly endless...

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Elgar Unmasked

Event Date: 
26/11/2015 - 7:30pm
Venue: 
Great Hall, Exeter University

With references to the brilliant warmth and light of Italy and the rugged grandeur of the Cornish coast, Elgar’s Second Symphony is far more complex and deeply personal than his First. Riddled with doubts, questioning and conflict it reflects not only the true spirit of the age but also the personality of the composer as it meanders from extrovert exuberance to melancholy introversion.

Elgar himself stated that “I have written out my soul”. In this most lyrical, poetic and fantastical of his concertos, Beethoven does not abandon Mozartian concerto form but imbues it with a...

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