Ripon orchestra strikes up for 2022 with Glorious Strings

Ripon-based St Cecilia Orchestra start their 2022 concert season on Saturday January 29 with a programme entitled Glorious Strings.

The concert showcases the orchestra’s string section in Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Serenade for Strings along with two shorter works: the Romance in C by Sibelius and Webern’s Langsamer Satz.

“The Serenade was written around the time Tchaikovsky was working on his 1812 Overture, but the works could not be more different in style,” said spokesman Helen Dawson.

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“In a letter to his patron Nadezhda von Meck he wrote that “the Overture will be very loud, noisy, but I wrote it without any warm feelings of love and so it will probably be of no artistic worth. The Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart and so, I venture to say, it does not lack artistic worth.”

“It is billed by Classic FM as among the best works he ever wrote and one of the late romantic era’s definitive compositions and is particularly revered for second movement, a graceful waltz.”

To complete the programme, clarinettist Tom Verity will join the strings in a performance of Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto.

The concerto, composed in 1949 in response commission from the Three Choirs Festival, is one of Finzi’s best-known and most widely performed works and shows the composer’s particular empathy for the clarinet as a solo instrument.

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Tom is currently principle clarinet of the Welsh National Opera and has performed as guest principle with many orchestras including the Philharmonia and Hallé.

His chamber music highlights include working with Stephen Hough and with the Heath Quartet, and (on a completely different note) he plays with Klezmer-ish, a classical/world music fusion quartet, whose albums Music of the Travellers and Dusty Road have been described as ‘a joyous combination of playfulness and precision’ by The Times.

Tickets are £15 for adults and free for under 18’s. Available online (www.st-cecilia.org.uk), from the Little Ripon Bookshop and Henry Roberts, or reserve by phone on 01423 531062.

In line with current guidance, audience members should wear face coverings and the seating will be socially distanced. There will be a short interval, but unfortunately no refreshments in order to minimise mingling.

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