Thames Concerts’ final programme in its 2007/08 concert season is given by The Hanover Band and its Principal Conductor Paul Brough on Saturday 26th April at Kingston Parish Church, Market Place, Kingston upon Thames at 8pm.
The programme entitled “Haydn at Esterhaza” has been designed specifically to showcase the home repertoire of the orchestra, which plays on period instruments of the classical era. The concert opens with the overture La Calamità de cuori by Johann Christian Bach. The eleventh son of Johann Sebastian Bach, he settled for twenty years in England, and became the Queen’s Master of the Music. He was a pivotal figure in the young Mozart’s musical development - to such an extent that, on Bach’s death, Mozart incorporated a theme similar to that in the La Calamità overture into the slow movement of his Piano Concerto No 12 (K414).
Later in the programme, Mozart’s ever-popular Concerto for Flute and Harp is played by Rachel Brown and Frances Kelly. Written in Paris in 1778 for the flautist the Duke of Guines and his harpist daughter, to whom Mozart was giving composition lessons, it features some of Mozart’s most memorable melodic writing. It is also a combination of instruments to which Mozart was never to return, but which has become popular since Mozart’s concerto. The opportunity to hear this work on period instruments should be intriguing.
The music of Haydn is central to The Hanover Band, which achieved international fame through its recorded cycle of Haydn Symphonies with Roy Goodman for Hyperion records. Haydn’s popular Harpsichord Concerto in D (often played on a piano) is performed by The Hanover Band’s Associate Director Andrew Arthur, whom Kingston audiences will remember from successful all-Bach concerts in our 2006 and 2007 seasons. The concert finishes with Haydn’s Symphony No 59, nicknamed the “Fire” Symphony. Written as accompanying music to the play Der Feuersbrunst at Esterhaza in 1774, the symphony is impassioned and spirited, featuring joyful horn fanfares and virtuosic string writing.
Tickets are £18, £13 and £11 (concessions: young people 16 and under all seats half price; students £5 and the over 60s £10 in £11 ticket area only) and can be purchased on the door or in advance from: Kingston Tourist Information Centre in the Market Hall; Hands Music in the Griffin Centre; online from www.ticketweb.co.uk ; or from Thames Concerts Society on 07984 417278. Further information on Thames Concerts Society can be found elsewhere on this website.
