Exeter Symphony Orchestra is delighted to present its summer concert featuring soloists Andreas Moutsioulis (guitar) and Nina Leonard Savicevic (piano) playing Rodrigo and Finzi – along with works by Holst, Goodwin and, local composer, David Norrish. The concert offers an eclectic melange of works by four English and one Spanish composer of the twentieth century.
The opening piece is an attractive and tuneful evocation of the Cotswold hills by Gustav Holst, completed in 1900 while on tour as an orchestral trombonist. His Symphony in F, The Cotswolds is a musical tribute to the countryside of his childhood home which so inspired him throughout his life, and a work which reveals his evident and later renowned skill as an orchestrator.
Bristol-based, Andreas Moutsioulis joins the orchestra for the much-loved Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo. Written in Paris in 1939, this beautiful piece is probably the most recognisable guitar concerto of all. Equally familiar and appropriate in this centenary year of the Royal Air Force are film composer and erstwhile trumpeter Ron Goodwin’s 633 Squadron and Where Eagles Dare. The squadron was fictitious of course, but these memorable tunes are just two of this truly illustrious Plymothian’s 70-plus movie scores.
In contrast, although Gerald Finzi’s choral works and concertos for the clarinet and cello really made his name, this little-played, but beautiful miniature for piano and strings – the Eclogue Op 10 – has a strongly pastoral feel to which our second soloist, Nina Leonard Savicevic, adds great feeling and sensitivity. We are proud to support her remarkably early orchestral debut while still a student at Wells Cathedral School. The premiere of The Golden Island Suite No 1 by David Norrish, leader of our 2nd Violins, is the second ‘first’ of the concert. Inspired by 23 years living in the Far East, David recalls the songs and dances of nine countries and retains the distinct flavour of each in a most accessible orchestral format.