Chamber Orchestra of Europe Principals - Aldeburgh Festival

Prefacing the teenage Mendelssohn’s astonishing first symphony in Oliver Knussen’s programme with the full orchestra (27 June), COE principals bring another effervescent masterpiece from the composer’s youth, a fresh and dazzling display of invention from the pen of a sixteen-year-old. At the other end of life and part of the prodigious output of his final years, Janácek’s vivacious chamber concerto teems with wit and bucolic charm, invoking a child’s fairytale world communing with a ‘grumpy hedgehog, fidgety squirrel and night owl’.