Havant Symphony Orchestra Live Music & Concerts

Havant Symphony Orchestra once again brings an evening of beautiful music to Hayling Island Community Centre!
The Orchestra have had a great year working with young conductor Tom Griffin as holder of their Bob Harding Bursary. His last outing with the Orchestra will be to conduct this concert and to introduce to us his colleague Robert Douglas (Professor of Piano at the Royal Marines School of Music) as soloist in the Piano Concerto no 1 by Beethoven. This lovely piece shows Beethoven already stretching the boundaries of the work produced by his predecessors, Mozart and Haydn. It had its premiere, played by the composer himself, in Vienna in 1795.
The concert will begin with another Viennese classic, the popular Overture to ‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss Jr. The Strauss family were, of course, famous as composers of waltzes and this overture (in English ‘The Bat’) is full of wonderful tunes from the opera which was also first performed in Vienna, but almost one hundred years later than the Beethoven, in 1874.
Robert Schumann was inspired to write his Symphony no 3 in 1850 after he and his wife Clara had enjoyed a relaxing holiday in Germany’s Rhineland. He gave it five movements, like Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, and it expresses the sights and sounds of life on and beside the river Rhine. It was only four years later that Schumann threw himself into the Rhine, apparently in a suicide attempt, but this music comes from a much happier place and is delightful to listen to!

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