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Intrigue and Modernity

Wednesday 27th January 2010 at 7.30pm
Assembly Rooms, Derby
Tickets: £17 to £26
Box Office: 01332 255800
Online booking available

Ilya Gringolts - photo credit J. Henry Fair.

The first half of this concert will be screened FREE on the Big Screen outside the Assembly Rooms starting from 7.20pm. Read our January 2010 newsletter for details of this.

sinfonia ViVA with Principal Conductor André de Ridder welcomes back Ilya Gringolts (Violin) for this programme contrasting the established mastery of the past with the inventiveness and modernity of the new in the form of the world premiere of another in the series of Orchestral Shorts commissioned by ViVA.

The concert opens with the Overture to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, on which the composer worked with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte - a tale of the adventures of the eponymous young nobleman which received its first performance in Prague in 1787. Next is Schumann's Violin Concerto in D minor of 1853 which had a complex and enigmatic route to its eventual performance. Initially dissatisfied with aspects of it, he consulted with Joseph Joachim over revising the manuscript. Joachim, after Schumann's subsequent decline into mental illness in 1854 and his eventual death, deposited the manuscript with the Prussian State Library in Berlin requesting that no performance should be made of it until 1956 - 100 years after Schumann's death. In a bizarre series of events including apparent messages from Schumann received in a seance, further discussions, c.20th revision of the manuscript and eventual publication led to a first performance in Germany in 1937. From here, we come right up to date with the latest in the series of ViVA's exciting Orchestral Short commissions, tonight's being Vapour Trail by UK based composer Larry Goves. We end with Brahms' Serenade for Orchestra No.1, one of his lesser-known works, which had a much smoother genesis than Schumann's piece. Begun in 1857 as one of a pair he would write - the second followed two years later - it was originally scored for a nonet but he reworked it the following year and beyond into a chamber orchestra version.

Supported by Rolls-Royce plc, Derby City Council, Derby LIVE, Orchestras Live and Arts Council England