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sinfonia ViVA with Antje Weithaas

Sunday 21st November 2010 at 7.30pm
Wiltshire Music Centre
Bradford-on-Avon
Tickets £25, Concessions £24, Savers £23, Under 18s £10
Box Office: 01225 860 100
Book now on venue website

Antje Weithaas, Violin - photo credit Marco Borggreve

The sparkling Antje Weithaas (violin) renews her association with sinfonia ViVA in tonight's programme with Principal Conductor André de Ridder in this much-anticipated return visit by the orchestra to the Wiltshire Music Centre.

Begun in 1814 and finished the following year, Schubert's bright Symphony No.2 was dedicated to Innocenz Lang, the headmaster of his former school, and may have been intended as a gift for performance there. Its first public premiere is thought to have been in London in 1877. The piece's opening bears a close resemblance to Beethoven's overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.

Berg's Violin Concerto premiered in 1936, the year after his death. It was to be his last work and is the one by which he is best known. It is dedicated "to the memory of an angel": the daughter of Mahler's former wife had recently died from poliomyelitis and Berg, who had an outstanding commission from the violinist Louis Krasner to fulfil (Krasner who would subsequently perform the Violin Concerto's premiere) took this as his inspiration, turning to the task with devotion. In doing so, he left unfinished (forever as it turned out) the opera Lulu that he had been working on. Tonight's arrangement of the piece is that by Tarkmann.

Mozart was nearing the end of his symphonic output when he produced the Symphony No.39 – only 2 further compositions would follow, also in 1788. The overall impression of the piece, particularly early on, is one of gentleness and warmth, punctuated by occasional forays into more energetic and urgent moments.

Supported by Rolls-Royce plc, sinfonia ViVA, Orchestras Live and Arts Council England