More Information

Orchestral Concert
Bactiguard Wire Brass
Conductor
Soloist
History
TICKETS
Home
Neston Music Festival 2009
The Orchestral Concert will take place at 7.30 on Saturday 5th September in
Neston Parish Church.
Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto in G Minor was his first major work and is one of the most performed and recorded concertos in the violin repertoire. It was first completed in 1866 and the first performance was given on 24 April of that year by Otto von Königslow with Bruch himself conducting. But Bruch was dissatisfied. The concerto was then considerably revised with help from the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim (who would later play the same role in the creation of the Brahms violin concerto) and completed in its present form in 1867. The première of the revised concerto was given by Joachim in Bremen on 5 January 1868 with Carl Martin Reinthaler conducting. Bruch also dedicated the score to Joachim.
The concert will open with Elgar's Cockaigne (In London Town), also known as the Cockaigne Overture, which he wrote immediately after the failure of the first performance of The Dream of Gerontius. The piece presents a musical portrait of life in London at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a lively and colourful piece and was an immediate success in Britain, Germany and the USA.

Brahms was a well established and respected composer by the time his first symphony came to fruition, and, as indicated by its opus number 68, had already produced a substantial body of work, which included the first Piano Concerto and the German Requiem. The first symphony was first performed in 1876, but Brahms had begun to write a symphony as early as 1854. He took this work as far as a setting for two pianos, but did not orchestrate it and it was never published. Three of the four movements did however appear in other works, including those mentioned above. The long gestation period was due to Brahms’ awareness of his place in the succession of symphonists from Haydn onwards. He was particularly intimidated by the shadow cast by Beethoven, even after the huge success of the German Requiem and St. Anthony Variations. The premiere of the first symphony, in Karlsruhe, was a triumph; Hans von Bulow did not hesitate to proclaim it "the Tenth", a tribute Brahms received with mixed feelings. Each of Brahms’ four symphonies has a distinct character. The first is the most overtly dramatic, and, particularly in the first movement, characterised by restlessness, urgency and a certain element of defiance. This is perhaps not surprising for a work born of such a long struggle with self doubt.

.