Scottish Sinfonia

"Scotland's most exciting orchestra"



Conductor - Neil Mantle, MBE
Leader - Richard Gratwick

Sponsors


Concert Season 2023 - 2024


With thanks to our Sponsors
Conductor - Neil Mantle MBE

Note: All evening concerts commence at 7:30pm
  in St Cuthbert's Church, Lothian Road




Sunday 5th May 2024 at 7:30pm
  The Planets
Vaughan Williams: Overture to “The Wasps”
Walton: Violin Concerto
soloist: Charles Mutter
Holst: The Planets
with the Linlithgow Ladies Choir, musical director Kirsty Ball

We close our season as we began it, with the music of our native composers, including Gustav Holst’s ever popular suite of seven movements for large orchestra, organ and female chorus. This virtuosic work especially cries out to be experienced live, as it happens!
Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams were close friends, so it is entirely appropriate that we pair them together by including the latter’s brilliant overture to “The Wasps” – a splendid curtain raiser.
Charles Mutter, leader of the BBC Concert Orchestra, is a long standing friend of the orchestra, having collaborated with us in concertos of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and most recently Elgar in 2021, and we are always delighted to make music with him, while our loyal patrons will need no encouragement to come and hear him in Walton’s bittersweet Violin Concerto.


Tickets, price £16.00 (concessions: £14.00; Student: £8.00; accompanied schoolchildren: free), are available from the Usher Hall Box Office.




Concert Season 2024 - 2025


Preliminary Information.
Tickets, price £17.00 (concessions: £15.00; Student: £8.00; accompanied schoolchildren: free), will be available in advance from the Usher Hall Box Office in due course - check back here for details.


Sunday 1st September 2024 at 7:30pm
  Mahler's Ninth
Mahler: Symphony No.9 in D major

The music of Gustav Mahler has been firmly embedded in Sinfonia’s DNA from our inception in 1970. Since then we have performed the entire symphonic cycle several times, issuing our live concerts on compact disc. Of our previous performance of this symphony, ‘The Scotsman’ critic wrote: "From the gripping heartbeat pulse that announces the opening theme, it was clear that Scottish Sinfonia had penetrated the very soul of the work."
The Ninth - which Mahler did not live to hear - is his greatest work, and demands to be experienced LIVE as it unfolds: there is no substitute. Please come and be a part of this!





Sunday 24th November 2024 at 7:30pm
  Dvořák Violin Concerto
Beethoven: Symphony No.8 in F major
Dvořák: Violin Concerto in A minor
soloist: Callum Smart
Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé - Second Suite

Every music lover knows Dvořák’s lovely concerto for ‘cello, but his less widely known violin concerto is also brimful of beautiful melodies. Making his first appearance with us is Scottish virtuoso Callum Smart, who is a committed advocate of the work.
By way of contrast, we feature Ravel’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Spain in his "Rapsodie Espagnole", and the sensuous second suite from his celebrated ballet Daphnis and Chloé. For these works, the orchestra will be at its full strength of one hundred players - don’t miss it!





Sunday 2nd February 2025 at 7:30pm
  Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto
Walton: Overture "Portsmouth Point"
Brahms: Piano Concerto No.2 in B♭ major
soloist: Adam Davies
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No.3 in A minor

Such was the impact of young British pianist Adam Davies with his stunning performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 4 in 2021, that conductor Neil Mantle immediately extended a return invitation. This time, Adam joins us in a very different, but equally demanding concerto, that of Johannes Brahms.
Rachmaninoff - one of the orchestra’s specialities - has not been forgotten, however, as we feature his passionate Third Symphony. Although this, one of the composer’s last works, was written in Switzerland in 1936, it is full of romantic nostalgia for the composer’s native country.





Sunday 11th May 2025 at 7:30pm
  The Lark Ascending
Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme (‘Enigma’)
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
violin soloist: Richard Gratwick
Finzi: Dies Natalis
soloist: James Slimings (tenor)
Britten: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell

To close our season, we feature the music of these shores, including two 'Classic FM top twenty' favourites: Vaughan Williams’ eloquent depiction of the lazy motion of a lark in flight, in which we feature our superb leader Richard Gratwick, and Elgar’s well loved ‘Enigma’ Variations, in which he immortalised his friends in delighted miniatures - including, of course - "Nimrod", which was a key factor in spreading this wonderful work worldwide.
Another - very different - set of variations unites the 17th and 20th centuries in the form of the theme of Henry Purcell with the imaginative thematic transformations by Benjamin Britten. A splendid opportunity for each and every section of your wonderful orchestra to demonstrate their virtuosity!
We look forward to welcoming you to this exciting and varied season of concerts!







Future dates and programme details will be announced here as they become available.


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