Autumn Classics

This is the first concert in the 2025-26 season covered by our season ticket scheme, which gives you a significant saving against buying tickets individually for our three subscription concerts.

Schumann: Manfred Overture

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor (soloist Mikhail Andreev)

Brahms: Symphony No 1 in C minor.

Schumann wrote sixteen pieces as incidental music to Lord Byron’s poem Manfred, and we will open the concert with the overture. This, the finest piece in the work, was written in 1848.

Sibelius aspired to be a violinist, and although being a virtuoso proved beyond him, he very much knew how to write for the instrument. He follows Beethoven and Brahms in just having written a single concerto for the instrument, but this composition is considerably more difficult. Sibelius wrote magnificent orchestral works, and in the violin concerto he brings together the solo and orchestral parts in an inspired fashion. The work finishes with what was famously described by Donald Tovey as a “polonaise for polar bears”. We look forward to welcoming our soloist for this concert, Mikhail Andreev, from Guildford. At just thirteen he is hardly a "seasoned professional", but he has already achieved success in several competitions, most recently as winner of the Croydon Concerto Competition.

While several composers seemed to favour writing nine symphonies, Brahms wrote just four, which well achieve a synthesis of Classical form and the emerging Romanticism. His first symphony had a long gestation (more than twenty years) and several “test performances” before Brahms was happy enough to send it to his publisher. The result is one of the greatest symphonies, and a fine way to end the first concert of our new season.

For details of our season ticket scheme please click here.