Spring Classics

Our final subscription concert of the 2025-26 season.

Prokofiev: Classical Symphony

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4 (Soloist Anson Wong)

Mendelssohn: Symphony No 3 - the Scottish

Prokofiev's Classical Symphony could be described as Haydn on steroids. It's, a wonderful concert opener - sparklingly witty, exhilarating, and with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Blink and you'll miss it, which would be a great shame!

Beethoven's sublime fourth piano concerto is innovative in two ways. It opens with just the piano, something that Rachmaninov did in this second piano concerto, written nearly a hundred years later (and performed in SSO's memorable 2025 summer concert). The other notable feature is the second movement, in which the piano seems effortlessly to subdue the orchestra. Our soloist, Anson Wong, studied in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from the age of nine. He has won several prizes in China and Japan, and recently won third prize, and the Beethoven Prize in the 2025 Dublin International Piano Competition.

The concert concludes with one of the works in which inspiration came to Mendelssohn as a result of his travels. In the case of his third symphony the initial impetus came from a visit to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. The symphony has a traditional four-movement structure, although the movements are written to be played without a break. There are elements of Scottish folk music in the final movement, and also in the second movement, in which the rhythm known as the "Scotch Snap" is in evidence. The symphony as a whole is full of contrasts - wonderful music with which to finish our season!