Category: Uncategorized
Musical mayhem for kids at SASO’s children’s concerts
Noisy kids can look forward to fancy dress and musical mayhem on Sunday November 17th at St Albans Symphony Orchestra’s two annual concerts for children (2pm & 3.30pm, St Saviour’s Church, Sandpit Lane, St Albans). Children are invited to dress up as their favourite superhero, monster, or fairytale character for Red Riding Hood and the Three …
Choirs join forces with SASO for Brahms Requiem
Three choirs and two internationally-acclaimed soloists will join forces with SASO on Saturday 26th October to perform the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms – a heartfelt setting of biblical texts about death by a composer who was an avowed religious sceptic. (7.30pm, St Albans Cathedral). The concert is the latest in a biennial series organised by the …
Workshop tackles the mighty ‘Leningrad’ Symphony
St Albans Symphony Orchestra has successfully brought together more than 90 musicians to take part in an epic musical commemoration of the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The weekend workshop sessions at Townsend Church of England School in St Albans were used to tackle the ‘Leningrad’ Symphony by Dmitri …
Festival Concert ‘a tour de force’, says critic
SASO’s Festival Concert featuring Holst’s Planets Suite and soloist Giovanni Re in Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto was “a real tour de force” according to John Manning, music critic of the Herts Advertiser. Writing in the 13th June 2013 edition he says: “I can’t think of a performance I have heard in the past where the opening movement, …
SASO’s summer concert sets course for ‘The Planets’
Almost a century after its was written, St Albans Abbey will reverberate to the sounds of Gustav Holst’s celestial Planets suite, performed by St Albans Symphony Orchestra as part of its yearly festival concert on Saturday 8th June (7.30pm). From the terrifying power of ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’ to the ethereal quiet of distant ‘Neptune’ – complete …
SASO to launch Summer Music festival
St Albans Symphony Orchestra is to perform the opening concert for St Albans Summer Music: a month-long series of classical concerts, folk music and dance events. The programme under Principal Conductor Bjorn Bantock is on Saturday 8th June (7.30pm) in St Albans Abbey. It features The Planets, Gustav Holst’s hugely popular suite ‘for large orchestra’. The orchestra …
SASO “in Seventh Heaven,” says critic
The Herts Advertiser was full of praise for SASO’s ‘Beethoven’s Seventh’ concert on April 27th: “St Albans Symphony Orchestra continued their progression through the symphonies of Beethoven in their concert last night at St. Saviour’s with an energetic performance of his Seventh…. ….an uplifting interpretation of the work, and one that makes this reviewer eagerly look …
Hanja and Bjorn team up for romantic concerto
An unashamedly romantic piano concerto will bring together piano soloist Hanja Bantock with her conductor husband Bjorn for a concert with St Albans Symphony Orchestra on Saturday 27th April (7.30pm, St Saviour’s Church, Sandpit Lane, St Albans). When Robert Schumann’s piano concerto received its first performance in 1846, his wife, Clara, was the soloist. Hanja, who …
Magnus Johnston to interpret Beethoven’s masterpiece for violin
The Harpenden-born violinist Magnus Johnston makes a welcome return to St Albans music-making on March 9th in an early spring concert that promises to banish winter blues with brilliant masterpieces of orchestra colouring. (7.30pm, St Saviour’s Church, Sandpit Lane, AL1 4DF) Appearing with St Albans Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Bjorn Bantock, Magnus will play the beautiful and …
SASO musician reveals his heroic tenor identity!
Jonathan Finney is a valued viola player with St Albans Symphony (SASO). But on Saturday November 10th he will reveal another identity as operatic superhero, singing the role of Siegmund in a scene from Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle (7.30pm, St Saviour’s, Sandpit Lane, St Albans). When Jonathan joined the orchestra two years ago after moving to Childwickbury, …
