Dulwich Symphony Orchestra have announced their programme of events for the Spring/Summer Season.
DSO Concert
- Next concert, Saturday, 27 February at All Saints Church, Lovelace Road, West Dulwich, SE21 8JY, at 7pm
- The concert will feature conductor Leigh O’Hara performing and leading the orchestra from the piano, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor
- The concerto will be complemented by Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ 8th Symphony, an additional two movements written by Brian Newbould
- The concert will also feature a new piece by local composer David Fielker
DSO in the Dulwich Community
DSO is a musical and cultural organization serving the Dulwich community by;
- Promoting local talent in 2015-16, with the contemporary composers series
- Enhancing the cultural life of young people in Dulwich by offering free tickets for under 16s to live performances and by funding an educational outreach project and a competition for secondary school children, the Young Composers Award
DSO’s first concert of the 2015-16 season took place in November 2015 and was a resounding success. Held at the usual venue, All Saints Church, Lovelace Rd, West Dulwich, the concert was the start of an exciting and ambitious year with symphonies by Mahler, Schubert and Parry alongside performances of new works by three local composers. The first in the series by a Dulwich composer was called Autumn by Michael Brooks, a worldwide debut and was received well by the audience and orchestra alike. The other two new works for 2015-16 will be by David Fielker and Alan Taylor.
DSO is a cultural organisation within the Dulwich community and in the view of DSO’s conductor Leigh O’Hara, who is also the director of music at St Paul’s Girls School and of the Blackheath Halls Orchestra, ‘It’s great to build links between the orchestra and the musical life of the area. We have a well established outreach programme with the Elmgreen School, where we rehearse, and sponsor an annual composition competition for local GCSE and A level students. This series of short pieces by local composers is a new venture for us and one which will show the vitality of orchestral music in this part of London.’
The next concert in DSO’s calendar will be on 27 February 2016, when Leigh O’Hara, also a concert pianist by training, will conduct Mozart’s popular Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor from the keyboard. This interesting feat will be complemented by Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony No.8, two movements originally by the composer with an additional two developed from ‘incomplete sketches’ by Brian Newbould, composer and Schubert scholar. Finally, the concert will feature the second local composer of the season, David Fielker, who has a written a light-hearted set of variations on the folk song Early One Morning, in the English pastoral tradition.
In June 2016, DSO will perform Alan Taylor’s piece Prelude: Guernica Gaza, which was written in Spain in 2009 after reading a newspaper editorial comparing the two events referred to in the title. Alan comments that ‘it draws on a sense of horror at the capacity of human groups to treat as sub-human members of other groups with whom they are in conflict.’ The summer concert on 18 June also features Croydon Festival Concerto prizewinner, pianist Bocheng Wang, who was the 2015 winner. He will be playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the orchestra.
Full details of the 2015-16 programme and other biographical information can be found on the DSO website www.dulwichsymphonyorchestra.org.uk, where there are contact details for people interested in playing in the orchestra or taking part in the Young Composers Award competition. Audiences are also encouraged to share and Tweet about the orchestra @DulwichSymphony