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Details
SJE Arts - St John the Evangelist Church
109A Iffley Road
Oxford
Oxfordshire
OX4 1EH
England
Programme
John Ireland – A Downland Suite
John Ireland – Concertino Pastorale
Gustav Holst – Brook Green Suite, H.190
Gerald Finzi – Clarinet Concerto, Op.31
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Performers
Janet Lince – Conductor
Jack McNeill – clarinet
Corona Strings
Programme Note
Acclaimed professional Oxford-based orchestra Corona Strings, conducted by Janet Lincé are regular visitors to St John the Evangelist, Oxford. In their forthcoming season of lyrical string music, they perform popular works by British and Scandinavian composers.
Following successful concerts in 2016 Corona Strings return to home-grown repertoire, with a programme of British lyrical favourites by fellow peers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, Gustav Holst and John Ireland for their opening concert of 2017 on Saturday 25th February.
Writing prolifically for all genres, works by composers such as these have been considered stereo-typical of the English music composed during the mid-twentieth-century. In truth, their inspirations were many faceted, being influenced by European and Eastern styles as well as pioneering a re-discovery of the music of the past to find their own distinctive 'English' voice. In the midst of the prevailing German classical tradition, these composers liberated compositional possibilities – a legacy which continues today.
Arguably the most beautiful of these works, Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis’, of which the composer said he wanted the strings to sound like their older counter-parts, the viols, is a regular at the top of audience listener’s polls of most popular works.
John Ireland’s ‘Concertino Pastorale’ was written at the outset of the Second World War. Ireland, writing at the time, saying “I do not see how anyone with any sensibility can compose music in the present world-atmosphere…” Following the first performance, the composer received many letters of gratitude in an outpouring of sentiment and this lyrical, pastoral and virtuosic work has continued to be widely performed ever since.
“We aim to offer a platform for exciting soloists and are especially pleased that Jack McNeil will join us in this programme to perform Finzi’s gorgeous ‘Clarinet Concerto’", said conductor, Janet Lincé.
