2009 - 2010 Season

Brian Wright, our Music Director, writes:

We may all be feeling the economic pinch, but I firmly believe our 99th season doesn’t show the strain. Musically, we’ve a mix of great works both familiar and unfamiliar, and I’m sure you’ll have noticed we’ve managed to freeze prices for members’ season tickets as well as those for single concerts. There’s also a new standing order scheme to help spread the cost of season ticket payments. In addition, for the first time this season we’re offering free seats for students of school age, and continue to offer full-time adult students a ticket for a fiver. We hope this all adds up to a package that will appeal to as wide a spectrum of our potential music-loving community as possible. Please help us by spreading the word.

 Our soloists this season include two fine young British talents. Trombonist Peter Moore is the current BBC Young Musician and he’s playing a fine 19th century work by Ferdinand David, who was a good friend of Mendelssohn. Violinist Ben Hancox needs little introduction, being Kentish born and bred, and he plays Vaughan Williams’ atmospheric and very popular The Lark Ascending. Our two pianists, the phenomenally talented Ching-Yun Hu from Taiwan and Maurizio Baglini from Italy, play equally popular Beethoven and Chopin, and we warmly welcome back Italian cellist Silvia Chiesa to play the unaccountably neglected concerto by Lalo.

 MSO is a broad community within itself, with players travelling the length and breadth of the county to rehearse and perform with us. In choosing our programmes, my task is to challenge their talents and to entertain you. With superb overtures by Elgar and Brahms, brilliant orchestral showpieces by Enescu, Dvorak and Richard Strauss, and great symphonies by Prokofiev, Haydn, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky and Berlioz, I can only feel that this season I’ve succeeded. Come along and find out.