Free pre-concert talk at 6.45pm by Judy Blezzard
Much the finest of all his shorter Masonic pieces is Mozart’s glorious Masonic Funeral Music, a supernaturally solemn piece of stark beauty.
Schumann wrote his only Violin Concerto a year before his final attempt at suicide and eventual death in an asylum. The intended violinist – Joseph Joachim – suspected the concerto contributed to the composer’s madness and so left the tainted manuscript to remain unperformed. Today, it has firmly become part of the mainstream violin repertoire and is considered an important late work.
Beethoven’s thrilling, electrifying Eroica was a massively significant work both for the composer and classical music. Completed in 1805, it marked the beginnings of early Romantic composition and an end to the earlier Classical style. A dramatic, bold new style that has seen it voted the ‘greatest symphony of all time’ by ±«Óãtv Music Magazine and conductors working across the world.
