Venue: St Andrew Holborn
City of London Sinfonia
- Laura Samuel director/violin
- Parry An English Suite
- Puccini I Crisantemi
- Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in D minor
The city of London Sinfonia celebrates music for a string ensemble. The programme begins with Parry’s charming English Suite. Arranged after the composer’s death by his amanuensis Dr. Emily Daymond, the suite combines a beautiful Pastoral dating from 1890 with five further movements composed twenty years later. 1890 was also the year in which Puccini wrote Crisantemi, an exquisitely melancholic response to the death of the Duke of Savoy. I Crisantemi showcases that Puccini had as much affinity with writing for strings as with writing for the human voice. Mendelssohn’s Concerto in D minor for Violin and Strings, an energetic and unconventional work which the composer wrote in his early teens, remained largely unknown until Yehudi Menuhin deservedly resurrected it in the 1950s.
