University Philharmonia

£16 (£6 students)
1 hour 45 minutes including interval

Jonathan Tilbrook Conductor

Mendelssohn Overture to Athalie, Op.74 
Debussy (orch. Sackman) 3 Epigraphes antiques  
Respighi Gli uccelli (The Birds)  
Vaughan Williams Symphony No.5 

University Philharmonia’s spring concert features some rarely performed music, beginning with Mendelssohn’s Overture from the incidental music to the Racine’s play Athelie. Respighi’s delightful suite The Birds, based on music by 17th and 18th -century composers, uses instruments in the orchestra to imitate the distinctive calls and characteristics of the dove, hen, nightingale and cuckoo. Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony draws on thematic material from his (then) unfinished opera Pilgrim’s Progress as well as sections from Bunyan’s text before the poignant slow movement, ‘Romanza’. 

Programme Notes