About the Concert

The ESO returns to the Great Malvern Priory with this beautiful programme of string orchestra music. The concert will begin with a well-known Divertimento in D major, written by Mozart who was only sixteen years old and had just returned from a triumphant tour of Italy. Finzi wrote his Romance in 1928, however it was not published until 1952. It is a short but beautiful piece with elegiac quality and a profound love of the English countryside in Wiltshire where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing. Bach dedicated six “concertos with several instruments” to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg in 1721. This Third Concerto is scored in nine parts plus continuo and has also been composed in an unusual form – two fast movements separated by a slow movement of just one bar (containing two sustained chords). The second half of the concert will see the ESO’s leader, Zoë Beyers, directing and playing the solo part for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.