Wednesday 3rd April 2019, 7.30pm

Pre-concert conversation with novelist and critic Jessica Duchen at 6.30pm

Great Malvern Priory, Church Street, Malvern, WR14 2AY

English Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Woods – Artistic Director
Zoë Beyers – Violin

Pre- concert conversation at 6:30pm with author and critic Jessica Duchen

Programme

Mozart – Overture to the Marriage of Figaro
Schumann – Violin Concerto
Zoë Beyers – Violin
David Matthews – Romanza for Violin and Strings
Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 “Italian”

Sponsored by Gerald Green

Since her appointment as Leader of the ESO in 2017, violinist Zoë Beyers has quickly become an audience favourite as a featured soloist. For this concert in the beautiful Great Malvern Priory, Beyers turns her hand to Robert Schumann’s poetic and evocative Violin Concerto, his last completed work. The concert also includes one of Mozart’s most beloved overtures. and the beloved “Italian” Symphony by Schumann’s great friend and frequent collaborator, Felix Mendelssohn. Ms. Beyers will also be performing David Matthews’ beautiful Romanza for Violin and Strings.

Join us at 6.30pm for a very special pre-concert event with author and critic Jessica Duchen, whose bestselling novel about the Schumann Violin Concerto, ‘Ghost Variations’, has been received with world-wide praise. Duchen will share the story of the origin and discovery of this most mysterious of all works, one of music’s great detective stories.

This concert is part of David Matthews in the Heart of England, a year-long celebration of one of Britain’s most important composer on the 75th anniversary of his birth.

TICKETS: £5-20 (Discount for ESO Friends) Family Tickets available

Book online via Worcester Live
Phone Booking  01905 611427
In person at the Huntingdon Hall Box office CrownGate Worcester, WR1 2ES

Programmes may be subject to change
The novel Ghost Variations by Jessica Duchen, author and music critic, is based on the bizarre true story of how the Schumann Violin Concerto came to light for the first time in the 1930s. Having been left unpublished by Clara Schumann after the composer’s death, it disappeared into a Berlin library. But in 1933 the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi – dedicatee of Ravel’s Tzigane – claimed to have received a message from beyond the grave alerting her to its existence. Soon the Third Reich heard that there was something interesting lurking in the archives, something that could be taken and used as a propaganda tool for great German art…
In this talk Jessica reveals the story behind the Schumann Violin Concerto: its creation towards the end of the composer’s troubled life, its later suppression, its extraordinary rediscovery and the controversies that surround it to this day.
“A thrilling read” – John Suchet, The Daily Mail Christmas Books Choice
“Schumann’s wonderful violin concerto has a tragic history unlike any other piece of music. In this splendid new novel Jessica Duchen manages to find the fine balance between facts and fiction. Her book reads like a thriller yet it’s also a tribute to great music and musicians.” – Sir Andras Schiff
BOOK NOW