Top sopranos in double billing for Shrewsbury Symphony
Two of the nation’s most talented sopranos are set to perform with Shrewsbury Symphony Orchestra in a stirring double-bill featuring works by Mahler and Wagner.
The Shrewsbury Symphony Orchestra has built a strong reputation locally with sell-out concerts at Shrewsbury Castle in recent years. It is composed of gifted amateur and semi-pro musicians and punches well above its weight in terms of repertoire and quality of delivery.
This autumn, the SSO will be returning under the baton of John Moore for a concert in the Alington Hall at Shrewsbury School on November 23. The orchestra will play Wagner’s sublime ‘Prelude & Liebestod’ from one of the composer’s best-loved operas ‘Tristan und Isolde’. The soprano part from the final scene of the opera will be sung by Elinor Rolfe-Johnston, daughter of late operatic tenor Anthony Rolfe-Johnston. Elinor recently toured Europe with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s new Constellation Choir and appeared in Cadogan Hall this October with the Monteverdi Choir.
The same concert also sees the orchestra tackle Mahler’s powerful Fifth Symphony with its spine-chilling opening trumpet solo and famous ‘Adagietto’ fourth movement, which was famously used in ‘Death in Venice’.
Shrewsbury Symphony Orchestra will perform the same programme, with Nicola Mills as soprano, in The Market Hall, Whitchurch on Wednesday, November 19 at 7.30pm.
Nicola started her professional career at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and has worked with Dutch National Opera, The Flemish Opera and Opera Monte Carlo. She has since taken opera to the streets of New York and is devoted to making the art form accessible to all with her brand ‘Opera for the People’.
Conductor John Moore said: “To be performing two of classical music’s most iconic masterpieces in one evening is something that perhaps doesn’t happen that often, but with Mahler’s glorious Fifth Symphony and the 'Prelude and Liebestod 'from Wagner’s opera 'Tristan and Isolde', that is precisely what will be happening in both Whitchurch and Shrewsbury in November.
“Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is the most fantastic personal journey by the composer, an almost autobiographical statement of where Mahler was in his life at the time, beginning with his thoughts on his own mortality, through to his homage to the vibrancy of Vienna at the point of the Secession, and then his love letter to his future wife Alma in the famous 'Adagietto' before the symphony concludes with one of the greatest and most optimistically rousing finales in all of music.
“Inspiration for the Symphony in fact came partially from Wagner’s devastatingly beautiful music for Tristan. Pairing the two works seems a perfect marriage, made more special by our two very special guest sopranos who will bring Wagner’s achingly evocative aria for Isolde, sung over the body of her beloved Tristan, to life for Shropshire audiences. A more powerful programme and beguiling evening of music is hard to imagine.”
Shrewsbury Symphony Orchestra’s Autumn Concert is at The Market Hall, Whitchurch on Wednesday, November 19 at 7.30pm - and also at The Alington Hall, Shrewsbury School on Sunday, November 23 at 3pm.
Tickets are £17.50/£2 from ticketsource.co.uk/shrewsbury-symphony-orchestra
