Saturday 5th July 2008

Strode Theatre, Street at 7.30 P. M.

The Mid-Somerset Orchestra http://www.midsomersetorchestra.co.uk, conductor Paul Denegri, leader Hywel Jenkins, presents its Summer Prom “Breakers! Cornwall and the Sea”.

Programme:

• Smyth:     Overture The Wreckers

• Elgar:       Sea Pictures

Soloist:       Kathy Taylor-Jones

•  Arnold:    Four Cornish Dances

•  Bax         Tintagel

• Elgar:       March Pomp & Circumstance No 1

• Arnold arr. Lane:   March Padstow Lifeboat

• Arne arr. Sargent: Rule Britannia

• Parry arr Elgar:     Jerusalem

Ticket prices:     £9: Full, £7:  Concession, £1: Age 18 and under.

Tickets, all reserved, available from Strode Theatre Box Office, tel. 01458 442846 info@strodetheatre.co.uk. The box office is open Monday to Saturday 10.30 A. M. – 6.30 P. M. and welcomes ‘phone bookings with credit cards. The MSO recommends booking in advance for this concert.

The Mid-Somerset Orchestra’s 2008 summer prom is full of music inspired by the sea, and in particular music which responds to the impact that the sea has on one geographical location, the peninsular land of Cornwall, in fact, fiction and myth. The programme is made up of the work of English (but not Cornish!) composers, all but one of whom were knighted. This is also the first occasion that the orchestra has had the opportunity to programme the work of Sir Malcolm Arnold, a one time resident of Cornwall, since that composer’s death in 2006. The only composer to have had the honour of the MSO performing his work in his lifetime, the orchestra dedicates this concert affectionately to his memory! The MSO welcomes Paul Denegri as conductor of this concert. Paul leads a busy free-lance career as performer, conductor and composer as well as being the “inspirational” head of brass teaching at Wells Cathedral School!

The concert opens in controversy with the dramatic overture to Dame Ethyl Smyth’s opera “The Wreckers”. It marks how unfair it is that the work of women composers is rarely programmed, and especially Smyth’s which stands up with the best. It marks 90 years since women were first allowed to vote in the UK, following a major campaign of protest of which Smyth was a high profile leader. The opera also presents an allegation of criminal activity, that of deliberately luring cargo ships on to rocks in order to wreck and plunder them, which the Cornish people have often been accused and where there is no proven case of it ever having happened. Needless to say, the residents of Cornwall have never accorded this opera the status of a national anthem!

Moving on to a more general depiction of the sea, the MSO will give its 3rd performance of the popular orchestral song cycle “Sea Pictures” by Sir Edward Elgar, setting texts by various poets including one by the composer’s wife. The MSO is pleased to welcome mezzo-soprano Kathy Taylor-Jones to sing the 5 songs. Kathy’s career to date has been mainly working in opera all over the UK and she will be performing in this concert on the heels of completing a full-time contract with Opera North for their winter, spring and summer 2007-8 seasons appearing in 5 different operas.

After a performance of Sir Malcolm Arnold’s 4 lively Cornish Dances, the programme will look to the genuinely mythical inspiration of Cornwall and the Sea in the symphonic poem “Tintagel” by Sir Arnold Bax in which the composer, whilst depicting the realistic swell and crash of waves against the rocks of North Cornwall, invites us to conjure up the legendary world of King Arthur and the knights of the round table and the story of Tristram and Iseult.

The MSO’s traditional “last night of the proms” fare will see new departures from previous practice, but will open with a welcome return of Elgar’s 1st Pomp and Circumstance march incorporating the tune to “Land of Hope and Glory”. Present day Cornwall will be represented by Arnold’s march “Padstow Lifeboat”, complete with fog horn (!), before Kathy Taylor-Jones returns to that platform to lead all those present in a rendition of Thomas Arne’s Rule Britannia as arranged by Sir Malcom Sargent. The concert will end with Jerusalem by Sir Charles Hubert Parry in the superb orchestration by Elgar.