National Youth String Orchestra

National Youth String Orchestra is one of the UK’s most prestigious training organisations for young string players, providing specialist training for talented players up to the age of 21. The ensemble’s outstanding characteristic is the standard of coaching from Music Director, Damian Iorio, and a dedicated team of professional players with a lifetime’s experience.

Founded in 1995, National Youth String Orchestra is fortunate to have had Sir Neville Marriner CH CBE as its principal patron for many years. Sir Neville conducted the orchestra on many occasions, including the ensemble’s 10th and 15th anniversary concerts in 2005 and 2011 in London and concerts in Capri and Ischia, Italy, at the invitation of the William Walton Trust at La Mortella.

Recent performances include concerts for Cambridge Summer Music, the Three Choirs Festival and Lake District Summer Music. The culmination of the ensemble’s 2018 programme sees these talented young players perform some of the very best writing for strings from the 19th and 20th centuries, including Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, an intensely moving work from towards the end of Strauss’s life and considered by many to be his greatest work.