This concert is the first for Macclesfield Singers and Symphony Orchestra since the end of 2019 and the intention is to make it a joyous occasion for audience and performers alike. The mixed programme has been chosen with this in mind.
The concert opens with Beethoven’s much loved and highly dramatic overture Leonore No 3 – one of no fewer than four that he wrote for his opera Leonore, later re-named Fidelio. Beethoven struggled over the work: he began it in 1804 and had four attempts at writing an appropriate overture. They were all very different from each other and our Leonore No. 3 is the grandest and perhaps the completest distillation of the Fidelio idea and as such has become a stand-alone concert overture.
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is a wonderfully colourful work and perhaps the Russian composer's most popular work. It has captivated the imaginations of generations of listeners with its tunefulness and brilliant orchestral colours. Based on the Book of One Thousand Nights, the score draws on Rimsky-Korsakov’s mastery of orchestration and on the fashionable Russian interest in the East at that time.
The second half of the concert features the Singers and Symphony Orchestra who together perform John Rutter's cycle of seven familiar spirituals, Feel the Spirit. They are joined by soprano soloist, Margaret Ferguson. The work brings new life to well known titles such as Joshura Fit the Battle of Jericho, Steal away, I got a robe, and ends with the rousing, When the saints go marching in.
As a finale, the Singer and Symphony Orchestra will perform an arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the fourth and final movement of his epic 9th Choral Symphony, bringing the concert to a thrilling climax.