The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s virtuosic wind & brass ensemble performs a magical programme of music at Banchory Woodend Barn (21 June), Boat of Garten Community Hall (22 June) and Birnam Arts Centre (23 June).

The concert opens with music from Prokofiev’s wonderfully melodious ballet score Cinderella, arranged specially for the wind & brass ensemble by SCO Principal Trumpet Peter Franks.  This suite of movements from the ballet’s first act features the fairies who come to dress Cinderella for the ball.

This is followed by Mozart’s passionate Serenade in C minor composed when he was 25 years of age, soon after his move to Vienna.  Written in just two days for Prince Liechtenstein, it provides the horns, clarinets, oboes and bassoons a chance to shine.

Hungarian folk rhythms are brought to life in the Wind Sextet by Mátyás Seiber, a protégé of fellow-Hungarian composer Zoltàn Kodály.  Seiber entered this work in a competition for which Kodály and Bartók were judges: when the Sextet did not win, Bartók resigned in fury from the jury. Seiber lived in the UK from the early 1930s until his death, in a tragic car accident in South Africa, in 1960.  He became well known as both a teacher and a composer of film scores, including those for Animal Farm and A Town like Alice.

Peter Frank’s arrangement of Russian composer Borodin’s popular Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor brings the evening to a close. The opera was adapted from the 12th-century epic poem The Lay of Igor’s Host and the folksy dances take place while the Polovtsian Khan’s slaves perform for the captured Prince Igor.

The Orchestra’s summer touring across the Highlands and Islands is now in its 34th year and, by dividing into smaller ensembles, allows the Orchestra to bring music to as many local communities as possible.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra receives funding from the Scottish Government. The Orchestra’s programme of summer touring is generously supported by the Misses Barrie Charitable Trust.

Source: SCO