Welcome to the 2018-19 season of the Cambridge Philharmonic, one of the UK’s leading music societies. With a full symphony orchestra and a large chorus, the Cambridge Philharmonic presents a series of concerts in the West Road Concert Hall and Saffron Hall.
The season opens with music very close to my heart; the operas of Thomas Adès have taken me all over the world and I’m delighted that we’ll be introducing Cambridge audiences to the orchestral suite from Powder Her Face. Music from another great opera composer, Franz Schreker, features later in the season and I look forward to sharing my enthusiasm for both these composers in pre-concert talks.
In December, we perform music from all three of Leonard Bernstein’s New York-inspired musicals. A rare concert performance of Wonderful Town is prefaced with selections from On the Town and West Side Story as part of the world’s Bernstein 100 celebrations.
This season we present two concerts for families: in January we are joined by the prodigiously talented Matthew Sharp, who is creating a brand new show especially for the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra, and in May the Philharmonic Chorus take centre stage for the brilliant re-working of a Roald Dahl classic.
We are sad to be saying farewell to Steve Bingham, who has led the Cambridge Philharmonic with such distinction for nearly 20 years, but we are delighted to welcome Paula Muldoon as our new leader. Both of these consummate musicians will be featured in orchestral showpieces: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.
As always, we look forward to working with a stellar ensemble of guest soloists, including BBC Young Musician Martin James Bartlett, principal cello of the RPO Richard Harwood, and Cambridge Phil favourites Milan Siljanov, Rebecca Bottone, Victoria Simmonds and Peter Auty.
We also perform two of the greatest choral masterworks: Haydn’s The Seasons (in a new translation by Paul McCreesh) and the Verdi Requiem, for which we are delighted to be joining forces with the Saffron Walden Choral Society in the critically-acclaimed acoustic of Saffron Hall.
We look forward to welcoming you to our concerts and thank you for supporting the Cambridge Philharmonic.
Timothy Redmond
Principal Conductor
