Tag Archives: English Symphony Orchestra

News: Elgar Festival 2026 – tickets now on sale

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by Ben Hogwood, with adapted text from the press release

Set against the backdrop of ‘Elgar Country’, the Elgar Festival is a highlight of the West Midlands cultural calendar, this year taking place across the scenic destinations of Worcester, Malvern, and Pershore from 23 – 31 May 2026. The festival celebrates the enduring legacy of Worcester-born composer Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934), through a diverse programme featuring world-class artists and accessible performing experiences, talks, exhibitions and guided walks designed to attract the broadest audience.

GALA CONCERT IN WORCESTER CATHEDRAL

Amongst highlights this year is a Gala Concert in Worcester Cathedral on Saturday 30 May which features a performance of the rarely-heard Cello Concerto by Elgar in the version for Viola, prepared by Lionel Tertis and premiered under Elgar’s baton in 1930. The work is to be performed by one of today’s leading performers and educationalists, Rosalind Ventris, with the English Symphony Orchestra (ESO) under their Principal Conductor Kenneth Woods. For the second half, the ESO will be joined by the Elgar Festival Chorus for another Elgar rarity; the composer’s early ‘symphony for chorus and orchestra’, ‘The Black Knight’.

‘GREAT BRITISH TONE POEMS’

There will be a further opportunity to hear the English Symphony Orchestra – as Orchestra-in-Residence at the Elgar Festival – on Friday 29 May at Worcester Cathedral in a rousing ‘Great British Tone Poems’ programme, to include Elgar’s ebullient ‘Falstaff’, Bax’s evocative ‘Tintagel’ and Holst’s ever-popular ‘The Planets’ Suite.

STRING GREATS AND NEW DISCOVERIES

On Thursday 28 May, the ESO Strings perform at Great Malvern Priory in a programme of masterpieces from the string repertoire; popular works by Elgar alongside ‘Rakastava’ by Sibelius, and Schoenberg’s ‘Verklarte Nacht’ (‘Transfigured Night’), both haunting and powerful. The final work is ‘Night Windows’ by Thea Musgrave; a five-movement chamber work inspired by a painting of that name by Edward Hopper.

THEA MUSGRAVE CELEBRATED AS FEATURED COMPOSER

The distinguished 97-year-old Scottish-American composer, Thea Musgrave, is featured composer this year at the Elgar Festival and her work will be showcased in performances throughout the event.

GUEST ARTISTS

Guest artists include oboist Nicholas Daniel and composer and pianist Huw Watkins. I Fagiolini, the British solo voice ensemble and Director Robert Hollingworth will be making a special visit as part of their 40th anniversary tour. Already fully booked is an evening with cellists Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber, while leading record producer Andrew Keener will be reminiscing on his work in the studio with some of the most renowned Elgar conductors and instrumentalists from the 1980s to the present day.

In recital, soprano April Fredrick who, as ESO Affiliate Artist, is well-known to audiences for her many fine performances and recordings, will be joined by acclaimed composer-pianist Eric McElroy and guests Grace Shepherd, violin, and narrator Joseph Campbell Powell, to explore the World War I experiences in words and music of regional luminaries including composers Ivor Gurney, George Butterworth, Arthur Bliss, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

BEST-LOVED ENSEMBLES

Offering FREE admittance is a popular programme given by Worcestershire Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra co-founded by Sir Edward Elgar, providing an opportunity for families to experience the thrill of live orchestral music. Choral and song repertoire is to be performed by the region’s best-loved ensembles including The Elgar Chorale, and The Jenny Lind Singers who celebrate the works of women composers past and present.

An exciting new collaboration is to be led by Malvern-based multi-disciplinary artist Nakisha Swatton who is working with local amateur and professional musicians to create new musical portraits inspired by Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’. International competition winner Roman Kosyakov brings the 2026 festival to a close in virtuosic style with a piano transcription of Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’.

PARTICIPATORY EVENTS FOR MUSICIANS OF ALL AGES

At Malvern College, a ‘Come and Play Elgar’ day invites amateur musicians to perform alongside members of the English Symphony Orchestra in two of Elgar’s most challenging overtures as part of a collaborative workshop.

The ‘Elgar for Everyone’ Family Concert is hosted by ESO Youth’s patron, Classic FM broadcaster, composer and author Zeb Soanes, and provides an introduction to the orchestra for music lovers of all ages. Over 100 young musicians from across Elgar Country will play alongside their teachers and ESO mentors for a performance following rehearsals and workshops. A highlight of the program includes the premiere of the winning entries from the 2026 Young Composers Competition.

Participants from the Elgar Festival/Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Young Performer Showcase Programme will perform works for string quartet by Elgar and Rebecca Clarke at the Church of St Mary Magdalene, NT Croome Court.

FREE AND INFORMAL EVENTS

All concerts at the Elgar Festival offer free entry for under 18s accompanied by full-paying adults. Many other events are free-of-charge including relaxed concerts, talks, film and an exhibition.

‘ELGAR FOR EVERYONE’ – BACKGROUND TO THE ELGAR FESTIVAL

Since its inception in 2018, the annual Elgar Festival has grown from a weekend to a 9-day celebration of the life and music of Worcester’s most famous son and Britain’s great composer, Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), held at a number of integral venues of both historic interest and personal significance to the composer including Worcester Cathedral and Great Malvern Priory. The Elgar Festival was The Guardian’s Crtic’s Pick in 2018 and in 2022 featured as one of the top 20 Jubilee events. https://elgarfestival.org/about/

FURTHER INFORMATION AND BOOKINGS

Elgar Festival 23 – 31 May 2026
Patron: Julian Lloyd Webber
Artistic Director: Kenneth Woods
Orchestra-in-Residence: English Symphony Orchestra
Programme information and ticket sales
Online: www.elgarfestival.org
Email: elgar@elgarfestival.org
Telephone: 01905 611 427
In person: Worcester Theatres, Huntingdon Hall Box Office, CrownGate, Worcester WR1 3LD

HOW TO SUPPORT THE ELGAR FESTIVAL

The Elgar Festival is raising money to help deliver its 2026 iteration and to continue the development of its range of events for people of all ages, interests, and lifestyles. Funding continues to be a huge challenge across all arts organisations and donations are valuable in helping to continue the legacy of one of England’s most revered composers, contributing towards costs for relaxed concerts, artist’s fees and instrument and venue hire, and keeping the Free events free for all. https://elgarfestival.org/support/

Published post no.2,839 – Friday 27 March 2026

In Concert – Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Vaughan Williams, Sawyers & Elgar @ Cheltenham Town Hall

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Zoë Beyers (violin, above), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Vaughan Williams The Wasps (1909) – Overture
Sawyers Symphony no.6 ‘A Pastoral’ (2022) [World Premiere]
Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1909-10)

Town Hall, Cheltenham
Sunday 1 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo of Zoë Beyers (c) Bill Leighton

This afternoon’s concert in the second season of its Cheltenham residency found the English Symphony Orchestra tackling, appropriately enough, an all-English programme; the Overture from Vaughan Williams’s incidental music to The Wasps being an ideal curtain-raiser with its interplay of incisiveness and eloquence ideally judged. The performance was enhanced by an unerring balance that allowed such as Rita Schindler’s dextrous harp playing to register with real clarity. Hopefully the whole suite will appear at an ESO concert sometime in the future.

The music of Philip Sawyers has appeared frequently on ESO programmes this past decade, with his Third Symphony launching the orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project back in 2016. A decade on bought the premiere of his Sixth Symphony – less epic in scope than the Third or Fourth in this cycle and without the searching ambiguities of the Fifth, but a piece whose modest length (30 minutes) or forces (double woodwind, horns and trumpets) likely belie the emotional range of what is being played out across these four compact movements.

Its subtitle evidently an afterthought, ‘A Pastoral’ deftly characterizes this symphony audibly influenced by if never beholden to that by Beethoven. Hence the opening Moderato implies a journey whose destination seems at best uncertain, its accumulating tension carried over into an Andante where scenic aspect is countered with more subjective preoccupations. Nor is the Allegro of an unchecked jollity, the insistent rhythmic profile accumulating an impetus such as takes on more elemental qualities in its visceral latter stages. The final Allegretto surveys all that went before (whether motivically or emotionally) through a process of clarifying and honing earlier ideas towards an ending which, with its evocation of birdsong, affords closure but not catharsis. An ambivalence Sawyers will hopefully address in his Seventh Symphony.

Assuredly directed by Kenneth Woods (below), this first performance was almost all that could have been wished as to accuracy of ensemble or interpretive insight. Good to hear it was recorded for future release, and hopefully Sawyers’s Sixth will receive more hearings before too long.

After the interval, Zoë Beyers repeated what was a well-received account of Elgar’s Violin Concerto from last year’s Elgar Festival. With its opulent scale and solo part that had been conceived for Fritz Kreisler, this could never be other than a testing proposition but Beyers succeeded admirably in conveying that formal intricacy and expressive force which typify this work. The opening Allegro was rarely other than cohesive, thanks not least to Woods’s astute accompanying, and the Andante radiated an emotional warmth with no risk of undue emoting. Beyers had the measure of the lengthy finale, duly coming into her own with that accompanied cadenza such as reviews previous themes at an emotional remove and whose ambivalence resonated long after activity had been resumed on the way to a decisive close.

An engrossing performance which concluded this concert in impressive fashion. Woods and the ESO return to Cheltenham Town Hall next month with a new piece by David Matthews, alongside Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (for strings) and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

To read more about the orchestra’s 2025/26 season, visit the English Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names for more on violinist Zoë Beyers, conductor Kenneth Woods and composer Philip Sawyers

Published post no.2,786 – Monday 2 February 2026

In concert – Wednesday 12 November: English Symphony Orchestra to bring Roaring Twenties to life in opening concert of 2025-26 Malvern Residency

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reposted by Ben Hogwood Photo Zoe Beyers leading the English Symphony Orchestra (c) Michael Whitefoot

The renowned English Symphony Orchestra (ESO), under their principal conductor Kenneth Woods, is to make a highly anticipated return to Malvern Theatres, Worcestershire on Wednesday 12 November at 7:30pm with a programme celebrating the adventurous spirit and playful energy of the 1920s, as part of their Autumn-Winter Residency.

LIVELY SPIRIT OF THE ROARING TWENTIES

The evening will feature works by composers who captured the era’s lively spirit, including Erwin Schulhoff’s Suite for Chamber Orchestra, Darius Milhaud’s The Ox on the Roof’ and Kurt Weill’s raucous cabaret songs, to be performed by the ESO’s first affiliate artist, soprano April Fredrick. The programme opens with the music of Joseph Haydn and a performance of his Symphony No. 60 entitled The Absent-Minded Gentleman, delighting in the composer’s celebrated wit and humour.
 
Kenneth Woods, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the ESO, introduces the programme: “Erwin Schulhoff’s suave Suite for Chamber Orchestra takes listeners on a guided tour of 20s dance crazes, from the shimmy to the tango. Milhaud’s zany ballet score The Ox on the Roof was inspired by the comedy of Charlie Chaplin and the dance music of Brazil, while Kurt Weill’s songs reflect life in and around the cabaret scene in all its humour and sensuality. The programme opens with Haydn’s Symphony No.60, The Absent-Minded Gentleman, quite possibly the funniest and most surreal symphony ever composed.”

ENGLISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – MALVERN RESIDENCY

Wednesday 12 November 2025, 7.30pm
Malvern Theatres Grange Road, Malvern, Worcs. WR14 3HB
English Symphony Orchestra: The Joker’s Wild – Mischief in Music
Haydn Symphony No. 60 (‘Il Distratto’) in C
Weill Cabaret Songs
Schulhoff Suite for Chamber Orchestra
Milhaud The Ox on the Roof

April Fredrick (soprano), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

For more information visit the Malvern Theatres website

Published post no.2,708 – Tuesday 4 November 2025

Talking Heads: Doing It Their Way – Kenneth Woods, ESO Records and the Future

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interview by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Julie Andrews

You do not move forward by standing still. That is evidently the maxim of the English Symphony Orchestra, whose first release on its new in-house label has just been issued. Apropos of this and other matters, Arcana spoke recently to Kenneth Woods, the principal conductor and artistic director of the ESO, about his plans for this audacious undertaking.

It made sense to begin with the motivation behind the establishing of ESO Records. ‘‘It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Being able to release whatever we want, and whenever we want, to is hugely empowering for us as an orchestra. It gives us a chance to align our concert work with our online presence and recording programme more strategically’’.

As to whether these releases will be mainly studio or live recordings, ‘‘It’ll be a combination of both. I think that over the course of the next couple of years, listeners will start to discern a number of threads within the ESO Records portfolio. Our first release is an Elgar Festival disc with Elgar’s First Symphony and his concert overture In the South. This is a great way for us to spread the word about the festival internationally and also to share the exceptional quality of Elgar Festival events. And, with the festival doing so many new or lesser-known works, we can share that music with a world-wide audience.

‘‘As a result of the COVID pandemic, we’ve an enormous amount of material ‘in the can’ that we recorded for ESO Digital (our online video portal). ESO Records gives us a chance to share that body of work, also to highlight and complement our future concerts. For instance, we’ll be releasing our one-per-part version of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony to coincide with a run of performances in December. And there are studio projects such as the Sibelius cycle which have continued as we tie-in the recording of its future instalments to public concerts’’.

Woods is keen to point out that ESO Digital release will complement the orchestra’s ongoing schedule of releases for other labels. ‘‘Since we released the first disc of my tenure in 2015, we’ve worked with Nimbus, Lyrita, Signum, Avie, Toccata and Somm among others. While I hope that many of those partnerships will continue, the economic climate for labels is very difficult. They’ve a lot of fixed costs and declining revenue streams which means that, for a group like us, finding release slots and agreeing repertoire or projects has become more complicated. Something like the Sibelius cycle which, while it is very important to us as an orchestra, is not the kind of repertoire many labels do anymore.

‘‘One can also be hampered through labels having other versions of the same repertoire in the pipeline or in their back catalogue. That said, I’d contend the world does need recordings of pieces which emerge out of shared sympathy and enthusiasm for the music among players, conductor and production team. There’s always more to be said about the greatest music, and if we feel we’ve something meaningful to contribute, then we’re going to say it’’.

Given the varying economic and logistical factors, ESO Records might not always be issued both as CDs and Downloads. ‘‘This will vary according to the release. It makes to put the Elgar Festival Live stuff makes out on CD because they make a great souvenir for attendees. But with most projects today, physical sales are so small it isn’t worth the cost or complexity of maintaining an inventory and shipping it all over the world. Moreover, the argument used to be that CDs sounded better, but the quality now at 24-bit and 96-kHz sampling contains between three and ten times as much detail and information. We want our listeners to hear our work in the best possible quality, and these days that means streaming or hi-res downloads’’.

With this in mind, listeners can look forward to no mean diversity in terms of future issues. ‘‘I mentioned we were looking to create coherent and ongoing threads among our releases. Elgar Festival Live has several more releases ready and we’ll be recording our performances at this year’s and all future festivals. The orchestra’s long-term commitment to contemporary music will be a big part of our future work, and I expect this to feature many of the amazing composers that listeners have come to associate with ESO such as Philip Sawyers, Adrian Williams, Emily Doolittle, David Matthews and Steve Elcock. We’re also keen to draw on the ESO’s extensive archive of performances by composers such as Ireland, McCabe, Maw, Simpson and Arnold, along with performances conducted by the likes of Michael Tippett and Yehudi Menuhin, with a wider public.”

‘‘The Sibelius and Mahler projects are indicative of our desire to put our stamp on so-called standard repertoire or, as I prefer to call it, the greatest music ever written. One of the best things about streaming is that not every release needs to be a 70-minute album. Archival recordings might well come out as singles or EPs to align with composer anniversaries or birthdays, historic occasions and upcoming concerts – so there’ll be releases of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Bartók and Shostakovich. I’m also very proud of our track record of championing historically suppressed music, so listeners can expect further issues of Gál, Schulhoff, Kapralova, Krenek and Weinberg.”

‘‘Finally, ESO Records will give us greater freedom to develop collaborative projects with artistic partners including composers, soloists and directors. We’ve just recorded a fantastic disc of organ concertos by Poulenc, Hindemith and Daniel Pinkham with organist Iain Quinn for release next year, and I’m hopeful there’ll be many opportunities in the future to work collaboratively so as to bring worthwhile music to the public’s attention’’.

Much to look forward to, then, from a label whose artists have never shied away in pushing the envelope when it comes to imaginative programming and innovative presentation. Qualities, indeed, that will no doubt prove synonymous with whatever releases emerge from the ever-enterprising English Symphony Orchestra.

You can read Richard’s review of the first instalment in the English Symphony Orchestra’s Sibelius cycle on Arcana, with the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies and Tapiola

Published post no.2,623 – Monday 10 August 2025

On Record – English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods – Sibelius: Symphonies 6 & 7, Tapiola (ESO Records)

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Jean Sibelius
Symphony no.6 in D minor Op. 104 (1918-23)
Symphony no.7 in C major Op. 105 (1923-4)
Tapiola, Op, 112 (1926)

English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

ESO Records ESO2502 [67’16”]
Producers Phil Rowlands, Michael Young Engineer Tim Burton

Recorded 1-2 March 2022 (Symphony no.6 & Tapiola); 2 May 2023 (Symphony no.7) at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Good to find the English Symphony Orchestra issuing the follow-up release on its own label (after Elgar’s First Symphony and In the South), launching an ambitious project to record all seven symphonies and Tapiola by Sibelius prior to the 70th anniversary of his death in 2027.

What are the performances like?

Only if the Sixth Symphony is considered neo-classical does it feel elusive, rather than a deft reformulation of Classical precepts as here. Hence the first movement unfolds as a seamless evolution whose emotional contrasts are incidental – Kenneth Woods ensuring its purposeful course complements the circling repetitions of the following intermezzo, with its speculative variations on those almost casual opening gestures. Ideally paced, the scherzo projects a more incisive tone which the finale then pursues in a refracted sonata design that gains intensity up to its climactic mid-point. Tension drops momentarily here, quickly restored for a disarming reprise of its opening and coda whose evanescence is well conveyed; a reminder that Sibelius Six is as much about the eschewal of beginnings and endings in its seeking a new coherence.

A decisive factor in the Seventh Symphony is how its overall trajectory is sensed – the ending implicit within the beginning, as Sibelius fuses form and content with an inevitability always evident here. After an expectant if not unduly tense introduction, Woods builds the first main section with unforced eloquence to a first statement of the trombone chorale that provides the formal backbone. His transition into the ‘scherzo’ is less abrupt than many, picking up energy as the chorale’s re-emergence generates requisite momentum to sustain a relatively extended ‘intermezzo’. If his approach to the chorale’s last appearance is a little restrained, the latter’s intensity carries over into a searing string threnody that subsides into pensive uncertainty; the music gathering itself for a magisterial crescendo which does not so much end as cease to be.

Tapiola was Sibelius’s last completed major work, and one whose prefatory quatrain implies an elemental aspect rendered here through the almost total absence of transition in this music of incessant evolution. A quality to the fore in a perceptive reading where Woods secures just the right balance between formal unity and expressive diversity across its underlying course. Occasionally there seems a marginal lack of that ‘otherness’ such as endows this music with its uniquely disquieting aura, but steadily accumulating momentum is rarely in doubt on the approach to the seething climax, or a string threnody whose anguish bestows only the most tenuous of benedictions. A reminder, also, that not the least reason Sibelius may have failed to realize an ‘Eighth Symphony’ was because he had already done so with the present work.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. Whether or not the cycle unfolds consistently in reverse order (with a coupling of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies having already been announced), this opening instalment is the more pertinent for focussing on Sibelius’s last years of sustained creativity.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The ESO is heard to advantage in the spacious ambience of Wyastone Hall, and there are detailed booklet notes by Guy Rickards. Make no mistake, these are deeply thoughtful and superbly realized performances which launch the ESO’s Sibelius cycle in impressive fashion.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Ulysees Arts website. Click on the names to read more about the English Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Woods, and for the Ernest Bloch Society

Published post no.2,622 – Sunday 10 August 2025