RVW, Elena Kats-Chernin & John McCabe's Notturni ed Alba with Donna Lennard from Kensington Symphony Orchestra & Russell Keable

The Kensington Symphony Orchestra & Russell Keable at Cadogan Hall

Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to St John's Smith Square on Monday 16 October 2023 to open their 2023/24  season with a concert marking music director Russell Keable's 40 years with the orchestra. The main work in the programme is RVW's A London Symphony, but the orchestra is pairing that with a couple of terrific more recent works by Elena Kats-Chernin and John McCabe. 

Soviet-born Australian composer, Elena Kats-Chernin describes Big Rhap as musical sketch of her memories of hearing her mother play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 when the family lived in Russia. The work was commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2017. John McCabe's song-cycle Notturni ed Alba dates from 1970 and features settings of four Medieval Latin poems dealing with various aspects of night. Premiered at the 1970 Three Choirs Festival by soprano Sheila Armstrong, to whom it is dedicated, and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by Louis Frémaux, it has been described as most exotically and seductively beautiful music McCabe has written. Kensington Symphony Orchestra will be joined by soprano Donna Lennard for the performance.

Looking ahead, the orchestra's season is full of the exciting, interesting and unusual, with Martinů's Symphony No.3 and Janáček's Taras Bulba (27 November, Cadogan Hall), Ruth Gipps' Horn Concerto (6 February 2024, Cadogan Hall), Dohnányi's Symphonic Minutes plus Mahler, Lili Boulanger and Stravinsky (18 March 2024, St John's Smith Square), 

Full details from the orchestra's website.