Spring Concert 6 March 2026

Alexander Borodin’s four-act opera, Prince Igor, is based on the medieval Russian nationalistic epic, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. It tells the story of a 12th century military campaign, launched by the Prince of Novgorod-Seversk against the Polovtsians, an invading nomadic Tartar tribe. Quickly, the campaign takes a disastrous turn, and Igor and his son, Vladimir, are taken prisoner.

A member of the group of composers known as the “Russian Five,” Borodin divided his time between writing music and working as a highly respected research chemist. He worked on Prince Igor for 18 years, beginning in 1869, but the work remained unfinished when he died suddenly in 1887. The score was completed by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a 23-year-old Alexander  Glazunov. The premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in November, 1890.

Based on themes from the opera, the Overture to Prince Igor was reconstructed by Glazunov from Borodin’s sketches.

SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto, soloist: Sasha Parker

Although Jean Sibelius dreamed of becoming a violin virtuoso, he turned to composition instead, creating one of the instrument’s greatest concertos. While he wrote several works for violin, none matches the Violin Concerto in its fusion of technical brilliance and profound musical expression. Sibelius reshaped the traditional concerto form by placing the solo cadenza at the heart of the first movement, giving it structural as well as virtuosic importance. The work’s expansive opening, lyrical slow movement, and powerful finale—famously described by Donald Francis Tovey as “a polonaise for polar bears”—combine Nordic grandeur with exceptional emotional depth.

Our soloist: Sasha Parker is a nineteen year-old violinist-conductor studying at the Royal College of Music under Lutsia and Alina Ibragimova, having previously studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Sasha is a prizewinner of many international competitions, including first prize at the WMSO Young Musician’s Concerto Competition and second prize at the 44th Rodolfo Lipizer Competition in Gorizia, alongside prizes at the Ilona Féher Violin Competition in Budapest and the Sevenoaks Young Musician of the Year Competition.

BARTÓK: Concerto for Orchestra

The Concerto for Orchestra is a five-movement orchestral work. It is one of his best-known, most popular, and most accessible works from Bartók. The score is inscribed '15 August – 8 October 1943', and was premiered in December the following year, at the Symphony Hall, Boston, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly performed since.

Perhaps one of Bartók's best known pieces it has an apparently contradictory title 'Concerto for Orchestra'. This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók said he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way.