Saturday 21 March 2026 7.45pm
St Andrew’s Garrison Church, Aldershot, GU11 2BY – Venue Information
Guest Conductor: Philip Ellis
Soloist: So-Ock Kim (Violin)
Beethoven: Egmont Overture
Brahms: Violin Concerto
Brahms: Serenade No. 1
For our March concert, we are welcoming a new guest conductor, Philip Ellis. Philip brings a wealth of experience with both professional and amateur orchestras, having been the winner of the Leeds Conductors’ Competition in 1991. He has also previously performed the Brahms’ Violin Concerto with much-loved soloist, So-Ock Kim, and, in common with the FSO, is delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with her once again. Composed in 1878, Brahms’ only violin concerto was dedicated to the composer’s great friend, Joseph Joachim, who premiered the work on New Year’s Day 1879. The public reception was frosty and, after the concert, Brahms, Joachim, and their friend Edvard Grieg withdrew to a tavern and got drunk! However, by the time the concerto was published as Opus 77, Brahms had polished it to his usual unforgiving standards. It endures as one of his essential masterpieces and one of the most beloved works in the concerto repertoire.
Our concert opens with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, written in 1809 as part of the incidental music to a play by Goethe. The subject of the music and dramatic narrative is the life and heroism of the 16th-century Count of Egmont, whose valiant stand against oppression mirrored Beethoven’s own political views. The overture is powerful and expressive and written in a style similar to his Symphony No. 5. By contrast, Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 is written in a lighter vein, and is one of the composer’s earliest orchestral works. Originally scored for a wind and string nonet, he later expanded it into a work for full orchestra. Although Brahms considered that the first performance “did not go very well”, he records that after every piece in the concert “the audience was shouting”. We can only hope that our performance is greeted with equal enthusiasm.
