Saturday  12 June 2027 7.30pm
St Andrew’s Garrison Church, Aldershot, GU11 2BY – Venue Information

Conductor: Daniel Hogan

Soloist: Emily Hodkinson (Mezzo-soprano)

Bax: Tintagel
Elgar: Sea Pictures
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Our final concert of the season includes some exciting and contrasting works, all capturing a musical expression of the sea and seascapes. To help us to do this, we welcome mezzo-soprano soloist, Emily Hodkinson, who will perform Elgar’s evocative Sea Pictures. Emily is an opera singer, who recently graduated from the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she won various awards and scholarships. She has performed as a concert soloist and in solo operatic roles including at Glyndebourne. Elgar’s work, which is a song cycle based on 5 poems by different authors, was premiered in 1899 with Clara Butt singing (and dressed as a mermaid).

The concert opens with Arnold Bax’s symphonic poem, Tintagel, which, he said, “aims to offer an impression of the cliffs and castle of Tintagel and the sea on a sunny but not windless summer day”. By contrast, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, the final work in the concert, is based on The Arabian Nights. The dazzling, colourful orchestration conjures not only pictures of the orient but also of sea voyages and shipwrecks. You are warmly invited to join us on this evening of maritime adventure…although we can’t promise that anyone will be dressed as a mermaid!