Newsletter, September 2004
Honorary officers of the Friends
At the AGM of the Friends in March 2004 Andrew Ellis and Jim Harrison confirmed that they wished to step down as Honorary Chairman and Honorary Secretary respectively. Both had given vital support and encouragement to the Orchestra for many years; they travelled to distant venues and manned the Friends' information point, seeking to publicise the orchestra's activities and recruit new Friends. Members of the Orchestra present at the AGM thanked Andrew and Jim for all their support, and hoped that they would still attend our concerts.
Since the AGM it has not yet proved possible to replace either Andrew or Jim on a permanent basis, so Peter Kerr (Honorary Treasurer of the Friends) has taken on some additional tasks, and Ron Nourse (like Peter, a playing member of the Orchestra) has taken responsibility for compiling this Newsletter.
"We all need friends"
This is always true, and never more so than in this context. The Friends (set up as registered charity 268654 by Douglas Smith and Carroll Jones in 1974 as the Friends of Cheltenham Sunday Players) has throughout those thirty years given vital financial support to the orchestra, pursuing Douglas' aim of bringing live orchestral music to venues in the Cotswolds where such music was never heard. As the orchestra has enlarged far beyond its original thirty or so players, so the venues have had to be larger, but still Douglas' aim is being pursued, in towns such as Winchcombe, Northleach, Cirencester, Tewkesbury and Pershore.
The Friends' financial support is vital to the orchestra, whose high ambitions are inevitably matched by its operating costs. The orchestra has a professional conductor in David Curtis and engages professional soloists, and the cost of hiring some of the music now in the repertoire is often very high.
In parallel with that, the playing standard of the orchestra is also improving under David's baton, the orchestra is tackling more difficult works and a number of experienced players have joined the ranks in the past year.
Recent developments
The orchestra gives seven or eight concerts a year; an increasing number of them being for charity. After the orchestra's costs have been met, several charities have made significant profits for their good causes, among them recently being the Gloucestershire Arthritis Trust, the Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy Trust (LINC), Cheltenham, the Farmers' Overseas Action Group (FOAG) and the Friends of Chilonga (both supporting communities in Africa).
Charity concerts are not of course a totally altruistic gesture - they do help to ensure good audiences!
Another, perhaps more subtle, development in recent times has been the orchestra's increasing encouragement of the musical interests of children and young people; briefly, these include the award in 2003 of an annual Music prize for the outstanding "leaver" at Prestbury St Mary's Junior School (where the orchestra rehearses), and concerts with Leckhampton School Primary School choir and the Gloucestershire Young Musician of the Year (more about these later in this Newsletter).
A look back at recent concerts
February 22nd 2004 saw a double first for the orchestra, with two world premieres in the one programme at Pittville Pump Room. These were Symphony #2, "the Cheltenham Symphony" by the talented young local composer Colin Decio, and David Barlow's "The Elgar Enigma", a narrative for two speakers and orchestra, describing, with musical quotations, the background to the writing of the Enigma Variations. The whole concert was very well received by a good-sized audience.
The March 27th concert at Winchcombe Church contained performances of Prokofiev's "Classical" Symphony and Beethoven's 4th Symphony, but the highlight of the evening was surely the virtuoso performance of the Haydn Cello Concerto in D by the brilliant young South Korean Ji-Yeon Woo. This performance very nearly did not take place, through a problem in Immigration at Heathrow Airport (the soloist flew in from Seoul especially for this concert).
"Red-blooded" probably best describes the concert at All Saints Church, Cheltenham, on 15th May. How else can one describe a programme comprising works by Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Mahler?
The orchestra rounded off its 2003/4 season with its annual visit to Leonard
Stanley Priory on July 4th. The organiser of what is now the Leonard Stanley
Festival announced that this was not, as previously thought, the twenty-sixth,
but the twenty-seventh consecutive annual appearance of the orchestra there.
A small point, you might say, but behind that statement is that Douglas
Smith first took his Sunday Players to Leonard Stanley in 1978, and it was
this that inspired local people to create an annual two-week-long Music
Festival. The rest is history!
The concert at Leonard Stanley included an accomplished performance of Mozart's
Flute concerto in G by Nicola Shorland, Gloucestershire Young Musician 2004.
It was a pleasure to see Douglas Smith, the orchestra's founder, and
his wife Ann at the concert.
Concerts in autumn 2004
October 2nd (7.30 pm) sees the orchestra's first ever concert at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury. The popular programme (in support of the Tewkesbury Branch of Save the Children) will include Humperdinck's Overture to Hansel and Gretel, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf", and Elgar's Three Bavarian Dances and Enigma Variations. Tickets from the Roses Theatre Box Office, 01684 295074
On October 30th at 7.30pm the orchestra will be performing at Pershore
Abbey in aid of FOAG. The concert will include Rossini's "Semiramide"
Overture, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Schumann's 3rd Symphony.
Tickets from FOAG Office, 01905 830745
On November 20th at 7.30pm the orchestra will again be breaking new ground,
with a concert at St Andrew's Church, Montpellier, Cheltenham. The
programme will consist of: Schoenberg's Second Chamber Symphony, Mozart's
Violin concerto in D (soloist: David le Page) and Schumann's 3rd Symphony.
This concert will be in aid of the Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy
Trust (LINC), Cheltenham.
Tickets from members of the orchestra, and at the door
Finally in 2004, the orchestra will be playing at Pittville Pump Room at
7.30pm on Sunday December 19th (note the day of the week, and also the changed
time - not as previously advertised). It is intended to build on the enormous
success of last year's Christmas concert, when the orchestra was joined
by a choir from Leckhampton Primary School, comprising some seventy children.
The Choir will again join the orchestra in December 2004, this time performing
two songs with orchestral accompaniment. Also taking part will be Jemima
Phillips (harp, Gloucestershire Young Musician 2003) and Nicola Shorland
(flute, GYM 2004), performing Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp.
Another memorable evening is in prospect for everyone involved. If the Christmas
2003 concert is any guide, it will be an occasion when one can honestly
say - "book early to avoid disappointment". (And come
early to get a good seat).
Tickets from Town Hall Box Office 01242 227929
Looking ahead to 2005
The orchestra's committee is still working on the details of concerts
in 2005, which we already know will include appearances at St Philip and
St James Church, Cheltenham, Northleach Church, and Pittville Pump Room.
The Pump Room concert at 7.30pm on Saturday May 7th 2005 ought to go onto
your calendars right away. The programme will include a performance of Grieg's
much-loved Piano Concerto by the outstanding young British pianist Samantha
Ward. Samantha was one of this year's winners of the Philip and Dorothy
Green Awards for Young Concert Artists, a scheme run by Making Music (formerly
the National Federation of Music Societies), One aim of the scheme is to
give concert platform experience to young artists. Samantha's performance
of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with the Hitchin Symphony Orchestra
in May 2004 was given an ecstatic review, and the CSO is looking forward
very much to performing with her next year.
Full details of the orchestra's concerts in 2005 will be published at the end of 2004.
And finally…
Hopefully you have found something of interest in this Newsletter, and better still you have put several CSO concert dates on your calendar.
If you have any suggestions to make as to any aspect of the Friends, or
of the orchestra itself, please get in touch with a member of the orchestra's
committee. Details are to be found on www.cheltenhamsymphonyorchestra.info or contact:
Ron Nourse 01242 675855 or ron@nourse.fsnet.co.uk
And really finally, remember that there are two ways in which you can make your donation count for much more:
Payments to the Friends of Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra may be Gift Aid-ed;
you sign a form, just once, to certify that you pay at least the Basic Rate
of Income Tax. Thereafter, for each donation made, the Treasurer is able
to reclaim from the Inland Revenue, on behalf of the Friends, the significant
sum of 28p in the pound. The declaration is also retrospective to the year
2000. Unlike covenanting, Gift Aid-ing does not represent a longstanding
forward commitment; it operates on a payment by payment basis.
If you are not Gift Aid-ing your donations already, please consider contacting
the Friends' Treasurer (Peter Kerr, 01242 572725), to obtain the relevant
form.
Alternatively, thanks to a new arrangement, one can contribute to the Friends (and produce the same benefit) by quoting the Friends' unique Charity code ZAE04UG on a Self Assessment Tax Return.