Orchestra Wellington: Fancy Free

Orchestra Wellington: Fancy Free

Sunday November 17
4pm, The Opera House

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No 3, Op 72b
Leonard Bernstein: Serenade for Violin (after Plato’s Symposium)
Beethoven: Fidelio Overture Op 72c
Leonard Bernstein: Fancy Free

Natalia Lomeiko, violin
Marc Taddei, conductor

Orchestra Wellington’s final subscription concert for the year shows two sides of American composer Leonard Bernstein, pairing the jazzy suite Fancy Free with his seriously philosophical Serenade for Violin. The concert also completes the orchestra’s cycle of overtures to Beethoven’s opera Fidelio.

Bernstein likened his Serenade to Plato’s Dialogue, calling it, “a series of related statements in praise of love”. To play it, Orchestra Wellington is pleased to welcome Natalia Lomeiko, who has been garnering rave reviews from The Strad since winning the Michael Hill Violin Competition a decade ago. Born into a family of musicians in Novosibirsk, Russia, Natalia Lomeiko has established herself internationally as a regular performing artist. She has appeared as soloist with the Royal and Tokyo Royal Philharmonics among many other orchestras, and her chamber music colleagues include Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet and Dmitry Sitkovetsky.

Four rimshots on the snare-drum launch Bernstein’s Fancy Free, a ballet suite filled with the rhythms and energy of New York’s Jazz Age. The 1944 ballet tells the adventures of three sailors on shore leave. They go to a bar (of course!), dance with girls they meet there, fight over them and finally make peace.

The music gives a nod to Stravinsky’s motoric rhythms, but Fancy Free’s biggest influences are the streets and clubs of New York, pulsing with jazz, Latin rhythms and blues harmonies.

Leonore No 3 was written for a revised 1806 version of his opera Fidelio. It is a glorious tone poem with a heroic sweep picturing the opera’s journey from darkness to light.

When the opera was revived in 1814, Beethoven wrote a completely new overture. Now known as Fidelio, it packs a mighty punch right from the fearless, leaping challenge of its opening chords.

“Natalia Lomeiko is one of the most brilliant of our younger violinists” – Yehudi Menuhin

ENDS

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