Salomon Past Concerts

'Their next concert is on March 3rd ...Put the date in your diaries now.' Classical Music blogspot - Robert Hugill.

'The Salomon's performance was a delight, capturing all the colour and excitement of a work tinged with longing for a homeland that Martinů had long-since left, never to return.' Simon Taylor, musicOMH.

'The Salomon Orchestra’s performance was breathtaking in its unanimity, precision, intonation, energy, excitement and commitment.' Jonathan Burton, Words and Music.

Tuesday 3rd March 2009 at St John's Smith Square

Conductor Dominic Wheeler Violin Sara Trickey

Britten Fanfare for St Edmundsbury

Britten Violin Concerto

Dvořák Othello

Martinů Symphony No.6 'Fantaisies symphoniques'

Carnegie Hall, New York, opened on 5th May 1891 with a concert including Tchaikovsky's Marche Solenelle conducted by the composer. Dvořák's Othello premièred there on 21st October 1892. Carnegie Hall has hosted world premières by Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Bartók, Stravinsky, Ives and Schoenberg, and Britten's Violin Concerto on 28th March 1940 conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. The main auditorium was designed by architect and cellist William Burnett Tuthill, seats an audience of up to 2,804 and remains one of the world's great venues.

Dvořák's Othello was the last in a triptych of symphonic poems that have become popular as independent overtures. A common theme runs through them, introduced In Nature's Realm, referred to in Carnival and developed in Othello. Dvořák called the triptych 'my very best orchestral works', an accolade he did not seem at the time to stretch to the New World symphony presented to his publisher at the same time.

The 22 year old Britten heard the posthumous first performance of Berg's Violin Concerto in Barcelona. The form of Britten's concerto, like Berg's, follows the pattern of Prokofiev's 1917 concerto (performed by Salomon in May 2007). The Berg première was on the eve of the Spanish civil war: the impact on pacifist Britten will have been all the greater and it is no coincidence that his violin concerto was completed as he moved to then peaceful America at the beginning of what was to become the second world war.

Violinist Sara Trickey brings her "beautifully refined tone" (Musical Opinion) and her "fiery and passionate" performance style (The Strad) to her award-winning career as both solo violinist and chamber musician. She studied at the Royal College of Music, at Cambridge University (where she achieved a double starred First in Classics), and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a Scholarship Student of Camilla Wicks.

Martinů joined the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra as a violinist after being dismissed from the Prague Conservatory. He moved to Paris in 1923 to study composition with Albert Roussell, and while there got to know conductor Charles Münch. When the German army moved on Paris Martinů fled to the South of France, then Spain, ending up in the USA in 1941. Like Dvořák before him Martinů had initial difficulty settling in America, but he learned English, taught (Burt Bacharach is counted amongst Martinů's students), and composed, gaining a commission from Koussevitsky. Münch commissioned Martinů's final 6th Symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 75th anniversary in 1955. Seemingly to fit Münch's style it is freer than his early war-influenced symphonies and was an enormous success with its first audiences.

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