THE Westmorland Youth Orchestra is preparing for its final concert of the year with a celebration of music written during or in response to World War One.
The group will be taking on a theme of 'war and peace' when it appears at the Lakes School later this month, in what will be one of its biggest concerts of the year - and one of its biennial charity concerts organised with Windermere Rotary Club.
"With the exception of the Weber Clarinet Concertino, all the music chosen by director Roland Fudge has links with WW1, to coincide with the current centenary," explained David Boxford, chairman of the orchestra.
The evening will include classics such as Gustav Holst’s Mars – the bringer of war - with its alien, mechanistic swagger, which threatens to destroy humanity, and Maurice Ravel's Forlane and Menuet from Le Tombeau de Couperin, written to honour friends killed in the trenches.
This piece responds to the horror of war with deceptive detachment by writing a charmingly beautiful acknowledgement of a much earlier French composer.
The work of Swiss composer Arthur Honegger will also feature.
Honegger was a student in Paris during the war and his Pastorale d’Été, written at that time, rejoices in the deep beauty of an unspoilt Alpine summer.
This paradoxical love of peaceful countryside finds poignantly powerful expression in The Banks of Green Willow by York's George Butterworth, who was killed on the Somme in 1916 having never heard it performed.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was a friend of Holst and Butterworth, and who had composition lessons from Ravel, rejoices in his Folk Song Suite in the rich cultural heritage of ordinary people.
The clarinet soloist for the showcase Weber Concertino will be Jack Horrocks, from Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, who played in this summer’s Proms at the Albert Hall.
A bagpipe will be played by Tom Skelhorne as the audience arrives, to further set the scene.
The concert will begin at 7.30pm on November 29, with welcome music played from 7pm.
Tickets are available on the door, in advance from Mountain Goat, Windermere, or by contacting 015395-60054.
See www.wyo.org.uk for more information
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