Concerts
2026/27 Centenary Season
Autumn Concert 2026
Our first concert of the season sees our President, clarinettist Sarah Williamson return to play with us for a second time. This year, Sarah will be performing Weber's 2nd Clarinet Concerto.
Starting the concert will be Mozart's Don Giovanni Overture, composed in haste as the composer travelled to the premiere. It is said that the ink was still drying as the musicians were given their music.
Finally, we perform the first symphony of French romantic composer Emilie Mayer.
Spring Concert 2027
For our Spring concert, we will be performing at The Rochester Grammar School for Girls featuring works almost exclusively by female composers. Emilie Mayer features again, this time with her Faust Overture. Former MMS violist and soprano, Tabitha Reynolds then joins us to perform Elgar's song cycle Sea Pictures.
Before we start the second half, we will be joined by musicologist and author, Dr Leah Broad, who will be giving a talk. Her new book, Unsung will also be available to purchase.
Following this, we will perform Avril Coleridge-Taylor's Sussex Landscape and Ruth Gipps' Second Symphony
Summer Centenary Concert 2027
Our final concert of the season is our Centenary Concert and for this we are going big. We begin with Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, composed as a tribute to the University of Breslau for awarding him an honorary doctorate. Brahms, who was known to be an ironic joker, filled his quota by creating a "very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé" in an intricately designed structure made to appear loose and episodic, thus drawing on the "academic" for both his sources and their treatment.
We then perform Sinfonietta No. 2 by our composer-in-residence, Jacob Bride, whose first commission (Sinfonietta No. 1) was premiered by this orchestra over twenty years ago.
Finally we join with Rochester Choral Society; The Bradstow Singers; Maidstone Choral Union; East Malling Singers; East Coast Chamber Choir; and the Choir of The Rochester Grammar School for Beethoven's monumental 9th Symphony, the "choral". Joined by soloists Lizzie Searle; Tabitha Reynolds; Ed Hughes; and Jack Holton, this promises to be a spectacular performance of one of the greatest works in the classical repertoire and a fitting way to celebrate our 100th anniversary.