Baden Symphony

• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – Four Characteristic Waltzes, Op. 22
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Tuba Concerto
• Frederic H. Cowen – ‘Reverie’ for Orchestra
• Alice Mary Smith – Symphony in C minor (1863)

In the first concert of the season, the Sinfonia Baden presents a veritable cross-section of England’s musical landscape: the evening opens with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a composer who epitomises the multicultural side of a Britain that spans the globe. The son of an English mother and a doctor from Sierra Leone, he was one of the first Black musicians to make his mark.

A hallmark of English orchestral music is the sound of the brass section. Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto is very much in this tradition, and Sinfonia Baden will be performing it with Markus Hauenstein, a soloist from the region.

Frederic Cowen’s short ‘Reverie’ symbolises England’s orientation towards continental music. The composer channels his own, thoroughly British musical language into a typically German form: the symphonic poem.

To round off the programme, the Sinfonia Baden presents the first symphony by a woman to be completed and performed in England: Alice Mary Smith wrote her Symphony in C minor in 1863, which was a great success. In 1883, she became one of the first women to be elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music!