Edinburgh City Orchestra

We had such an amazing time at the weekend, with our performance to a sold-out St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh of some beautiful works for orchestra a wonderful success! Thanks to everyone involved in organising the concert, including the wonderful staff of St. Giles', to our brilliant soloist Ruaridh Bakke-Clarinet - and not least of course to our fantastic audience! It was a joy to perform and we hope to see as many of you at our future events, with more information to come in the next few weeks!

Today's the day! If you're not yet booked in, there's still time to come and see the Edinburgh City Orchestra perform THIS EVENING at St Giles' Cathedral. We'll be opening tonight's concert with Mendelssohn's evocative 'Hebrides' overture, followed by Mozart's ever-popular Clarinet Concerto, featuring the wonderful Ruaridh Bakke-Clarinet. After the interval, we turn to Tchaikovsky's turbulent, tragic, and ultimately triumphant Symphony no. 4; a work taking us from melancholy through to brilliant triumph!

Tickets are selling fast, so make sure you get yours quickly for tonight at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/795992122867

We’re just a couple of days away from our performance of Mendelssohn’s stormy ‘Hebrides’ overture, Mozart’s beautifully lyrical Clarinet Concerto (with Ruaridh Bakke-Clarinet), and Tchaikovsky’s turbulent 4th Symphony at St Giles' Cathedral!

Tickets are still available at eventbrite.co.uk/e/795992122867 - don’t miss out on what will be a brilliant concert of some gorgeous music!

Will you be joining us next week? Our concert at is just 7 days away, and we’re so excited to present our work on Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky with and - don’t miss out as tickets are selling fast! They are still available at the link in our bio so join us next Saturday at 19:30

Will you be joining us for our performance next weekend, at on the 17th of February? Tickets are selling fast for a programme mixing the much-loved works of Mendelssohn and Mozart - their ‘Hebrides’ overture and Clarinet concerto respectively - with Tchaikovsky stormy, turbulent and ultimately triumphant 4th symphony! Don’t miss out on our performance of these amazing works, with tickets available at the link in our bio! #4

We’re less than two weeks away from our next visit to for our performance of no. 4, Hebrides overture, and with - we had our first rehearsal yesterday and the music was sounding as intense, dramatic, and beautiful as we’d hoped! Our players are now busily preparing for the next rehearsal - don’t miss out on tickets at the link in our bio!

The Edinburgh City Orchestra and conductor Peter Le Tissier return to St Giles' Cathedral with a concert of music bringing us from the late classical beauty of Mozart's ever-popular Clarinet Concerto in A Major with superstar soloist Ruaridh Bakke, to Tchaikovsky's stormy, intense, and ultimately triumphant 4th Symphony, in F Minor.

One of Mendelssohn's most famous examples of tone-painting opens the evening's concert. As a young man it was customary for people of Felix Mendelssohn's social class to undertake 'grand tours' of Europe - and the young composer took his ingenious mind with him wherever he went. Famously, Mendelssohn's tour took him from Scotland (including a depiction of Edinburgh's own Holyrood abbey in his 3rd Symphony) to the southern climes of Italy. The Hebrides was a concert overture inspired by the composer's visit to Fingal's Cave, on the isle of Staffa. The piece opens with a serene calm that belies the storminess under its surface, and has been a popular concert opener from its first performance in 1832.

M ozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major has been a favourite amongst performers and audiences alike since its inception in 1791. Written in the final year of the composer's life, the concerto massively expands the form as Mozart had previously used it for other instruments, and represents not only the composer's fully mature style but opens the door to works by later composers, in particular Beethoven, with its extremely expansive first movement in particular. Tuneful and playful throughout, Mozart delights in the instrument he had been instrumental in championing as an orchestral part in his later symphonies, the Clarinet (which was a very recent development at the time). We are delighted to welcome soloist Ruaridh Bakke to join us for our performance of this beautiful piece of music.

After the break, the orchestra perform's Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony. Tchaikovsky as a composer was always torn between his senses of 'Russian-ness', and a more 'European' outlook - reflected in the composer's own personal adoration for the melodic instincts of Mozart's music. The fourth symphony marked a breakthrough for the composer's symphonic output, with the enormous opening movement employing a radical form to achieve a powerful expressivity that still astounds critics to this day. In the transformative finale, Tchaikovsky looks to traditional Russian folk melodies for the cathartic apotheosis of the work - in particular, the famous "in the field stood a birch tree" melody.

Tickets are available online at our eventbrite link, as well as on the door for one hour before the performance's start time - we look forward to seeing you for our latest performance!

Edinburgh City Orchestra at St. Giles' Cathedral The Edinburgh City Orchestra, and conductor Peter Le Tissier, return to St. Giles' Cathedral with a programme of lyrical and powerful works.

What an evening! Thanks to everyone who braved the weather and was able to join us for our latest performance at featuring Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ symphony! We had such a wonderful time performing for a truly appreciative audience, and we can’t wait to be back for more in 2024! Keep your eyes peeled for our future exciting announcements 👀

Join us this Saturday, October 7th at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburh for a performance of Mozart, Wagner and Beethoven!

We return to performance with Peter Le Tissier for Mozart's light-and-dark 'Don Giovanni' overture, before turning to Wagner's intimate, warm and sincere love-letter-in-music, the Siegfried-Idyll.

After the break, we perform one of Beethoven's most famous works: the Symphony no. 3, 'Eroica' - dramatic, bombastic and tempestuous, it is perhaps one of the most important pieces of individual music in history.

Doors will open at 18:30 for a 19:30 start, and tickets can be purchased online or on-the-door - don't delay getting yours for what will be a fantastic performance!

Join us and at next Saturday, October 7th for a performance of three popular works by musical genii Mozart, Wagner, and Beethoven! Tickets are available until start time at the link in our bio - do join us for another spectacular performance!

We’re looking forward to getting back to work this Saturday on our repertoire for the concert - coming up NEXT WEEKEND at with tickets available at the link in our bio. Are you looking forward to Mozart, Wagner, or Beethoven the most?

The Edinburgh City Orchestra and conductor Peter Le Tissier return to St Giles' Cathedral on October 7th with a performance of works written in the aftermath of revolution and large social upheavals, by some of the most well-known composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The performance includes Mozart's Don Giovanni overture, and Wagner's Siegfried-Idyll, before the orchestra plays one of Beethoven's greatest works: the "Eroica" Symphony.

Mozart's Don Giovanni was written in 1788, just as in France the revolutionaries were about to strike against the ancien régime. In Mozart's opera, we find a tale of nobility led astray that has considerable echoes with the sentiments of revolutionary France that were to come. The titular character, Don Giovanni, is a noble of high birth whose exploits range from the trivial menace of the local towns to the genuinely dark and disturbing use of his power to escape the consequences of his actions - until the famous final scene where he is dragged to hell by the ghost of a man he defeated in combat. Billed as a Dramma Giocoso - a "playful drama" - the dichotomy of seriousness and lighthearted exuberance is present right from the overture, which the orchestra performs tonight.

In 1849, it was Richard Wagner who personally manned the barricades in Dresden during an uprising against the King of Saxony. Forced after the failure of the revolt to flee into exile in Switzerland, Wagner would spend the next two decades unable to return to Germany. During this time the composer would write some of his most famous works - including the Siegfried-Idyll for chamber orchestra. Originally intended as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried, the work is an astonishing portrait of the idyllic surroundings of Luzern, Wagner's home at the time, and is a wonderful contrast to many of the composer's more bombastic works for the stage.

In 1803, the French Revolution had, for a time at least, come to an end with the reign of Napoleon and his sweeping success against the coalitions of Europe lined up to tear down the revolutionary state. It was during this time that Beethoven composed his Symphony no. 3 - the start of his 'new way' of composing. The symphony we now know as the Eroica was, at the very least, inspired by the revolutionary French sweep across central Europe, with Napoleon at its heart (and likely its original dedicatee). Across four movements Beethoven revolutionises the symphonic form, with a large-scale first movement, a funeral march, a boisterous scherzo, and all tied together by a set of variations on the theme of Prometheus, the Greek god of fire.

Tickets are available online at eventbrite, as well as on the door for an hour before the performance.

Edinburgh City Orchestra presents Beethoven's 'Eroica' The Edinburgh City Orchestra and conductor Peter Le Tissier return with a programme of music written in the aftermath of revolution.

We’re so excited to announce our latest concert at on October 7th! Join us for an evening featuring and conducted by - tickets are on sale NOW at the link in our bio! Discounts available for concessions, under-30’s and children so please come along to what will be a fantastic evening!

What a performance! We were delighted to perform to such a large and enthusiastic audience at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh this weekend for our concert featuring Elgar's Serenade for String Orchestra and Mahler's Symphony no. 5 with Peter Le Tissier. It was an amazing event and thank you to everyone who was able to join us! If you haven't already, do 'like' our page here on facebook, and follow us on twitter and instagram for more updates about our forthcoming events!

Edinburgh City Orchestra at St. Giles' Cathedral

Saturday, 25th March
Peter Le Tissier, Conductor
Elgar, Serenade for String Orchestra, op. 20
Mahler, Symphony no. 5

Tickets available online at https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/537137200827 and on the door during the afternoon (14:30-17:00), and before the concert (18:30-19:30). Do join us for our return to St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh!

We're now just days away from our performance of Mahler's 5th Symphony, alongside Elgar's Serenade for String Orchestra, at St. Giles' Cathedral on March 25th! Tickets are still available online so be sure to book ahead so you don't miss out, but there will also be sales on the day in both the afternoon and evening at the venue. Follow this link for tickets: https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/537137200827

We spent our weekend working on the finer details of our repertoire, and we're delighted with how things are sounding! We've included a sneak peek of the adagietto movement, which we are excited to perform complete with Harp on Saturday evening. See you there!

We’re a week away from our performance of Mahler’s 5th Symphony and Elgar’s serenade for String Orchestra at - and it’s a year today since our first performance! Since we last played at St Giles with in Mahler’s 4th Symphony, we’ve had the opportunity to perform great works by Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Rachmaninov at St Mary’s Cathedral also! Do join us next weekend for what is sure to be a fantastic performance!

We're just a week away from our performance at St. Giles' Cathedral, on Saturday March 25th at 19:30, featuring a programme of Elgar's Serenade for String Orchestra, op. 20 and Mahler's Symphony no. 5 with Conductor Peter Le Tissier!

Its also the anniversary today of our inaugural performance, also at St. Giles. On that day we featured a programme pairing Mahler's Symphony no. 4 with soprano Emily Chapman alongside Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Since then we've had the privilege of performing as part of a charity event in aid of Ukrainian refugees and a november performance featuring Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov with Maurizio Reyes, at St. Mary's Cathedral.

Do be sure to join us for a performance of music that features moments of chamber-like intimacy, romantic yearning and ultimately bombast and triumph. Tickets are still available at https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/537137200827 and will be on sale on the door during the afternoon (from 3pm) and from doors opening (6:30pm) on the day - we hope to see you there!

We've already had fun with Peter Le Tissier rehearsing Edward Elgar's Serenade for String Orchestra, op. 20, ahead of our performance next weekend at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh!

Despite being Elgar’s 20th opus, the Serenade for String Orchestra dates from the composer’s early life, being completed several years before his Enigma variations of 1899 would shoot him to international fame, and it remains one of the earliest pieces of the composer’s repertoire that is still regularly performed today. The work was first performed in private by an amateur orchestra in Worcester that Elgar conducted. Contrasting moments of chamber-like intimacy with grand expressions, the serenade makes a wonderful feature of the string orchestra.

A first movement driven largely by a boisterous and bouncy figure in the violas underlies music that contrasts a great chromatic uncertainty with some romantic, yearning gestures in the first violins that also appear, inverted, in the Mahler symphony we perform alongside. The second, larghetto movement, features the shadow of Wagner heavily as its tender and moving melodies unfurl themselves with, eventually, utmost passion from this most romantic of early 20th century composers. The finale breathes fresh air again, before rather promptly returning to the ideas of the first movement to bring the piece to a sunny close.

Tickets are available at the eventbrite link below, and will be available in the afternoon and evening of the performance at St. Giles Cathedral - do join us on March 25th for the performance!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/edinburgh-city-orchestra-at-st-giles-cathedral-tickets-537137200827

We’ve had a very busy weekend rehearsing the repertoire for our concert at St. Giles’ Cathedral with Peter Le Tissier! We had a full day of work on Mahler’s 5th Symphony, before finishing off with Elgar’s Serenade for String Orchestra. Tickets are still available at https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/537137200827 and will be on sale during the afternoon and evening of March 25th at the venue - don’t miss out!

We're so excited to be getting to work on two wonderful pieces of music at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh on March 25th. Tickets are available online at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/edinburgh-city-orchestra-at-st-giles-cathedral-tickets-537137200827 or on the door, with discounts for concessions, under-25s and under-18s - presales are strongly encouraged to ensure you get the best seat possible!

First up, a brief introduction to our 'main event', Mahler's 5th Symphony!

Written between 1901 and 1902, Mahler's 5th Symphony corresponds with some major upheavals in the composer's personal life, having recently taken over direction of both the Vienna State Opera in 1897, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1898.

The work is an extraordinary journey from darkness to light - opening with the heavy tread of a funeral march and closing with a blaze of optimism and glory over the course of 5 movements, separated into three distinct parts.

The first part contains movements 1 and 2, opening with a solo trumpet, with a militaristic quality calling all the orchestra into line before proceeding with a by turns morose, sombre and even violent funeral march in c . The opening trumpet figure is never far away, and as the 2nd movement aggressively opens the material is treated with extraordinary dexterity in what is a great upheaval of orchestral sound. Just as despair seems to have totally taken over, the brass section brilliantly injects light into the symphony for the first time, and the first part ends in a frenzy of sound - chaos mixed with hope.

The middle movement features a prominent 'obbligato' solo Horn. This scherzo was the first movement of the symphony to be written, and stands alone as its own second part. Taking elements of popular dances - from countryside Ländler, through graceful Viennese waltzes, to the sounds of a street band - this movement manages to present all aspects of life in its chaotic quasi-dance, ending with the full orchestra bursting out into sound.

The third part contrasts heavily with the first: where in the first a funeral march preceded chaos, here a wordless love song precedes a joyful rondo. The adagietto movement, for strings and harp alone, is Mahler's most famous individual movement and has been popular ever since the first performance. Written as a love song to the wife Mahler met during the composition of this symphony, it precedes with important themes the joyful rondo finale to follow. This finale gradually builds energetically until the symphony ends in its glorious blaze, as far as possible from its starting funereal tread as possible.