Fantastique

Saturday 3/10/26, 7.30pm

Brangwyn Hall, Swansea

Lili Boulanger
D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning) 5’

FranzSchubert
Allegretto in C major 10’

Ludwig van Beethoven
Choral Fantasy in C minor 20’

INTERVAL: 15 minutes

Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique 49’

Jaime Martínconductor
Steven Osbornepiano
BBC National Chorus of Wales
National Youth Choir of Wales

The concert is recorded by BBC Radio 3 for Radio 3 in Concert; it will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds, where you can also find podcasts and music mixes.

Introduction

Tonight we play some of the most imaginative works of the 19th and 20th centuries, written by composers who delighted in pushing musical boundaries and performed by a host of wonderful artists.

The theme is fantasy, with each piece conjuring its own imagery, swerving from the bizarre to the sublime, from solo piano to the combined forces of orchestra and chorus.

We begin with Lili Boulanger’s depiction of a spring morning – D’un matin de printemps – a work bursting with colour and fantastical flourishes. We follow this in an intimate moment for solo piano, with Steven Osborne’s completion of a Schubert Allegretto, before expanding into the rarely heard Beethoven Choral Fantasy. This Beethoven is a real gem, bringing together piano, orchestra and chorus in one of his most inventive creations. Written some 15 years before the Ninth Symphony, it feels as if Beethoven is experimenting with ideas that would later blossom in his famous ‘Ode to Joy’.

We finish with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, one of the most audacious works ever written: passionate, unsettling and wildly original, it remains a thrilling journey into the mind of a true revolutionary.

George Lee
Head of Artistic Planning and Production

Please respect your fellow audience members and those listening at home: mobile phones may be kept on but on silent and with the brightness turned down; other electronic devices should be switched off during the performance. Photography and recording are not permitted.

Lili Boulanger ^{_{(1893–1918)}}

D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning)^{_{(1917–18, orch. 1918 )}}

Many of Lili Boulanger’s instrumental works exist in different arrangements for various formations, a practice no doubt encouraged by her publisher, Ricordi, to ensure the widest possible market for her works. D’un matin de printemps (‘Of a Spring Morning’) was the last completed work by Boulanger for which a manuscript survives in her own hand, and it was published in versions for flute and piano, violin and piano, piano trio, and large orchestra. This last version packs a good deal of timbral and textural variety into a mere four and a half minutes.

D’un matin de printemps has an ebullience that never for a second evokes its composer’s real-life situation with a terminal illness. Rather, the acidulous unresolved dissonances of its opening suggest Boulanger would have been at home alongside her young composer contemporaries of Les Six (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and Tailleferre), who were reinvigorating classical music with insolent and insouciant twists. Even the immediate repetition of part of the theme a semitone higher is something that became a fingerprint of Poulenc.

That opening theme is playfully tossed from one instrument to another and returns in varied and much louder form at the end of the piece, after a contrasting, quieter and harmonically meandering central section and a series of false reprises. Boulanger keeps the rhythmic momentum going throughout, and her imagined spring morning is a sparkling orchestral showcase.

^{Programme note © Caroline Potter}

Franz Schubert ^{_{(1797–1828)}}

Allegretto in C major, D346 ^{_(c1815–16)}, compl. Steven Osborne

Steven Osbornepiano

Few composers, barring Mozart, can have left quite so many works unfinished as Schubert. These range from single movements that break off before the end up to whole sonata, quartet or symphony movements that were abandoned before their subsequent movements were contemplated. That Schubert was apparently content to abandon work of such evident high quality as the C minor Quartettsatz or the Eighth Symphony and move on to yet greater things demonstrates the speed at which his compositional mind must have worked, and the sheer breathtaking fecundity of his inspiration.

The larger works can speak for themselves – indeed, adding further movements to the Quartettsatz and Eighth Symphony has rarely proved satisfactory. Smaller fragments, though, are destined to remain unheard without sufficient editorial intervention to make them performable, whether by orchestrating from sketches or projecting closing bars for works that peter out before their end. Such exercises often uncover music which, if unlikely to find itself among its composer’s best-loved works, often shines revealing new light on their compositional development at the time. That is the case with this Allegretto, which may have been intended as a finale for the Sonata in C major, D279 – a three-movement torso that breaks off after its Minuet. The Allegretto makes great play of its characteristic four-note rising figure but comes to an abrupt halt following a fortissimo (very loud) F minor episode, where Steven Osborne’s completion takes over. Can you hear the join?

^{Programme note © David Threasher}

Ludwig van Beethoven ^{_{(1770–1827)}}

Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 ^{_{(1808, rev. 1809)}}

Steven Osbornepiano
BBC National Chorus of Wales
National Youth Choir of Wales

The Choral Fantasy has had a chequered career. Composed in late 1808, to provide (in the words of Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny) ‘a brilliant finale’ to the already colossal concert of 22 December – in which Beethoven introduced his Fifth and Sixth symphonies and his Fourth Piano Concerto to the Viennese public – it had so little rehearsal that it broke down at the performance and had to be begun again.

Despite this inauspicious start in life, the Choral Fantasy became popular, to judge by the large number of editions issued by its first publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel. It was only later in the 19th century, and in the 20th, that its stock fell, and a work that E. T. A. Hoffmann had called ‘masterly’ came to be regarded as a mere oddity, no more than a clumsy precursor of the mighty finale of the Ninth Symphony, whose ‘Ode to Joy’ theme it prefigures.

Commentators have always felt an overwhelming need to categorise musical compositions and fit them into pigeonholes; but to what category did this strange piece belong? It was also perhaps a relief for them to find an example of the great Beethoven, for once, stumbling; here was a rare opportunity to patronise him. The finale of the Ninth was itself not exempt from criticism for its hybrid character. How much more so the Choral Fantasy, a set of simple variations on a song-like theme, introduced by a bizarre piano solo, then – as in the Ninth – delivered first by soloist, then by the orchestra, finally by the voices, but concluding (like the Ninth, and the Missa solemnis) with orchestra alone.

This may be true, so far as it goes. But the manifest superiority of the finale of the Ninth is surely no reason for dismissing this work. In any case the resemblances between the two movements are largely superficial. The folk-like theme of the Fantasy’s variations (based on an early song of Beethoven’s, Gegenliebe – ‘Mutual Love’) isn’t really like the ‘Ode to Joy’ melody: the one outwardly similar phrase sounds quite different in character and colour. The F major march variation, following a slow and florid one in A major, is nothing like the Ninth’s alla marcia. Chorus and solo voices don’t appear till very late in the Fantasy, and their words, a paean to the beauty of art, could hardly be more different from the symphony’s cosmic, apocalyptic text. Until the voices enter, the Choral Fantasy is a kind of piano concerto in variation form, and even then the piano continues to play a resplendent role to the end.

If there is anything of which it reminds us, there is that moment in the blazing final Presto where the sudden shift from forte (loud) G major to più forte (louder) E flat recalls the similar thrilling harmonic epiphany in the final Presto of Fidelio. But ultimately, the Choral Fantasy doesn’t have to be compared to anything. As Hoffmann says, it is ‘completely original’. It only asks to be enjoyed for itself.

^{Programme note © David Cairns}

Text

Schmeichelnd hold und lieblich klingen
Unsers Lebens Harmonien,
Und dem Schönheitssinn entschwingen
Blumen sich, die ewig blühn.

Fried’ und Freude gleiten freundlich,
Wie der Wellen Wechselspiel;
Was sich drängte rauh und feindlich,
Ordnet sich zu Hochgefühl.

Wenn der Töne Zauber walten
Und des Wortes Weihe spricht,
Muss sich Herrliches gestalten,
Nacht und Stürme werden Licht.

Äuss’re Ruhe, inn’re Wonne
Herrschen für den Glücklichen,
Doch der Künste Frühlingssonne
Lässt aus beiden Licht entstehn.

Grosses, das ins Herz gedrungen,
Blüht dann neu und schön empor;
Hat ein Geist sich aufgeschwungen,
Hallt ihm stets ein Geisterchor.

Nehmt denn hin, ihr schönen Seelen,
Froh die Gaben schöner Kunst.
Wenn sich Lieb’ und Kraft vermählen,
Lohnt dem Menschen Göttergunst.

Christoph Kuffner (1780–1846)

Translation

Sweet, beguiling are the accents
of our being’s harmonies.
From our insight into beauty
everlasting flowers grow.

Peace and joy pass by serenely,
like the play of wind and waves.
Every hostile, wild emotion
is appeased and changed to bliss.

When sweet music reigns supreme,
and the words are sanctified,
wondrous things must come to pass,
night and storms are turned to light.

Outward calm and inward rapture
reign supreme in happy breasts,
yet art’s sun will smile in springtime,
so that both are changed to light.

If perfection fills your hearts,
beautiful new flowers shall bloom;
when the spirit rises upwards
choirs of spirits will respond.

So accept, you lofty spirits,
gladly what great art bestows.
If love and strength are joined,
the gods will reward mankind with grace.

Translation © Gery Bramall

INTERVAL: 15 minutes

Hector Berlioz ^_(1803–69)

Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 ^{₍₁₈₃₀₎}

1 Rêveries – Passions [Daydreams – Passions]: Largo – Allegro agitato e appassionato assai – Religiosamente
2 Un bal (Valse) [A Ball (Waltz)]: Allegro non troppo
3 Scène aux champs [Scene in the Countryside]: Adagio
4 Marche au supplice [March to the Scaffold]: Allegretto non troppo
5 Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat [Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath]: Larghetto – Allegro

It all began with Shakespeare. In 1827 a London theatre company travelled to Paris to perform some of the Bard’s most celebrated plays – all in English – at the imposing Théâtre de l’Odéon. To say that their trip was a success would be a stupendous understatement. ‘Imagine a man, blind from birth, receiving the gift of sight and discovering a world of which he had no inkling,’ gushed Alexandre Dumas (senior). And then there was Hector Berlioz. ‘I saw – I felt – I understood – that I was alive and that I must arise and walk,’ he said, after seeing Hamlet. But it was not just the drama that moved him: he had also fallen head over heels for the Irish-born actress Harriet Smithson, whose portrayal of Ophelia sent the French press into raptures.

The Shakespeare–Smithson epiphany was one of several thunderbolts that struck Berlioz in his mid-twenties. In 1828 he heard Beethoven’s Third and Fifth symphonies for the first time and discovered Goethe’s epic drama Faust. Combining these great discoveries with all the naive optimism of youth, by February 1829 Berlioz was planning to write a symphony based on Faust that he could take to London and win public acclaim with Smithson there in the audience.

In the end, the piece that captured this tumultuous time in Berlioz’s life was composed in early 1830. He’d had the basic plan of the piece in his head for some time, but after spending the previous year composing vocal works – most of which used Irish texts (he really couldn’t get Smithson out of his head) – he turned his attention fully to his Épisode de la vie d’un artiste. Symphonie fantastique en cinq parties (‘Episode in the Life of an Artist. Fantastical Symphony in Five Parts’).

The five parts in question were described not only using movement titles, but also via a printed programme which, Berlioz explained, ‘serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression’. He also compared it directly with ‘the spoken text of an opera’. Stage works presented at the grandest Parisian theatre, the Opéra, had to be in five acts with a ballet. Here was Berlioz, eight years before he managed to get one of his operas staged in that hallowed space, with a brand-new symphony in five ‘episodes’ including ‘Un bal’ – a dance scene.

All five movements of the Symphonie fantastique reference the same musical motif or idea, which Berlioz called an idée fixe (just as Obelix’s dog, in the famous Astérix comics by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, is called Idéfix!). This motif haunts the hero, conjuring ‘a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love’. It is also a haunting from Berlioz’s own past: the theme is taken from his 1828 cantata Herminie, while the work’s slow introduction borrows from a much earlier song, ‘Je vais donc quitter pour jamais’ (I will therefore leave for ever). Deep melancholy gives way to open-hearted excitement and desire as the first movement unfolds, the low strings pulsing like the quickening of a lover’s heartbeat under the soaring idée fixe at the start of the Allegro.

Next comes a sumptuous ball scene, an elegant waltz full of glittering harps and an unusually prominent, lyrical trumpet solo. As couples twirl and curtsy around the artist, he catches sight of his beloved and it ‘throws his spirit into confusion’. And so in the third movement (‘Scene in the Countryside’) he escapes to the country: two shepherds pipe to each other across the valley – a cor anglais and an offstage oboe in dialogue – a storm rumbling ominously in the timpani towards the end.

‘Convinced that his love is spurned,’ Berlioz explains, ‘the artist poisons himself with opium.’ This plunges him into a deep sleep filled with ‘the strangest of visions’. (In a grim case of life imitating art, in 1833 Berlioz took an overdose of opium to try to convince Harriet Smithson that he loved her.) What follows is a drug-induced nightmare. In ‘March to the Scaffold’, the hero imagines that he has killed his beloved and is being taken to his own execution. Berlioz transforms the pomp and shine of so much brass and percussion – borrowed from his unperformed opera Les francs-juges – into a sinister mockery of military display. Just before the axe falls, our hero thinks once more of the woman he loves, the idée fixe cut brutally short in a distressingly triumphant closing gesture.

Still the horror isn’t over. The finale, Berlioz tells us, is ‘a Witches’ Sabbath … a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind’. The idée fixe is given to a squeaking, giggling E flat clarinet, high and shrill – the lover is a witch! – while the Dies irae chant of the Requiem Mass resounds in the depths of the orchestra and bells strike midnight. It’s an orgy of Gothic thrills and spills, and a testament to Berlioz’s brilliance as an orchestrator and storyteller that we’re left energised and exhilarated by this far-from-happy ending.

The Symphonie fantastique was premiered, to mixed reviews, on 5 December 1830. The hall was crammed with musical worthies, from leading opera composers such as Spontini and Meyerbeer to the waspish critic François-Joseph Fétis and the young virtuoso Franz Liszt. Over the next few years, Berlioz revised both the music and his printed programme several times. And in 1832 – at long last – he was finally granted a formal introduction to Smithson. They married in October 1833 and enjoyed several happy years together before ultimately going their separate ways.

^{Programme note © Katy Hamilton}

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Biographies

Jaime Martín conductor

Spanish conductor Jaime Martín is currently Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He has also held the positions of Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (2019–24), Principal Guest Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra (2022–24) and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Gävle Symphony Orchestra (2013–22).

Having spent many years as a highly regarded flautist, he turned to conducting full-time in 2013 and quickly became sought after at the highest level.

Recent highlights have included an 11-day Beethoven Festival with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducting all nine symphonies. He also returned to conduct orchestras in Spain, the UK and Australia and undertook a UK and European tour with the Melbourne SO that included appearances at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival.

Last season he conducted the Aalborg, Colorado, Euskadi, Gothenburg, New Zealand and Queensland Symphony orchestras, Budapest Festival Orchestra, George Enescu and Strasbourg Philharmonic orchestras, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and RTVE Madrid.

His extensive discography includes recordings with the Barcelona, Gävle and Melbourne Symphony orchestras, Cadaqués Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jaime Martín is Artistic Advisor and former Artistic Director of the Santander Festival and a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, where he was a flute professor.

Steven Osbornepiano

Steven Osborne’s musical insight and integrity underpin idiomatic interpretations of varied repertoire that have won him fans around the world. The extent of his range is demonstrated by his 35 recordings for Hyperion, which have earned numerous awards, and he was made OBE for his services to music in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2022. He has had a lifelong interest in jazz and often improvises in concerts, as well as bringing this spontaneity and freedom to all his interpretations.

He has served as Artist-in-Residence at Wigmore Hall, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Bath International Music Festival, and has written articles and given talks on subjects ranging from stage fright to ‘What does Music Mean?’ His ongoing relationship with Aldeburgh Festival was reflected in his role as Artistic Collaborator during the 2026 festival.

His solo recitals take him to New York, Boston, Washington and London, and this season he tours China with a new themed programme, ‘Reflections on the Waltz’. He also maintains longstanding musical partnerships with artists including Paul Lewis, Alban Gerhardt and Benjamin Beilman.

He works with major orchestras worldwide, most recently the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov, Dresden Philharmonic and Sir Donald Runnicles, Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nicholas Collon and the Philharmonia and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. This season he performs with the Finnish Radio and Seattle Symphony orchestras and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

He has appeared at the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall, Tokyo, and Kennedy Center Washington D.C., and is a regular guest at both Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall.

His award-winning discography includes works by Beethoven, Schubert, Ravel, Debussy, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Kapustin, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb and Feldman. His most recent album, OK by me – A Life in Encores, will be released in November.

Steven Osborne was born in Scotland and studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and the Royal Northern College of Music. He is Visiting Professor at Royal Academy of Music and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Patron of both the Scottish International Piano Competition and Lammermuir Festival, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.

BBC National Chorus of Wales

Made up of over 120 singers, BBC National Chorus of Wales is one of the leading mixed symphony choruses in the UK and, while preserving its amateur status, works to the highest professional standards under Artistic Director, Adrian Partington.

The chorus comprises of a mix of amateur singers alongside students from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and Cardiff University. It is based at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff Bay and works regularly alongside BBC National Orchestra of Wales, as well as giving concerts independently.

Recent highlights include Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms under the baton of Ryan Bancroft, Brahms’s A German Requiem in the stunning setting of St Davids Cathedral, and Poulenc’s Gloria with Sophie Bevan, conducted by Michał Nesterowicz.

Committed to promoting Welsh and contemporary music, BBC National Chorus of Wales gave the second-ever performance of Grace Williams’s Missa Cambrensis, 45 years after its premiere, which it also recorded for a CD which was released in spring 2025. In addition, it has premiered works by many composers, including a special performance of Kate Whitley’s Speak Out, set to the words of Malala Yousafzai’s 2013 UN Speech.

The chorus can be heard on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru, and recently featured in Paul Mealor’s soundtrack for BBC Wales’s Wonders of the Celtic Deep.

National Youth Choir of Wales

Established in 1984, the National Youth Choir of Wales has supported the long-standing choral traditions of Wales ever since, with many alumni still singing or conducting choirs throughout Wales and further afield.

Other alumni can be heard performing professionally in concert halls and opera houses throughout the rest of the world, including Sir Bryn Terfel, Katherine Jenkins and current NYCW conductor, Tim Rhys-Evans.

The choir’s members, largely aged between 16 and 22 years, are drawn from all parts of Wales and auditioned annually. As with all NYAW ensembles, the choir works with first-class professional musicians to deliver its key strategic aim of excellence.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

For over 90 years, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the only professional symphony orchestra in Wales, has played an integral part in the cultural landscape of the country, occupying a distinctive role as both a broadcast and national orchestra, and serving as an ambassador of Welsh culture, regularly performing music created in Wales and championing Welsh composers and artists.

Part of BBC Cymru Wales and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, BBC NOW performs a busy schedule of concerts and broadcasts, working with acclaimed conductors and soloists from across the world, including its Principal Conductor, the award-winning Ryan Bancroft.

The orchestra is committed to working in partnership with community groups and charities, taking music out of the concert hall and into settings such as schools and hospitals to enable others to experience and be empowered by music. It undertakes workshops, concerts and side-by-side performances to inspire and encourage the next generation of performers, composers and arts leaders, and welcomes thousands of young people and community members annually through its outreach and education projects.

BBC NOW performs annually at the BBC Proms and biennially at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and its concerts can be heard regularly across the BBC – on Radio 3, Radio Wales and Radio Cymru. On screen, music performed by BBC NOW can be heard widely across the BBC and other global channels, including the soundtrack and theme tune for Doctor Who, Planet Earth III, Prehistoric Planet, The Pact and Children in Need.

Based at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, BBC NOW utilises a state-of-the-art recording studio with a camera system for livestreams and TV broadcasts to bring BBC NOW’s music to a broader audience across Wales and the world. For more information about BBC NOW please visit bbc.co.uk/now

Patron
HM King Charles III ^{KG KT PC GCB}
Principal Conductor
Ryan Bancroft
PrincipalGuest Conductor
Jaime Martín
Composer-in-Association
Gavin Higgins

BBC National Chorus of Wales and National Youth Choir of Wales

Soprano
Amelia Beecroft
Angharad Phillips
Bethan Nicholas-Thomas
Claire Hardy
Eleanor Cantrill
Elizabeth Phillips
Ella Edwards Beavington
Eve Carey
Hannah Robertson
Helen Thomas
Jo Westaway
Joanna Osborn
Katie Cross
Lydia Wilson
Olivia Ghanem
Rachael Leary
Ronnie Enoch
Sally Glanfield
Sarah Jane Griffiths
Vanessa John-Hall
Caroline Thomas
Charlotte Pawley
Emily Hopkins
Esme Daniell-Greenhalgh
Florence Waddington
Frankie Ingall
Hafwen Davies
Kate Bidwell
Katherine Woolley
Lucy Paterson
Marcella Rose Benson
Margaret Lake
Melanie Taylor
Rhian Davies
Rhiannon Humphreys
Victoria Illsley
Catrin Davies *
Mali Williams *
Lauren Roberts-Orford *
Juliet Triggs *

Alto
Abigail Shepherd
Alison Davies
Catherine Bradfield
Elouise Frost
Jessica Williams
Kate Reynolds
Kathrin Hammer
Lisa May
Matilda Holder
Megan Veiga-Troso
Naomi Hitchings
Nicole Boardman
Rachel Farebrother
Rhian Pullen
Vicki Westwell
Yirui Wang
Zozi Sookanadenchetty
Annette Hecht
Cerian Rolls
Josie Nemeth
Julie Wilcox
Max Keith
Sian Schutz
Yasmin Browne
Maiwenn Watson *

Tenor
Andrew Lunn
Jacob Bussell
Keith Davies
Meilyr Dafydd
Nick Willmott
Philip Lloyd-Holtham
Ethan Stockham
Paul Mizen
Peter Holmes
Richard Shearman
Roland George
Rory McIver
Sam Proll
James Porter *

Bass
Alun Williams
Ben Pinnow
Daniel Williams
David John Davies
Emyr Wynne Jones
Geraint Jones
John Davies
Lucas Maunder
Neil Schofield
Noah Boneham-Hill
Will Walshe-Grey
David Hutchings
David Rodgers
Gareth Nixon
Jack Irwin
Mike Osborn
Oliver Hodgson
Stuart Hogg
Daniel Imrie *
Sam Morris *

* member of National Youth Choir of Wales

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

First Violins
Lesley Hatfield leader
Martin Gwilym-Jones
Gwenllian Hâf MacDonald
Terry Porteus
Suzanne Casey
Carmel Barber
Kerry Gordon-Smith
Emilie Godden
Anna Cleworth
Žanete Uškāne
Alejandro Trigo
Gary George-Veale
Grace Shepherd

Second Violins
Anna Smith *
Kirsty Lovie #
Ros Butler
Sheila Smith
Vickie Ringguth
Joseph Williams
Michael Topping
Katherine Miller
Beverley Wescott
Roussanka Karatchivieva
Lydia Caines **
Emily Groom

Violas
Rebecca Jones *
Alex Thorndike #
Tetsuumi Nagata
Peter Taylor
Catherine Palmer
Anna Growns
Mungo Everett-Jordan
Robert Gibbons
Laura Sinnerton
Carl Hill

Cellos
Henry Shapard
Jessica Feaver
Sandy Bartai
Alistair Howes
Carolyn Hewitt
Rachel Ford
Keith Hewitt
Kathryn Graham

Double Basses
David Stark *
Alexander Jones #
Emma Prince
Thea Sayer
Ketan Curtis
Imogen Fernando

Flutes
Matthew Featherstone *
John Hall †
Lindsey Ellis

Piccolo
Lindsey Ellis †

Oboes
Steve Hudson *
Amy Till
Russell Coates

Cor anglais
Russell Coates

Clarinets
Nicholas Carpenter *
William White †
Lenny Sayers ** +

Bass Clarinet
Lenny Sayers † ** +

Bassoons
Jarosław Augustyniak *
Patrick Bolton
David Buckland
Bartosz Kwasecki

Contrabassoon
David Buckland †

Horns
Tim Thorpe *
Meilyr Hughes
Mark Alder-Bennett
Flora Bain
John Davy

Trumpets
Phillipe Schartz *
Robert Samuel
Corey Morris †
Nina Tyrell

Trombones
Donal Bannister*
Dafydd Thomas †

Bass Trombone
Darren Smith †

Tubas
David Kendall
Dan Trodden

Timpani
Steve Barnard *
Christina Slominska

Percussion
Andrea Porter
Harry Lovell-Jones
Phil Girling
Max Ireland

Harps
Tomos Xerri
Tamara Young

Piano/Celesta
Catherine Roe Williams

* Section Principal
† Principal
‡ Guest Principal
# Assistant String Principal

The list of players was correct at the time of publication

Director Lisa Tregale
Head of Artistic Planning and ProductionGeorge Lee
Orchestra Manager Liz Williams
Assistant Orchestra Manager Nick Olsen **
Orchestra and Operations Coordinator Eleanor Hall
Orchestra Personnel ManagerKevin Myers
Orchestra Librarian Naomi Roberts **
Stage and Technical Manager Josh Mead +
Assistant Stage and Technical Manager Richie Basham
Artists and Projects Manager Victoria Massocchi **
Producer Mike Sims
Broadcast Assistant Emily Preston
SeniorAudio Supervisors Simon Smith, Andrew Smillie
Education Producer/Chorus Manager Rhonwen Jones
Education Producer Beatrice Carey
Head of Marketing and Audiences Sassy Hicks
Marketing Coordinator Amy Campbell-Nichols
Growth Marketing Coordinator Angharad Muir-Davies
Digital Producer Angus Race
Marketing Apprentice Mya Clayden
Production Business Manager Lisa Blofeld
Business Coordinator Georgia Dandy **

+ Green Team member
** Diversity & Inclusion Forum

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