Our February 2025 concert

Alessandro Marcello (1673-1747) was a son of a prominent Venetian family, and was a philosopher, poet, and a mathematician as well as a composer. Alongside a legal and political career, as a young man he was a Venetian diplomat in the Levant and the Peloponnese. His Oboe Concerto is a piece which emerges from the culture of early 18th century Venice, and the heady atmosphere of artistic experimentation and collaboration which emerged from those years. Although several of Marcello’s vocal works have survived, his reputation is primarily based on instrumental music; especially the Oboe Concerto in D minor, which appeared in an anthology in Amsterdam in 1717 and was later arranged by J.S. Bach.

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) studied violin, piano, and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory and later in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Carl Flesch. An accomplished violinist, she performed across Europe, won the 1935 Wieniawski Competition, and was concertmaster of the Polish Radio Orchestra. After a 1954 car accident ended her performing career, she focused on composing and teaching in Lódź and Warsaw. A prolific composer, Bacewicz wrote numerous concertos, symphonies, string quartets, and chamber works, blending neoclassical clarity with later avant-garde experimentation, as well as writing fiction. During the war, the young Grażyna Bacewicz was living in Warsaw, where she both continued to compose and hosted underground concerts in private homes, among friends, performing Polish music banned by the occupying forces. These enabled artists and the audience to hear new works, instilling in them a conviction that despite the horror around them, Polish culture was still alive - Bacewicz and her family only left Warsaw after the failure of the Warsaw Uprising. The Concerto for String Orchestra (1948) remains her most frequently performed and most popular work. Throughout the Concerto, there is a palpable sense of optimism and renewed confidence, reflecting Bacewicz’s mastery of her technique and musical language as she and Poland emerged from the hardships of the Second World War.

Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen for 23 strings was written during the final months of the Second World War – it is a work that seems to collapse simplicity and complexity onto each other. The title implies music that transmutes and transmogrifies incessantly, winding upwards towards the light, and the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic writing undergoes constant metamorphoses as its lines overlay one another into a river of sound.  At the height of the war, Strauss sought consolation in Goethe and his meditations on transformation found in the poems The Metamorphosis of Plants and The Metamorphosis of Animals. The fragmentary theme Strauss had first sketched under the title Trauer um München (Mourning for Munich) resurfaced as an overarching theme of Metamorphosen – it becomes a mourning for all that was lost, and a hope that there will be new growth from its remains.

Daisy Syme-Taylor

Our first fundraising round.

On 25 September 2024, the Fidelio Orchestra ran their first fundraising gala at the Fidelio Cafe. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters we have managed to raise over £50,000 in one single night.

The guests were treated to a five-course tasting menu accompanied by wines provided by our partner Corney & Barrow, with special guest Jancis Robinson introducing the wine before each course.

As part of the auctioned prizes, a 1908 cello by Ettore Soffritti was offered for a valued orchestral member to use it exclusively for the 2025 season.

Several musicians from the Fidelio Orchestra took part to the evening, with music from Franz Schubert to Caroline Shaw. The night ended with Champagne in the cocktail lounge and a guitars+violin jam session.

Great review on the Guardian.

Our concerto programme with Angela Hewitt featuring Bach and Brahms’ D minor concertos has been praised in the Guardian by Fiona Maddocks. Here is the link to the review.