KCO plays Beethoven, Lilburn and Saint-Saëns

The Kāpiti Concert Orchestra is pleased to return to Te Raukura ki Kāpiti with a concert on Saturday, 15 May at 3.00pm, featuring works by Beethoven, Lilburn and Saint-Saëns. The Orchestra is also pleased to introduce two young musicians with great futures ahead of them - Georgia Steel as conductor and guest soloist, Otis Prescott-Mason who will perform the Second Piano Concerto by Saint-Saëns with the Orchestra.

The concert will open with Douglas Lilburn’s Drysdale Overture which was written in 1937 and is one of his earliest works for orchestra. It was dedicated to his father and celebrates the family farm near Hunterville where Lilburn was born.

The Second Piano Concerto by Saint Saëns is probably his most popular piano concerto. Saint-Saëns wrote the work in three weeks and played the première himself with Anton Rubinstein conducting. The first movement (unusually for a first movement of a concerto) is a slower movement followed by a scherzo-like second movement and a third movement in the style of a furious tarantella.

The final work will need no introduction - Beethoven’s magnificent Symphony No 7 in A major, written in 1811/1812 against a backdrop of Napoleon’s campaign against Russia. The music is intense, energetic and tuneful. The second movement has always been a favourite - in fact the audience at the first performance demanded that it be repeated. Beethoven himself described the symphony as “one of his best works”.