Meadows Chamber Orchestra 50th Anniversary Concert

The Meadows Chamber Orchestra has been performing concerts to public and critical acclaim for 50 years. Its public debut was in the Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh on the 13th May, 1972.

Beethoven: Egmont Overture
Eleanor Alberga: Symphony No 1 'Strata' - Scottish Premiere
Barber: Violin Concerto
Gershwin: An American in Paris

Solo violin: Thomas Bowes
Conductor: Peter Evans

Over the intervening years the Meadows has gained a reputation as one of the UK's finest amateur orchestras, renowned for its energy, exuberance, musicianship and skill in performance and the imagination of its programme planning. The Orchestra's principal conductor and musical advisor throughout its history has been the Edinburgh-based pianist and conductor, Peter Evans. 

Meadows has a long history of attracting outstanding soloists and guest conductors, many with international reputations, as well as instrumentalists and singers with exceptional ability who are in the early stages of their musical careers. Meadows has also commissioned and given first performances of many dozens of works by living composers, many of them Scottish or based in Scotland.

The Meadows anniversary concert includes a specially commissioned Symphony from Jamaican-born composer Eleanor Alberga, entitled Strata. This is a co-commission with another outstanding amateur orchestra, the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra in Bristol. Eleanor is a renowned British composer with a rich catalogue of works in all genres, and commissions from the BBC Proms and the Royal Opera, amongst others. Eleanor's husband, exceptional British violinist Thomas Bowes, will be the soloist in Samuel Barber's lyrical, romantic and virtuosic Violin Concerto.  Tom has on previous visits to the Meadows given memorable performances of the violin concertos of both Brahms and Elgar.

The concert opens with the energy and drama of Beethoven's Overture to Egmont and concludes with the jazz and Broadway - inspired exuberance and irresistible melodic vitality of Gershwin's American in Paris.

The concert is dedicated to the memory of longtime Meadows chairman and principal oboe, Professor Spedding Micklem - also a fine pianist and past soloist with the Orchestra - who passed away last Autumn.

Presented by the Meadows Chamber Orchestra