Thursday 6 March 2025
7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra
Roberto González-Monjas conductor
Sebastian Hill tenor
Sarah Pennington horn
Anders Hillborg
Eleven Gates
Benjamin Britten
Serenade for tenor, horn and strings
Interval
Richard Strauss
An Alpine Symphony
In this programme:
The performance duration is approximately 2 hours and 5 minutes, including a 20-minute interval.
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Founded in 1880 by the City of London Corporation
Chair of the Board of Governors
The Hon. Emily Benn
Principal
Professor Jonathan Vaughan
Vice-Principal & Director of Music
Armin Zanner
Please visit our website at gsmd.ac.uk
Guildhall School is provided by the City of London Corporation as part of its contribution to the cultural life of London and the nation.
Barbican
Please make sure that digital watch alarms and mobile phones are silenced during the performance. Please try not to cough until the normal breaks in the performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, it is not permitted to stand or sit in any gangway. No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall.
Barbican Centre
Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS
Administration: 020 7638 4141
Box Office Telephone Bookings:
020 7638 8891 (9am–8pm daily: booking fee)
barbican.org.uk
This concert is dedicated to the memory of Peter Gane FGSM,
Head of the Wind, Brass & Percussion department from 1988 to 2008.
Photo © Em Davis
Welcome
On behalf of the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, welcome to the Barbican Hall. Thank you for joining us. It’s exciting to be back for a concert that ranges from the most intimate to the grandest of orchestral music, and a thrill that Roberto González-Monjas, Guildhall alumnus – and dynamo, as you will see – has returned to conduct.
The evening is dedicated to the memory of a Guildhall giant, Peter Gane, Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion from 1988 to 2008. He died last summer and, as his successor Richard Benjafield writes in the tribute below, Peter would have loved this programme. I hope you do, too.
Armin Zanner
Vice-Principal & Director of Music
It’s easy to imagine Peter Gane’s delight at tonight’s concert. A piece of contemporary orchestral art by Anders Hillborg for us all to discover, listening together, followed by a work showcasing two of Guildhall School’s exceptional students as soloists – tenor Sebastian Hill and horn player Sarah Pennington, with the superb Guildhall strings in Britten’s Serenade. Peter was consistent in his belief that music making was collaborative across all genres and disciplines of music. He advocated always that we could all learn from each other’s artistry and creativity.
Peter also understood that students learn deeply from the simple joy of playing together in orchestras, the ultimate collaborative ensemble. Tonight we can lose ourselves in the story of An Alpine Symphony. Richard Strauss’ unashamedly instinctive and unphilosophical symphony, with magically orchestrated scenes from a 24-hour mountain journey, will be vividly re-painted by one of the biggest orchestras you will ever experience, conducted by the magisterial Roberto González-Monjas, a celebrated Guildhall alumnus.
I hope you enjoy it! That’s what Peter asked students to convey in their compulsory spoken introductions, in his innovative Performance Platforms classes. His leadership of the Wind, Brass & Percussion department was always by example, driven by his deep-seated beliefs, the wisdom of his professional experience, and a generous good humour. He inspired, mentored and sometimes provoked with his infectious enthusiasm and his devotion to the power of classical music. He understood that not only does it convey and share our strongest emotions, but also that young musicians can find their purpose in life through a total immersion in music, supported and driven forward by their professors and by their student colleagues.
Peter left a legacy that classical music matters in all our lives. His teaching also influenced hundreds of young musicians in National Youth Orchestra and European Union Youth Orchestra. Peter had an insatiable passion for enabling young musicians to tell a story through their instruments, in auditions, classes and concerts.
In his teaching and his leadership, Peter inspired so many students to become better than they could ever have believed when they first walked through the doors of Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His lifelong advocacy of collaboration, excellence, community and the sheer joy of performing together are celebrated in tonight’s concert. On behalf of all his students and colleagues, I hope you enjoy this concert, celebrating a much-missed, inspirational teacher and mentor.
Richard Benjafield
Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion
Photo © Mats Lundqvist
Anders Hillborg (b. 1954)
Eleven Gates (2005–6)
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Drifting into D major
-
Suddenly in the Room with Chattering Mirrors
-
D major Still Life
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Confused Dialogues with Woodpecker
-
Suddenly in the Room with Floating Mirrors
-
Into the Great Wide Open
-
Meadow of Sad Songs
-
Toy Pianos on the Surface of the Sea
-
String Quartet Spiralling to the Sea-floor
-
Sea-floor Meditation (Whispering Mirrors at the Sea-floor)
-
Waves, Pulse and Elastic Sea-birds
19 minutes
Swedish composer Anders Hillborg has a fondness for snappy two-word titles – a glance at his catalogue reveals the works Liquid Marble, Peacock Tales, Velocity Engine, Cold Heat, Beast Sampler and Hyper Exit. His early teachers contributed individually to his varied musical diet: classical, experimental, electro-acoustic, and in his teens he formed a band – Half Six (which he has said enjoyed ‘limited success’) – and also sang in choirs.
Eleven Gates displays qualities typical of his orchestral scores – suspended textures (not unlike the sound-clouds of Ligeti); bold, colourful instrumentation; and extremes of pitch (often simultaneously). He is happy to use superficial effects and humour of various types: from the absurd to the grotesque.
Eleven Gates was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which gave its premiere in 2006 under Esa-Pekka Salonen (a friend and long-time champion of Hillborg). The piece is formed of eleven short sections, running as a continuous whole. Hillborg has said that the title relates to “the imaginary gates that one passes through – either abruptly or seamlessly – in moving from one [section] to the other”. The section titles give an impression of the music, but “in a more or less surrealistic way”.
The opening (‘Drifting into D major’) coalesces to form a large D major chord, and upward-rushing scales lead to ‘Suddenly in the Room with Chattering Mirrors’, where energetically chattering wind are underpinned by funky/growly bass octaves in the piano. Another transformational upwards swirl and a massive piano chord (probably borrowed from the end of the Beatles song A Day in the Life) opens the third section, ‘D major Still Life’ – an appropriate title, as that’s all this 20-or-so-second section contains.
Hillborg described ‘Confused Dialogues with Woodpecker’ as “a strange meeting between Webern’s Piano Variations, Op 27, and a Donald Duck cartoon”. Next, the brief fifth section begins with the ting of crotales (with other percussion); a froth of wind quickens and is taken over by the now-customary upward-swirling strings. ‘Into the Great Wide Open’ arrives with shining brass but later bears out its Terribile e grandioso marking as it reaches a blazing climax around a third of the way through the section. A long, deep bass pedal emerges and the intensity dwindles. ‘Meadow of Sad Songs’ begins as a solo oboe emerges out of a rising trumpet line: this section is the still, touchingly desolate heart of the work. Tinkling piano, vibraphone and harp aptly mark the start of ‘Toy Pianos on the Surface of the Sea’; this merges into the string quartet section, a light descent to the sea-floor. The ‘Sea-floor Meditation’ is glassy, ethereal and rhythmically free, and it features a harp cadenza. A super-wide, other-worldly chord begins ‘Waves, Pulse and Elastic Sea-birds’, joined by jungle percussion. A final upwards rush of strings is lengthened but brutally stopped.
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Op 31 (1943)
-
Prologue
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Pastoral (Charles Cotton)
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Nocturne (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
-
Elegy (William Blake)
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Dirge (anon. 15th century)
-
Hymn (Ben Jonson)
-
Sonnet (John Keats)
-
Epilogue
Sebastian Hill tenor
Sarah Pennington horn
26 minutes
Britten wrote his Serenade in 1943, shortly after his return to England after three years in America. At this time, Schoenberg’s 12-tone serialism was developing in Europe and John Cage had begun his irreverent experimentation back in America. But Britten found praise at home for the relative simplicity of his style, which, bound up with his sympathy with pre-Romantic music, dominated his musical outlook at the time.
The Serenade began life as a set of nocturnes for tenor, horn and strings: “It’s not important stuff, but quite pleasant, I think,” Britten wrote, and he was blessed in having at his disposal two remarkable soloists in the tenor Peter Pears and the young horn player, Dennis Brain “who plays as flexibly and accurately as a clarinettist”. The premiere took place at the Wigmore Hall on 15 October 1943.
The suggestion of evening and moonlight were not new in Britten’s music - the early Quatre chansons françaises (1928) and Les illuminations (1939) contained night-songs – but the pre-occupation is more pervasive in the Serenade, prefiguring the opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) and the Nocturne for seven obbligato instruments and strings, Op 60 (1958).
A Prologue and Epilogue for solo horn frame the piece, with instructions for the player to use natural harmonics (inevitably sounding ‘out-of-tune’). The horn and tenor lines hardly overlap in the first three poems, and for the first two – Cotton’s ‘Pastoral’, a sleepy description of sunset, and Tennyson’s dramatic ‘Nocturne’ – the horn extracts its motifs directly from the tenor. The ‘Elegy’ has its own prologue and epilogue, a device that intensifies the image of Blake’s infected rose, while neatly offsetting the poem’s brevity. The twisting horn phrases wind their way in and around the fabric of throbbing string chords, breaking off for a recitative in which the tenor alerts the rose, too late, of its condition. The horn’s fluctuating semitone at the end is taken up obsessively by the tenor in the funereal ‘Dirge’. Marked come un lamento, and written high in the voice’s range, the tenor adopts a disembodied, boy-like quality, unstirred by the canonic danse macabre articulated by the strings. The macabre becomes brutal at the horn’s arrival and subsequent cackling; then the procession passes. The tension is immediately dissipated in the breathless banter of the virtuosic ‘Hymn’ (evoking typical hunting-music figures for horn), before Keats’s ‘Sonnet’. Here the intimate, shimmering string harmonies engulf the poet/tenor with the divine pleasures of a would-be everlasting sleep.
Interval (20 minutes)
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
An Alpine Symphony, Op 64 (1911–15)
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Night
-
Sunrise
-
The ascent
-
Entering the forest
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Wandering by the brook
-
At the waterfall
-
Apparition
-
On the flowery meadows
-
On the mountain pasture
-
Lost in thickets and undergrowth
-
On the glacier
-
Precarious moments
-
On the summit
-
Vision
-
Mists rise
-
The sun is gradually obscured
-
Elegy
-
Calm before the storm
-
Thunderstorm, descent
-
Sunset
-
Epilogue
-
Night
50 minutes
Strauss drew on a range of subjects in his ten orchestral tone-poems but the series begins and ends with tributes to nature. The last of these, Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), charts the progress of a day’s climbing in the Bavarian Alps. The score calls for huge orchestral forces, bolstered by a (usually off-stage) hunting party of 12 horns, two trumpets and two trombones, and an array of percussion (indispensable to the storm music). Arranged in 22 continuous sections that trace an aptly arch-like form – with the central arrival at the summit forming the work’s apex – the piece is fundamentally shaped by Alpine imagery.
From the opening darkness emerges the looming mountain profile in a theme outlined by trombones and tuba. The image soon becomes clearer as day breaks, revealing the mountain in the full radiance of the morning sun. Cellos and double basses begin a rising march-like theme signalling the ascent, punctuated later by a fanfare – a flavour of optimism, maybe, in anticipation of the challenge ahead. The pace is suspended with a rhapsodic entry into the forest, accompanied by gentle reminders of the task at hand through echoes of the earlier rising cello theme.
A further fanfare-burst marks the arrival at the waterfall, where spraying cascades – lit by harps and celesta – evoke an apparition of an Alpine fairy. As the image fades, the climbers pause to take in the flowery meadows before reaching an idyllic mountain pasture, complete with birdsong, bleating sheep and cowbells. An initially lyrical solo horn tune is taken up by the orchestra with increasing disquiet as the climbers lose their way in thickets before the icy face of a glacier appears, prompting shrill cries from a solo trumpet. Almost at the summit, a cartoon-like episode presents ‘precarious moments’ before horns and trombones proudly announce the arrival at the summit with a grand ‘peak’ motif. Here at the mountain-top a solitary, awestruck oboe chokes in wonder at the vista, before full realisation of the grand achievement gradually dawns in protracted waves of elation, climaxing in the first entry of the organ and a gigantic statement of the mountain theme in the brass. Mists rise up, the sun becomes obscured and then unison strings, with occasional breathy sighs from the wind, offer a sumptuous and faintly exotic Elegy. The oboe’s earlier theme of wonder is taken up in the calm before the storm and a brief reference to night – the murky sliding downward scale reappearing from the very opening – brings with it perhaps the most vivid representation of a storm in all music. Amid the furious wind and torrential downpour the climbers make a rapid descent, during which a hasty review of themes shows them passing by the waterfall, meadows and forest as they scramble to safety.
As the final raindrops subside (oboes, clarinet and plucked upper strings), the brass intone the mountain theme, majestic as ever, and the coda begins with a slow sunset. The following Epilogue begins with the sound of a church organ and proceeds to underpin a sensation of transcendental ecstasy – an afterglow following the successful communion with nature that recedes seamlessly back into night.
Programme Notes © Edward Bhesania
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Photo © Marco Borggreve
Roberto González-Monjas
conductor
Roberto González-Monjas is a natural musical leader with an abundance of energy, enthusiasm and fierce intelligence. He is Chief Conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland and Music Director of the Galicia Symphony Orchestra in Spain. In addition, Roberto is Principal Guest Conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra and Artistic Director of Iberacademy in Colombia. The Dalasinfoniettan in Sweden named him Honorary Conductor following a four-year tenure as their Chief Conductor.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony in London, Salzburg and Galicia; the European première of Hannah Kendall’s He stretches out the north with the Musikkollegium Winterthur; a Spanish tour with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia; appearances at the Mozartwoche, Salzburg and Verbier Festivals; and the recording of Mozart’s complete violin concertos with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg.
This season, Roberto also debuts with the Baltimore Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris, and returns to the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.
Roberto began his career as a solo violinist, orchestral leader and chamber musician. He frequently collaborates with singers and instrumentalists, including Joyce DiDonato, Rolando Villazón, Ian Bostridge, Andrè Schuen, Hilary Hahn, Lisa Batiashvili, Clara-Jumi Kang, Andreas Ottensamer, Fazil Say, András Schiff, Jan Lisiecki, Kirill Gerstein, Yeol Eum Son, Paul Lewis, Kit Armstrong, Steven Isserlis and Emmanuel Ceysson.
Mozart Serenades, Roberto’s newest CD recording with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg for Berlin Classics, has garnered international praise since its release in Summer 2023. His recordings with the Musikkollegium Winterthur feature works by Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns.
Roberto served as concertmaster of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia for six years and as the leader of the Musikkollegium Winterthur until summer 2021. He plays a 1710 Giuseppe Guarnieri ‘filius Andreae’ violin kindly loaned to him by five Winterthur families and the Rychenberg Stiftung.
Sebastian Hill
tenor
Sebastian is a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford and is currently studying with David Pollard in the vocal department at Guildhall School for an MPerf. From September, he will continue his studies on the Guildhall School Opera Course. Sebastian is supported in his current studies at Guildhall School by the Behrens Foundation Scholarship and Sidney Perry Foundation Scholarship, and additionally by the H R Taylor Trust, Drake Calleja Trust and The Countess of Munster Trust.
Sebastian was awarded first prize in the London Bach Society Competition as well as the Patricia Routledge English Song Competition. He was a member of the 2024 Glyndebourne Chorus and will be an Opera Holland Park Young Artist 2025 covering the title role in Jonathan Dove’s Itch.
Recent debuts include at Wigmore Hall as part of a Goethe celebration accompanied by Graham Johnson, the Oxford International Song Festival where he is a Young Artist alongside duo partner Will Harmer, and the International Lied Festival Zeist. In January, he performed Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge with Camerata Variabile in Basel, Bern, Schaffhausen and Zürich.
Concert highlights include Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (Oxford Festival of the Arts), Bach's St John Passion (Oxford Bach Soloists, Worcester Cathedral Choir, New College Choir, Winchester Bach Voices), Haydn’s The Creation (Burford Singers), Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Birmingham Symphony Hall, Ex Cathedra/New College Choir, Oxford), Handel's Messiah (Birmingham Symphony Hall, Ex Cathedra) and Monteverdi’s Vespers (Birmingham Town Hall, Ex Cathedra). He is a Samling Artist and was a graduate scholar with Ex Cathedra and the Oxford Bach Soloists. As a member of the Guildhall School semi-chorus, he performed Mendelssohn's Elijah with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano.
Upcoming engagements include several UK performances of Bach’s Passions as the Evangelist, Mozart’s Coronation Mass with The Really Big Chorus in Málaga and Bach’s B Minor Mass with the Orlando Chamber Choir.
Sarah Pennington
horn
Sarah is a full scholar at Guildhall School, where she is a third-year undergraduate studying with Sue Dent, Phil Munds, Jonathan Lipton and Angela Barnes. In her first year at the School, Sarah became the youngest recorded winner of the Armourers and Brasiers’ Brass Prize and later reached the final of the Ivan Sutton Chamber Prize with Brahms’ Horn Trio, Op 40. Sarah is supported in her current studies by the Guildhall Scholarship.
Before attending Guildhall School, Sarah spent seven years at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music, where she was awarded the Freda Dinn and Ida Mabbet prize for outstanding solo performance in the final of the concerto competition, and gave a recital in the Elgar Room of the Royal Albert Hall. During this time, Sarah was also the joint principal horn of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and is now the principal of Young Musician’s Symphony Orchestra. Sarah has gained a place on the prestigious Encuentro de Música y Academia de Santander two years in a row, where she has been mentored as a soloist and chamber musician by Radovan Vlatković and Szabolcs Zempléni.
At the age of 20, Sarah is already a busy freelance musician, working frequently with ensembles such as London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Royal Northern Sinfonia. She is currently on trial as principal horn of Sinfonia Viva and fourth horn of English National Ballet.
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra
Hillborg & Britten
Violin I
Victoria Lewis*
Elena Toledo
Pedro Marques Rodrigues
Rowan Dymott
Laia Francés Pont
Erola Masqué
Helena Thomas
Tanya Perez Jovetic
Maria Jimenez Valles
Gwyneth Nelmes^
Colby Chu
Gabriella Pedditzi
Yuxi Yang
Jessica Hendry
Camille Said^
Violin II
Yuno Akiyama*
Pak Ho Hong
Ola Lenkiewicz
Evan Lawrence
Lewis Lee
Isabelle Allan
Malena Benavent Gimeno
Clemmy Germain
Lichen Cai
Kayla Nicol
Niko Peake
Laura Hussey
Kate Simpson
Hana McDowell
Viola
Ami-Louise Johnsson*
Holly Woods
Rebekah Dickinson
Eve Quigley
Gavin Marnoch
Connor Quigley
Charlie Potts
Andrei Gheorghe
Iva Durkovic
Michael Soza
Teresa Macedo Ferreira^
Cello
Kosta Popovic*
Natalie Alfille-Cook
James Conway
Eryna Kisumba
Nia Williams
Anoukia Nistor
Lottie Gorrie
Josh Lucas
Annie Walton
Chiara Dozza Lopez
Double Bass
Tom Mahoney*
Strahinja Mitrovic
Cynthia Garduño Meneses
Caetano Oliveira
Izzy Nisbett
Aaron Aguayo Juarez
Suliac Maheu^
Flute
Tamsin Reed*
Jessie-May Wilson
Alex Ho
Piccolo
Alex Ho
Oboe
Elly Barlow*
Cameron Hutchinson
Aliyah Nelson
Clarinet
Kosuke Shirai*
Margot Maurel
Bass Clarinet
Sofia Mekhonoshina
Contrabass Clarinet
Kathryn Titcomb
Bassoon
Miriam Alperovich*
Sarah Byrne
Maria O'Dea
Contrabassoon
Aidan Campbell
Horn
Niamh Rodgers*
Alice Warburton
Dan Hibbert
Jacob Eynon
Owen McClay
Trumpet
Seb Carpenter*
Henry So
Parker Bruce
Trombone
Sam Cox*
Felix Rockhill
Bass Trombone
Helena Kieser
Contrabass Trombone
Jamie Cadden
Tuba
Annie Morris
Timpani
Engin Eskici
Percussion
Tom Hodgson*
Lauren Bye
Cláudia Costa Gonçalves
Reuben Hesser
Harp
Arwen Withey-Harrison
Piano
Julia Metzmacher
* Section Principal
^ Guest Alumni player
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra
Strauss
Violin I
Victoria Lewis*
Elena Toledo
Ola Lenkiewicz
Evan Lawrence
Lewis Lee
Isabelle Allan
Malena Benavent Gimeno
Clemmy Germain
Lichen Cai
Kayla Nicol
Niko Peake
Laura Hussey
Gwyneth Nelmes^
Hana McDowell
Camille Said^
Violin II
Yuno Akiyama*
Pak Ho Hong
Pedro Marques Rodrigues
Rowan Dymott
Laia Francés Pont
Erola Masqué
Helena Thomas
Tanya Perez Jovetic
Maria Jimenez Valles
Gabriella Pedditzi
Colby Chu
Jessica Hendry
Yuxi Yang
Viola
Ami-Louise Johnsson*
Holly Woods
Rebekah Dickinson
Eve Quigley
Gavin Marnoch
Connor Quigley
Charlie Potts
Andrei Gheorghe
Iva Durkovic
Michael Soza
Lydia Atkinson
Teresa Macedo Ferreira^
Cello
Kosta Popovic*
Natalie Alfille-Cook
James Conway
Eryna Kisumba
Nia Williams
Anoukia Nistor
Lottie Gorrie
Josh Lucas
Annie Walton
Chiara Dozza Lopez
Double Bass
Tom Mahoney*
Strahinja Mitrovic
Cynthia Garduño Meneses
Caetano Oliveira
Izzy Nisbett
Aaron Aguayo Juarez
Suliac Maheu^
Flute
Hanna Wozniak*
Cyrus Lam
Lara Ali
Justyna Szynkarczyk
Piccolo
Justyna Szynkarczyk*
Lara Ali
Oboe
Lidia Moscoso*
Daisy Lihoreau
Theo Chapple
Cor anglais
Theo Chapple
Heckelphone
Elly Barlow
Clarinet
Lily Payne*
Teah Collins
E-flat Clarinet
Kathryn Titcomb
Bass Clarinet
Beñat Erro Díez
Bassoon
Maria O'Dea*
Aidan Campbell
Sarah Byrne
Contrabassoon
Miriam Alperovich
Horn
Henry Ward*
Alice Warburton
Dan Hibbert
Freya Campbell
Niamh Rodgers
Katie Parker
Ima Kirkwood
Jacob Eynon
Thomas Pinnell
Offstage Horn
Millie Lihoreau*^
Alex Harris^
Alana Knowles
David Sztankov^
Christos Maltezos^
Owen McClay
Amelia Lawson
Ciaomh Glavin^
Sarah Pennington
Trumpet
Sam Balchin*
Florence Wilson-Toy
Samuel Tarlton
Alice Newbould
Parker Bruce
Offstage Trumpet
Sean Hartman*
Alex Smith
Trombone
James Bruce*
Ollie Plant
Josh Brierley
Felix Rockhill
Offstage Trombone
Ben Loska*
Andy Leeming
Bass Trombone
Alex Froggatt
Tuba
Dafydd Owen*
Sean Byrne
Timpani
Bryony Che*
Engin Eskici
Percussion
Lauren Bye*
Cláudia Costa Gonçalves
Ava Kinninmonth
Kia Lares
Ali Ayaz
Harp
Eleanor Medcalf*
Grace Ng
Celeste
Niall Townley
Organ
Hugh Rowlands
* Section principal
^ Guest Alumni player
Names and seating correct at time of publication.
Ensembles, Programming
& Instrument Manager
Phil Sizer
Orchestra Librarian
Anthony Wilson
Music Stage, Logistics & Instrument Manager
Kevin Elwick
Music Stage Supervisor
Louis Baily
Thanks
Special thanks to conductor William Long for helping to prepare the orchestra and to each of the following sectional tutors provided by the London Symphony Orchestra:
Kate Oswin violin I
Sarah Quinn violin II
Germán Clavijo viola
Ève-Marie Caravassilis cello
Simo Väisänen double bass
Tony Bedewi timpani & percussion
Helen Tunstall harp
Phillip Moore piano & celeste
wind, brass, percussion, harp, piano & celeste:
Jeremy Cornes
Alex Edmundson
Rachel Gledhill
Jim Maynard
Max Spiers
Helen Storey
Helen Tunstall
Forthcoming Events
Chamber Music Festival 2025
14–16 March 2025
Milton Court Concert Hall
& Silk Street Music Hall
Be inspired at our Chamber Music Festival, returning for a weekend of captivating and diverse performances showcasing accomplished chamber groups and unique student-professor collaborations.
The Winter's Tale
21–26 March 2025
Silk Street Theatre
Enter the world of one of Shakespeare's most poignant works, The Winter's Tale crosses oceans and spans decades as a cast of remarkable characters search for love, hope, and the chance of redemption.
The Gold Medal 2025
8 May 2025
Barbican Hall
Join for Guildhall School's most prestigious music prize and see three exceptional soloists from the School’s Vocal and Opera departments perform with piano accompaniment and with Guildhall Symphony Orchestra.
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C and P Young HonFGS
Benefactors
Jane Ades Ingenuity Scholarship
Carrie Andrews
Athena Scholarship
David Bartley Award
Behrens Foundation
Binks Trust
Sir Nicolas Bratza
Timothy Brennan KC
Derek Butler Scholarship
Dow Clewer Foundation
Sally Cohen Opera Scholarship
Brian George Coker Scholarship
The Cole Bequest
Stella Currie Award
D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust
Elmira Darvarova
David Family Foundation
Gita de la Fuente Scholarship
Drapers’ Company
Margaret Easton Scholarships
Amy and John Ford HonFGS
Lillian and Victor Ford Scholarships for Drama
Bishop Fox’s Educational Foundation
Albert and Eugenie Frost Music Trust CIO
Mortimer Furber Scholarship
Gillam Giving Circle Scholarship
Girdlers’ Company Charitable Trust
Ralph Goode Award
Haberdashers’ Company
Huddersfield 1980 Scholarship
Elaine Hugh-Jones Scholarship
Professor Sir Barry Ife CBE FKC
and Dr Trudi Darby
Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust
Damian Lewis CBE FGS
Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation
Alfred Molina FGS
Ann Orton
David and Margaret Phillips Bursary
Ripple Awards
Dr Leslie Schulz
Scouloudi Foundation
Skinners’ Company
South Square Trust
Graham Spooner
Barbara Stringer Scholarship
Rosemary Thayer Scholarship
Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Trade
Benevolent Fund
Frederic William Trevena Award
Edith Vogel Bursary
Wallis Award
Roderick Williams/Christopher Wood Scholarship
Elizabeth Wolfe Award
Worshipful Company of Carpenters
Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors
Worshipful Company of Grocers
Worshipful Company of Innholders
Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers
Worshipful Company of Weavers
Supporters
Margaret B Adams Award
Adelaide E Alexander Memorial Scholarship
Alexander Technique Fund
Anglo-Swedish Society
George and Charlotte Balfour Award
Peter Barkworth Scholarship
Brendan Barns
Maria Björnson Memorial Fund
Board of Governors’ Scholarship
Ann Bradley
William Brake Foundation
Liz Codd
John S Cohen Foundation
Noël Coward Foundation
Diana Devlin Award
Dominus and the Ahluwalia Family
Robert Easton Scholarship
Gwyn Ellis Award
Marianne Falk
Carey Foley Acting Scholarship
Gillian Gadsby
Iris Galley Award
Andrew Galloway
James Gibb Award
Dr Jacqueline Glomski
Hargreaves and Ball Trust
Hazell Scholarship Fund
Ironmongers’ Company
Gillian Laidlaw HonFGS
Eduard and Marianna Loeser Award
Alison Love – in memory of Barry MacDonald
Mackintosh Foundation
Marchus Trust
Narrow Road
Norwich Chamber Music
NR1 Creatives
The Pewterers’ Seahorse Charitable Trust
Pidem Fund
Peter Prynn
Denis Shorrock Award
Silver Bow Scholarship
Steinway & Sons
Caroline Stockmann LGSM HonFCT
Elizabeth Sweeting Award
Thompson Educational Trust
Louise Thompson Licht Scholarship
Kristina Tonteri-Young Scholarship
HWE & WL Tovery Scholarship
Harry Weinrebe Award
Worshipful Company of Barbers
Worshipful Company of Carmen Benevolent Trust
Worshipful Company of Dyers
Worshipful Company of Gold
and Silver Wyre Drawers
Worshipful Company of Horners
Worshipful Company of Musicians
Worshipful Company of Needlemakers
Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers
Donate
We hope you thoroughly enjoy today’s performance at Guildhall School. If you feel inspired by our students and would like to support world-class training for these talented performers and production artists, we would be grateful for a voluntary donation.
Join the Guildhall Circle to access priority booking, exclusive events and more while providing vital support to our students. Join us at gsmd.ac.uk/patrons.
Please visit our website at gsmd.ac.uk
Guildhall School is provided by the City of London Corporation as part of its contribution to the cultural life of London and the nation.