Peregrine Orchestra - Music of the Night

Our March concert takes place at 7:30pm on Sunday 8 March in the beautiful surroundings of St Gabriel’s, Pimlico. Although spring is beginning to arrive, this programme looks backwards, towards the long nights of winter.

We open with one of the most dramatic overtures of the Classical era: Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The stormy opening soon gives way to wit and sparkle — just like the opera’s irrepressible anti-hero — and it makes the perfect curtain-raiser.  From there we move to one of the most exquisite arias JS Bach ever wrote: the opening movement of the cantata Ich habe genug (BWV 82). Simeon, having seen the Christ child in the temple, sings that he has “seen enough” and may now depart in peace — music of stillness, acceptance, and extraordinary beauty.

The first half concludes with Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings: a sequence of nocturnal poems exploring both the calm and the unease of the night. Warm pastoral writing gives way to eerie shadows and a ghostly funeral march before fading into the hushed serenity of the final sonnet. The work is framed by two haunting horn solos.  Our soloists are the wonderful English tenor William Searle and Peregrine’s own principal horn Tim Costen.

After the interval comes Tchaikovsky’s final symphony — the Pathétique. Tender, intimate and deeply human, it moves from darkness to fleeting joy and finally to one of the most moving endings in all orchestral music: not a triumphant finale, but a farewell.  It is a remarkable piece to experience live.