Saturday 12th October 2024

All Saints, West Dulwich

Sibelius         Pohjola’s Daughter

Grace Williams            Rhiannon

Rimsky-Korsakov        Sheherazade

We start our season with a concert celebrating the stories of mythological women. Sibelius’s Pohjola’s Daughter (Daughter of the North) sets challenges for the demigod Väinämöinen (main character of the Finnish national epic Kalevala). A major figure from Welsh mythology, Rhiannon is celebrated by our first British composer of the season, Grace Williams. And most famously of all we have Sheherazade and her tales of the Thousand and One Nights in a blockbuster work by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Sunday 1st December 2024

St Bartholomew’s Church, Sydenham

Ruth Gipps            Song for Orchestra

Brahms                  Violin Concerto in D – soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones

Dvorak                   Symphony No. 8 in G

Our December concert has two Romantic hits, Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony and Brahms’s outstanding Violin Concerto with the return of inspirational soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones. This concert will start with a taster of the music of the remarkable Ruth Gipps (more later in the season) and her miniature Song for Orchestra, featuring her own instrument, the oboe.

Sunday 9th February 2025 

St Bartholomew’s Church, Sydenham

Louise Farrenc       Overture No. 1

Schubert                 Symphony No. 8, ‘Unfinished’

Smetana                The Bartered Bride: Overture

Beethoven              Symphony No. 8 in F major

Back to Classical for SELO to welcome in the new year with two more Eighth Symphonies – Schubert’s Unfinished and Beethoven’s very much complete equivalent. Lesser-known Frenchwoman Louise Farrenc provides the overture, written in the 1830s, just a few years after the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert.

Sunday 30th March 2025   

St Bartholomew’s Church, Sydenham

Doreen Carwithen    Overture: The Men of Sherwood Forest

John Williams           Star Wars: Suite

Ruth Gipps               Symphony No. 4

Having sampled the music of Ruth Gipps in the winter, SELO will be tackling her fantastic Fourth
Symphony in the spring. Gipps was a remarkable composer, conductor and educator – you’ll
hear the influences of her mentors, Vaughan Williams and Jacob coming through in her own
voice. To accompany we turn to film music – an overture by Doreen Carwithen (one of the
hardest working composers in mid-twentieth-century film music) and the evergreen Star
Wars by the one and only John Williams.

Saturday 14th June 2025

All Saints, West Dulwich

Sibelius Andante festivo

Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor – soloist Marina Staneva

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 in E minor

To conclude our season, piano concertos don’t come much bigger than the Grieg! This will be the
orchestra’s first ever piano concerto in concert for SELO and we’ll be working with the remarkable
Marina Staneva who you can find and hear plenty of online. More Sibelius to bookend the
season, and then Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire.