Risingholme Orchestra "A Mediterranean Holiday"

Risingholme Orchestra would be delighted to have your company on our touring holiday of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, where we sample their musical pleasures at various stopping-off points along the way. 

Italy – the birthplace of opera – has classical and modern music deeply woven into its cultural fabric. And so we offer an orchestral “Intermezzo” from an opera by Puccini; a soprano aria from an opera by Donizetti; and – bringing us into the realm of contemporary music – a Bass Trombone Concerto by specialist brass and woodwind composer, Nicola Morello.

A skip eastwards across the Ionian Sea lands us in Greece, where we play some of a number of dance-based pieces on this afternoon’s programme – in this case, a selection of four “Greek Dances” by the early-20th-century composer Nikos Skalkottas.   

Moving due west, brings us to France, where we stay long enough to perform the complete, four-movement L'Arlésienne Suite No. 2 by Georges Bizet.

And further west to the sunny realms of Spain, we encounter Manual de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” from his ballet score The Bewitched Love, and the haunting “Andaluza”: the most popular of Enrique Granados’ Twelve Spanish Dances. Our remaining programmed work is an arrangement of a traditional Sephardic song of Turkish/Spanish origin.