Music Director: Thomas Søndergård
A Quick Q&A with Canadian violinist James Ehnes ahead of his performances of Beethoven's Violin Concert with the RSNO this week. What's your own history with the Beethoven Violin Concerto? How long have you been playing it? I was lucky to have the opportunity to first perform the Beethoven when I was quite young, 16 […]
Today we head east to Vero Beach – we are certainly doing a lot of zig-zagging across the state! Vero Beach is home to some of the largest retirement communities in Florida and that was very evident in the audience. Unusually, the venue was not a concert hall but a large modern church. The acoustics […]
Anothert day, another beach, I mean concert! Today we are heading for Sarasota, a couple of hours west of Orlando. We have three coach drivers who are all being wonderfully flexible so one bus sent off early for those who wanted to explore a bit of the town. Some of us decided that pedal power […]
Another free morning so it was an opportunity to head for the shops, the beach, a museum or park. One of our hotels (we were split in two groups) was very close to the biggest mall in West Palm Beach. Just the simple task of getting there was an experience – very little priority is […]
You may think it looks as though we're on a nice holiday and I'll admit it kind of feels that way! But today, we have the first concert of the tour so it's down to business, well this afternoon at least! One of the unusual things about this tour is the fact that we are based […]
There's nothing like a good night's sleep after being on the road for 24 hours! With the weather forecast looking like wall to wall blue skies and sunshine, most people used the day to visit the beach, either here in West Palm Beach or up to Miami to do a bit of people watching on […]
It seems like foreign tours for the RSNO are like buses - you wait ages for one to come along and then two arrive at once! We've only been back from our January tour of Spain for a few weeks and the suitcases and passports were out again, this time packed with clothes for a […]
Well, right now I am working on a symphonic suite of waltzes, which will include three waltzes from Cinderella, two waltzes from War and Peace and one waltz from the movie score Lermontov. The War and Peace has just been brilliantly produced in Leningrad, where the composer Cheshko made an especially noteworthy appearance as a […]
We live in a magnificent world in which it is our natural assumption that we may freely congregate in order to celebrate the wonder and magic of man's creativity on evenings such as this. The events last night in Paris are a vivid reminder that mankind is also capable of acts of horrifying atrocity. The […]
When I was asked last year if I was interested in delivering one of the RSNO's new Discover Days on Prokofiev, I immediately jumped at the chance. I've been giving pre-concert talks for a few seasons now and I love the opportunity that that gives me to meet our audience and to share my love […]