About This Concert
From the charm of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings to the profound emotional weight of Strauss’s Metamorphosen, this programme journeys through some of the most deeply expressive music written for string orchestra. The evening opens with Elgar’s delightful Serenade for Strings, an early work filled with youthful grace, soaring melodies, and the composer's trademark English warmth. The mood then shifts dramatically with J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor. Driven by an intense, relentless energy, this masterpiece showcases the keyboard’s fiery virtuosity against a rich, dramatic string backdrop. Following a 20-minute interval, the programme concludes with Richard Strauss’s monumental Metamorphosen. Written for 23 independent string players in the final months of World War II, it is a deeply moving, tragic, and ultimately transcendent elegy for a lost world, and one of the greatest achievements in the string repertoire.
Programme
Edward Elgar
Serenade for Strings, Op. 26
Duration: 13'
Johann Stebastian Bach
Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052
Duration: 23'
20-minute Interval
Richard Strauss
Metamorphosen, TrV 290
Duration: 28'
Specific seats are not allocated for this concert. A priority ticket guarentees the ticket holder a seat in the first three rows.
Young Person
Students and Under 18s
£10.00
Standard
Standard Entry
£15.00
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Conductor
Blake Phillpot
Blake Phillpot is a conductor, cellist and baritone, and the founder and Artistic Director of the City Chamber Orchestra. He is currently studying conducting with Peter Stark, Professor of Conducting at the Royal College of Music. Blake leads the City Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble bringing together postgraduate, undergraduate and early-career musicians from London’s conservatoires. The orchestra seeks to bring professional-standard orchestral performance to the City of London while creating opportunities for emerging conservatoire musicians to develop through orchestral and concerto repertoire. He has also worked with postgraduate musicians at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, providing independent concerto performance platforms and repertoire sessions. Alongside his work with the City Chamber Orchestra, he has conducted youth orchestras, amateur ensembles, outreach orchestras and choirs. His conducting has been shaped by work with Peter Stark, Colin Metters and Lionel Friend, and his musical background is rooted in orchestral and choral performance. As a musician, he has performed extensively as a cellist and baritone and was a choral scholar and Head Chorister at the Chapel of St Augustine, performing in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and France. Blake is also a prize-winning mathematician from Imperial College London, where he graduated with First Class Honours in Mathematics in 2024.