Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra offer Chichester Cathedral summer concert

In Chichester Cathedral on Wednesday, June 14 at 7.30pm they will offer Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dvorak’s ‘From the New World’ Symphony, with BSO assistant conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh conducting (tickets on festivalofchichester.co.uk).

“The programme is a really wonderful programme,” Tom says. “The Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is for string orchestra and in fact it is for double string orchestra. There is a main body of strings and there is also a second string group. It premiered in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910 as part of the Three Choirs Festival and is therefore designed to be played in beautiful and massive spaces and that's why I thought of bringing it to Chichester. The joys of the piece are beautiful melodies and luscious harmonies. I'm sure it's going to work very well in Chichester.

“For the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto we have got Jennifer Pike as the soloist. Again it's a wonderful piece full of virtuosity and lyrical melody and lots of fireworks for the audience to enjoy. After the interval we've got Dvorak's Ninth Symphony which is again full of melodies that are very famous and very popular and very well known. It has got a very beautiful slow movement and a very fine solo on the cor anglais and I think that's again something that will be very beautiful in the cathedral.”

Tom became assistant conductor with the orchestra last year: “It was a very rigorous process of audition over a couple of days. It is repertoire that you prepare and you work for short bursts with the orchestra, and I was very fortunate to be appointed. I've been working with the orchestra on a huge number of projects this season. And I'm delighted to be with them next season as well. The breadth of the work is very big and the amount of repertoire is very impressive. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is one of the country's most historic and most revered orchestras and cultural organisations. They have a huge amount of activity not only in the concert hall but also in the community and also working across the south-west of England. It is an incredibly dynamic organisation to be part of. My next concert will be for the Festival in Chichester and then we go into the next season when we will have a lot of concerts that will be livestreamed. The idea is that for the Chichester audience that might not be able to get to our home in Poole they can catch the live stream which means obviously that it's available across the region, across the country and across the world. In the main season which is from October to May we're doing 18 concerts that will be streamed.”

Tom has conducted concerto performances with leading soloists including Alena Baeva, Alim Beisembayev, Julian Bliss, Danny Driver and Jess Gillam