Sinfonia Viva: Stunning Strings

Matthew Lynch             Conductor
Vaughan Williams       Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
George Walker              Lyric for Strings
Tchaikovsky                    Serenade for Strings

Following the success of their inaugural Sunday matinee last season, Sinfonia Viva turn to three supremely beautiful pieces for string orchestra. Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia was a breakthrough piece for the young composer and its multi-layered re-imagining of Tallis’s sixteenth-century psalm still exerts a mesmerising hold. Pulitzer Prize-winning George Walker’s Lyric for Strings began life as a part of a string quartet in 1946 and its impassioned string orchestra version carries a powerful emotive charge. In writing his Serenade for Strings, Tchaikovsky was inspired by elegant earlier models by Mozart. Rendered on a grander scale, this Romantic giant has it all: majesty, grace and irresistible momentum.