The Full Works Concert - Wednesday 25 June, 8pm

There are plenty of hits in tonight's Concert - from Vivaldi's Gloria, through Schubert's Trout Quintet, to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.

Tonight's concert opens with the Gloria in D by Vivaldi, composed probably around 1715, for the choir of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for girls where he worked. Vivaldi, a priest, music teacher and virtuoso violinist, composed many sacred works for the Ospedale, where he spent most of his career, as well as hundreds of instrumental concertos to be played by the girls’ orchestra. This, his most famous choral piece, presents the traditional Gloria from the Latin Mass. The wonderfully sunny nature of the Gloria, with its distinctive melodies and rhythms, is characteristic of all of Vivaldi’s music, giving it an immediate and universal appeal.

DISCOVER: Why Vivaldi had to hide his singers away > 

Schubert wrote the original ‘Trout’ song when he was 20. The Trout Quintet came five years later. The fourth of the quintet’s five moments is essentially a set of variations on the composer’s own tune and has become one of the favourite moments in Schubert’s output. We have one Sylvester Paumgartner to thank for this. He was an amateur cellist whom Schubert met while on his travels around Austria. Paumgartner not only suggested the quintet, but he also suggested that one of the movements might be based on The Trout.

Mozart's Horn Concerto No.2 in Eb major comes from the latest album on the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's own label featuring their Principal Horn Roger Montgomery as soloist. He plays the notoriously difficult valveless horn with extreme skill.

Tchaikovsky's famous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture ends tonight's Concert. The work is based on three main strands of the Shakespeare story. The first represents the saintly Friar Laurence. The second agitated theme evokes the warring families, including a reference to a sword fight, depicted by crashing cymbals. Thirdly, the love theme for Romeo and Juliet is passionate and yearning in character but always with an underlying current of anxiety.

Antonio Vivaldi: Gloria in D major RV.589
Soloists: Sarah Fox, Deborah Norman, Michael Chance
Stephen Cleobury conducts the Academy of Ancient Music and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge

Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet in A major D.667
Yefim Bronfman, Pinchas Zukerman, Zukerman Chamber Players 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Horn Concerto No.2 in Eb major K.417
French horn: Roger Montgomery
Margaret Faultless conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet
Kurt Masur conducts the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra