Edinburgh City Orchestra: Dvořák's New World Symphony and Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto

Edinburgh City Orchestra are at The Queen's Hall on Sunday 15 November, with Peter Le Tissier conducting and pianist Catriona Mackenzie on the solo. It's a full programme that runs from the early nineteenth century through to the end of it, and it's got a bit of a folk thread running through the whole thing.

The evening opens with Carl Maria von Weber's Overture to 'Der Freischütz'. It's a piece that draws on folk traditions, mythology and romanticism, and it went on to inspire many of the operatic composers who followed in the nineteenth century. From there, the focus shifts to Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, the only one he wrote in a minor key. It belongs to his heroic middle period, a time when his deafness was becoming more pronounced; he premiered it himself without a written score, playing through a largely blank piano part. The stormy solo is taken up here by Catriona Mackenzie, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.

Closing the night is Dvořák's New World Symphony, written in 1893 as a commission for the New York Philharmonic. Like the Weber, it looks to folk music for its material, drawing on Native and African American melody as well as folk tunes from the composer's new home in the US and his native Czechia. Between the three, the programme moves from the romanticism of the early century to the heroic middle and finishes with a symphony that pulls together sounds from two different sides of the Atlantic.

The concert starts at 6.30pm at The Queen's Hall, 85-89 Clerk Street, Edinburgh South EH8 9JG. Tickets range from £15.20 to £30.60, and those prices include a 10% booking fee per ticket and a £2 transaction fee.