Candlelight concert by The London Concertante pairing Vivaldi's The Four Seasons with Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, aimed at first-time classical concert-goers.
The London Concertante are playing Leeds Minster on Friday 30 October, with a programme that puts two of the most famous violin works side by side. It's a Candlelight Concerts evening, and the bill is built around Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending.
The Four Seasons is the most recorded work in classical music, a set of four concertos that each evoke a different season, and a defining showpiece for solo violin. The Lark Ascending was written on the eve of the First World War and takes its title and inspiration from a poem by George Meredith. Between them, they cover two very different eras of the violin: the high Baroque of Vivaldi and the early twentieth-century English style of Vaughan Williams.
There's more to the set than those two. Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro opens the night, and his Flute Quartet in D follows, a piece originally written for a wealthy amateur flautist. The London Concertante say that about half their audience are attending their first classical concert, and the programme reflects that: it's a collection of well-known works rather than an obscure deep dive.
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The venue is Leeds Minster on Kirkgate, a Gothic Revival church that seats 1,600. Its present Grade I listed structure was completed in 1841 on the site of the city's oldest church. The concert runs from 7:30pm to 9:30pm, two hours in total, and tickets go from £25 to £70 via Fever.
