London Concertante plays Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, with Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, at Portsmouth Cathedral.
London Concertante are playing Portsmouth Cathedral on Friday 13 November, with tickets starting from £27.50. They're a classical chamber ensemble founded in 1991 that gives around 100 concerts a year, and they've built a reputation as one of Europe's finest.
The evening is built around Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, which is often called the most recorded work in classical music and a defining showpiece for solo violin. Each of the four concertos depicts a season, shaped by accompanying poems possibly written by Vivaldi himself. They evoke birdsong, buzzing flies, harvest celebrations, barking dogs, summer storms and winter ice, so you can hear the seasons change across the set.
Alongside that, they'll play Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, composed on the eve of the First World War and inspired by George Meredith's poem. It's a more reflective piece, with a soaring violin line that suggests a lark gliding high above the mechanised world. The programme opens with Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, drawn from Beaumarchais' then-banned comedy, and includes Bach's Violin Concerto in A Minor.
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It's a violin-heavy night, with the Vivaldi and the Vaughan Williams both putting the solo violin front and centre. The concert starts at 7:30 pm, with doors opening at 6:45 pm, and seating is unreserved — first come, first served. There's also a bar at the cathedral, so you can grab a drink before you take your seat. Tickets start from £27.50.
