The orchestra's debut concert will take place on Thursday 6 April at St John of Jerusalem Church, Hackney. The orchestra of young instrumentalists will perform some classics of the symphonic repertoire as well as some more unusual works.

 

To open, Jamie Conway will take the two string orchestras through Ralph Vaughan Williams' sublime Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis in a generous church acoustic, in line with that of Gloucester Cathedral where the piece was premiered in 1910. Its pairing with Finzi's song cycle Let us Garlands Bring is particularly appropirate, the cycle having been written for Vaughan Williams' 70th birthday. Vaughan Williams himself commented that the third song in the cycle of five was one of the loveliest ever written. Royal College of Music student Edward Jowle will join the orchestra as baritone soloist.

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Brahms' Tragic Overture, the piece that "cries" according to the composer, closes the first half, completing a sequence of varying emotional bursts from three different composers. After the interval Tchaikovsky's "Russian flavoured" Fifth Symphony gives the orchestra the opportunity to pull out all the stops under the direction of Zoë Kundu.