Following a sold-out concert in 2025, University Chamber Orchestra returns with one of the most famous pieces of classical music ever composed. Despite being so well known, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is more complex than we might realise. The music journalist Tom Service writes that the 'only life-forms who now really hear the ambiguities in the opening' of the work are 'infants or extra-terrestrials'! It is not until the third time we hear the four-note rhythmic figure at the beginning of the Symphony – often referred to as the hammer blows of fate – that the key is confirmed as C minor. Up until this point, the music could be in E-flat major. While our familiarity with the work prevents us from hearing these intricacies, it is perhaps important to keep them in mind. As the transition from the scherzo to the finale reminds us so emphatically, where there is darkness, there is light. The programme also includes Saint-Saëns' ever-popular Second Piano Concerto, with final-year student Katie Laing as the soloist, and the first performance of PhD composer Roy Watkins' Terry Holmes Composer and Performer Award Commission.

Manlu Du  violin
Katie Laing  piano
John Stringer  conductor

Saint-Saëns   Piano Concerto no. 2 in G minor, op. 22
Beethoven   Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67
Roy Watkins   Terry Holmes Composer and Performer Award Commission