An Italian Vista

Our first Up Close performance features a triple bill of chamber orchestra delights. Strings gallop into the entry of Grieg’s Holberg Suite. During the first and last movements, you’ll picture yourself letting loose on the dance floor, and in the middle you’ll fantasise about how smoothly you glide along the ballroom. The suite was composed to celebrate the birth of a playwright; Puccini’s Crisantemi then marks the death of a king. His elegy is named after the chrysanthemum flower, a mourning bloom. Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony bursts with the ecstasy of being alive and travelling the world. As the composer told his dad of the sun-drenched country, ‘I am loving it!’.