Latest news with #NicholasCollon
Edinburgh Reporter
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Aurora is making its Edinburgh debut this August
Aurora Orchestra will be appearing at a bean bag concert in Edinburgh this August. This orchestra founded in 2005 by Principal Conductor, Nicholas Collon, memorise whole symphonies – sometimes an hour long and present music with theatrical elements to allow their audiences to get a better understanding of it. This summer Aurora marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the most influential and performed composers of the 20th century, with a deep-dive into his Fifth Symphony – a work born in the shadow of Stalin's regime that reveals music on the edge of life and death by a composer treading a dangerous line between political obedience and artistic defiance. Aurora will make their long-awaited debut at the Edinburgh International Festival, with two performances, including one in the Festival's Beanbag Concert Series. Shostakovich Inside Out (Monday 18 August, 2pm) invites audiences to learn more about the Fifth Symphony in a fresh and immersive way, through a conversational presentation led by Nicholas Collon as the orchestra play the symphony by memory, pausing to share insights and delve into its emotional depth and historical context. Later the same day, Aurora performs the full symphony by memory, as part of a concert that also includes Abel Selacoe's cello concerto Four Spirits, with the composer himself and percussionist Bernhard Schimpelsberger as soloists (Monday 18 August, 7:30pm). Made up of a roster of fearless musicians who have developed and grown with the orchestra, Aurora is the pioneer for memorised orchestral performance and has performed entire symphonies from memory at the BBC Proms and beyond for the last 11 years. They will play at BBC Proms on 16 and 17 August ahead of appearing in Edinburgh. The Artistic Director and Co-Director, Concept and Script for Shostakovich's Fifth by Heart, Jane Mitchell, said: 'Shostakovich's 5th symphony was written under extraordinary circumstances and has been put under a magnifying glass since the moment it was first presented. The stories surrounding the symphony provide a fascinating lens through which to look at the role of artists in a totalitarian state. Our presentation of the 5th symphony will look at these stories alongside an exploration of the score itself, and will take a look at the endless ways in which we can interpret abstract music, throwing light on both the terrifying and farcical nature of a state attempting to control a composer's voice.' Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place credit Nick Rutter Like this: Like Related
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Aurora Orchestra/Collon/Power review – Italian immersion with introspective Berlioz and extrovert Mendelssohn
So much shared, yet so utterly different. Mendelssohn wrote his Italian symphony in 1833, revising it the following year. Berlioz wrote his Harold en Italie symphony in 1834, following a stay in Rome during which the two composers had spent quality time together. Thus the Aurora Orchestra came up with the smart idea of putting the two Italian symphonies side by side. Beyond their loosely shared inspiration and form, however, the two works have little in common. Mendelssohn's is an expert and extrovert piece of symphonic writing, tight and technically impeccable. That of Berlioz, meanwhile, follows a wandering star all its own, broodingly romantic and constantly innovative, exemplified by the solo viola that depicts the melancholy of Byron's introspective hero Childe Harold. Left to themselves, these two works could have formed a well-contrasted programme of a traditional kind. But the Aurora and their conductor Nicholas Collon don't do traditional. They are above all else performance players, committed to immersing themselves and the audience in the excitement of live musical experience. It is one of the many reasons audiences love them. So in the second half, the Mendelssohn was played from memory, an Aurora speciality, the score taken at terrific tempos and with the players standing up and interacting. It was hard to resist, especially when the players then dispersed into the hall to encore the Italian symphony's breakneck final movement saltarello. Watch out for the Aurora giving the same treatment to Shostakovich's fifth symphony at the Proms this summer. Harold, meanwhile, was presented as a 'dramatic exploration'. Texts based on Berlioz's Mémoires were declaimed between movements and from amid the orchestra by actor Charlotte Ritchie. Collon and the viola soloist Lawrence Power chipped in, too. Power even whistled his idée fixe theme before wandering Byronically through the hall as he played the lonely music at the symphony's heart. It would be churlish not to be caught up in this. But it can sometimes distract. In his recording of Berlioz's symphony under Andrew Manze, Power is as poetic and nuanced a Harold violist as any on disc. But amid so much other activity, the Aurora's orchestral balance sometimes did him fewer favours. When he stood stock still to deliver Harold's skeletal arpeggios at the end of the second movement, it was a reminder that Berlioz's music provides its own theatre.
