FOR a night of feel-good music head for Huddersfield Town Hall next weekend to hear Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra’s last concert of the season.
The orchestra, under the baton of its principal conductor, the much-praised Venezuelan Natalia Luis-Bassa, has chosen a programme of music by composers from the Romantic period, Von Suppé, Brahms and Berlioz.
The concert, on Saturday April 26, begins with Overture, Light Cavalry by Franz Von Suppé, a 19th-century composer born in Dalmatia, now part of Croatia.
Von Suppé composed about 30 operettas and 180 farces, ballets and other stage works. The overtures, particularly Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry) and Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant), will be familiar to many and not just from orchestral concerts.
Both have proved popular among those who come up with soundtracks for films, cartoons and even ads.
German composer Johannes Brahms was notoriously critical of his own work and for many years avoided writing orchestral pieces.
The popular view is that he did not want to compete with his idol, Beethoven, in writing symphonies.
The Variations on a Theme of Haydn, published in 1873, marked not only the first purely orchestral piece by Brahms since the second Serenade in 1860, it was a turning point for the composer.
The orchestra has also chosen a piece by French composer Hector Berlioz.
The five-movement Symphonie fantastique is considered by many to be his most outstanding work.
Last autumn Natalia Luis-Bassa was awarded the Elgar Society Prize for the performance of the composer’s Second Symphony with the orchestra.
She began her musical studies at the age of 15, when she studied oboe at the world-famous Orquesta Juvenil de Venezuela.
She read music at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales, where she was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Falcón.
She then came to London to complete her studies at the Royal College of Music.
There she held the RCM Junior Fellowship in opera conducting for two years.
Natalia is now studying for her master’s degree at Huddersfield University.
In addition to her role with the Huddersfield Philharmonic she is musical director of the Haffner Orchestra in Lancaster and the Hallam Sinfonia in Sheffield.
Since gaining the second prize at the Maazel-Vilar Conductor’s Competition in New York in 2002 she has worked in the UK and abroad with a number of orchestras.
Tickets for next Saturday’s concert are available from Kirklees Council ticket offices.
There is also a pre-concert discussion in the Old Court Room at the Town Hall at 6.45pm.
