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| Fidelio Orchestra |
Founded in 2019 with the aim of creating opportunities for young musicians to get high standard orchestral experience and to collaborate with outstanding soloists, the the Fidelio Orchestra aims to bring together people with a commitment to making good music in a fun and unsophisticated environment.
Their 2025 season begins on 20 February at St Andrew’s Holborn, with Raffaello Morales conducting and the orchestra performing in the round with a programme, Meditations that features Marcello’s Oboe Concerto from 1717, and two works from the 1940s, Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra and Strauss’ Oboe Concerto with soloist Laura Wallace. A practicing solicitor with a top law firm, Laura is a vivid example of how the passion and the interest for music can go along a profession strictly outside of the music industry.
In April, Raffaello Morales conducts a far larger ensemble at Milton Court Concert Hall for Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 with violinist Kristine Balanas. Then in June the orchestra is joined by pianist (and barrister) Paul Wee at St John’s Waterloo for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.
Finally the season concludes in July at St John’s Waterloo with Mozart’s Serenade for Winds in C minor K. 388 and Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert für Klavier und Geige mit 13 Bläser. The conductor is Leonard Elschenbroich with soloists, pianist Julia Hamoś and Fidelio Orchestra’s concertmaster Jaga Klimaszewska.
The orchestra is effectively a springboard for young musicians to launch into a career as professional players. The involvement of non-professional musicians in the orchestra is a testimony to the idea that orchestral music is not only a discipline to be celebrated as a professional practice, but it can be a channel to facilitate communication between the professional music world and the society more in general.
Full details from the orchestra’s website.
