Mahler 5

The crown-jewel of the Wells Cathedral School musical calendar. Wells Cathedral School Symphony Orchestra and choirs present a programme of music new and old, culminating in the performance of Mahler’s monumental Fifth Symphony. We are delighted to welcome the much celebrated conductor Alice Farnham back to Wells to conduct the Symphony Orchestra.

The programme will open with a newly composed piece for solo horn ‘The Curlew’ written by current Upper Sixth pupil of the school Archie, who is off to Oxford to read Music next year. Archie’s piece, which evokes the plight of the endangered curlew in the Scottish Cairngorms, was runner-up in the British Horn Society Composition prize this year.

Then another new piece – this time by a former pupil of the school and now successful Hollywood composer David Buckley (OW 1994) – ‘Lamentations’, a sorrowful piece using singers positioned in different parts of the cathedral.

Winner of the Wells Cathedral School Concerto Competition, Elizabeth Massey, will then perform Weber’s characterful Bassoon Concerto. Elizabeth has been a stand-out specialist musician at Wells since she arrived aged 11, and it is wonderful to have her play her concerto as she finishes her time at school, before taking up a prestigious scholarship at the Royal College of Music next year.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony finishes the programme and is undoubtedly his most famous work, thanks to its serene fourth movement, the Adagietto, written as a love letter to his beloved wife Alma. It was written in the summers of 1901 and 1902, during which time the composer experienced some of the greatest highs and lows of his lifetime. It will take you from the darkness of the opening movements through the longing of the Adagietto to the transcendence of the finale.