Mid Sussex-based Ensemble Reza enjoying the good times

It’s all happening on Friday, July 11 at 7pm at St Paul's Church, Churchside, Chichester, PO19 6FT – a special anniversary concert performing and celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's dazzling String Octet and the 150th anniversary of Dvorak’s beautiful Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 22. Tickets £20, concessions £5 from The Novium.

For ensemble founder Pavlos Carvalho, the concert sums up everything that the ensemble is about: “We must be in our 12th year now. Every day we are talking about how to sustain the work and sustain the concerts and sustain the outreach, and that has been the same from the start. But the fact is that it has all been sustained. We're getting more and more busy. But I think the thing is that we don't rest on our laurels. We don't take anything for granted. We know that we must work hard to keep up all that we have achieved so far and we must work really hard to maintain our relationship with the people we perform for. But we've got an incredible team in the background. Without them it just wouldn't have been possible to sustain what we do. They find the funding and do all the organising.

“But the main thing is the close relationship that we have with the community. We always strive to come up with music that people will enjoy but not just music that they will know. We want to play the great classics that we adore. We get together to play the music we love but we want to do that in a really open way. We do lots of folk concerts and outreach work. We really are open to anything. The important thing is the contact that we have with people who love music and the fact that we don't ever isolate ourselves with the things that we do. We want to do the classics but we're always open to doing other things as well. That's the identity of the group.”

And it will be particularly a enjoyable programme this time: “Mendelssohn wrote the String Octet when he was very young. He was 17. I'm always very careful about using the word light but the music is light in the very best sense of the word. It's uplifting and it's got very fast virtuosic passages. It is just so much fun to play and is one of those pieces where the movements just get better and better and better. The last movement is just complete ecstasy of joy and fun and music. It is sparklingly virtuosic but never at the expense of beautiful music. It is not light in the sense of without substance because there is real substance to it. It is not just fast notes for the sake of fast notes. Everything is beautifully phrased.

“The Dvorak is a piece that is not played as often as a lot of his other pieces. It is such an interesting piece and it's full of Slavonic folk feelings and melodies. It is another really beautiful one to play.”

• The 2025 Festival of Chichester is delighted to welcome Edward Cooke Family Law as its principal sponsor. The Festival is generously supported by Chichester City Council, firm friends to the Festival since its inception.