​Eastbourne Symphony Orchestra offers summer concert

Ewan, who will play Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, is the winner of the John Crawshaw Award, a new prize, which was given in memory of a former ESO president and local supporter of young musicians.

The concert is on Sunday, June 30 at 7pm in St Saviour’s Church, BN21 4UT. Tickets (£18 in advance; £20 on the door) are available from Reid and Dean, BN21 4QG and WeGotTickets.

Orchestra spokesman John Thornley said: “Ewan is a prominent young oboist building a career in the UK. He graduated with a first-class degree reading music at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and is currently in the second year of his master’s at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2020 he won the woodwind final of BBC Young Musician, moving on to the Grand Final.”

Ewan said: “The Strauss is demanding both physically and technically. It was one of the last pieces he composed and is written in his distinctly neo-classical late style. The music is light and airy, almost Mozartian, but all the while retaining his dizzyingly ambitious harmonic language. It’s one of my favourite pieces to play, and I’m sure the orchestra will love playing it too. I’m delighted that it’s a first for the ESO after their 44 years! It’s certainly a must for music lovers.”

Conductor Graham Jones is enjoying rehearsing for the concert, his 133rd: “Ewan is the 39th winner of our competition which becomes increasingly competitive. With some 40 high-quality competitors every year from prestigious music colleges and schools, it’s always a difficult but rewarding task for the adjudicating panel to rank them. Ewan’s musicianship was a given, and his professionalism and experience helped us to select him as the winner. We were quick to take on his suggestion of the Strauss as it is a great work. We then built a programme around that which both players and audience will enjoy.

“We had a bumper audience for our Verdi Requiem concert in May, and so we are hoping that our loyal supporters will come along again to enjoy the Strauss as well as Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel Overture with its frothy and childlike exuberance, and Sibelius’s Symphony No 2. This work, with its passages of shimmering strings and long pedal notes over which music frequently slowly builds to a climax, has all the hallmarks of Sibelius’s style and is well known to the concert-going public especially the last movement.”

Graham addded: ‘This concert also gives us the opportunity to say thank you to Lisa Wigmore, who continues as our leader after 40 years.

"We met for coffee recently to look back at the orchestra’s many highlights. Her thoughts will feature in the concert programme but one thing stands out in addition to the great music we have played: orchestras are a special group where friendships are made. I would heartily agree, and long may that and the Eastbourne Symphony Orchestra continue.’”