Enjoy the Magic of Classical Music with Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra
Join us for unforgettable performances of timeless masterpieces
Saturday 14th June 7.30pm
All Saints Church, Leamington Spa
About WSO
Our next Concert
Saturday 14th June Summer Concert
7.30 pm - All Saints Church Leamington
Night on a Bald Mountain - Mussorgsky
Danse Macabre - Saint-Saens
Symphony No. 5 - Mahler
Roger Coull – conductor
Date for your diary - Autumn Concert
18th October 2025
Warwick Hall - Warwick
Our Conductor
Principal Conductor - Roger Coull
Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra 's Principal Conductor is Roger Coull
Roger Coull’s route into conducting has come very much from the eyes and ears of a performer. As a string quartet leader of international standing he has always been used to interpreting music and every aspect of the process of turning a vision into performance.
Associate Conductor - Paul Leddington Wright
Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra's Associate Conductor is Paul Leddington Wright
Paul started conducting at the age of 15 He won an organ scholarship to study at Cambridge and continued his conducting alongside his studies.
Following university, he started a career in Musical Theatre. Work in the West End and provincial theatre lasted until he moved to Coventry to take up the position of sub-organist then musical director at the Cathedral (a position he retired from recently)
Mussorgsky - Night on a Bald Mountain
Night on a Bald Mountain is one of Mussorgsky’s most familiar works. Mussorgsky offered it to his colleague Balakirev, who was very critical of the work. Mussorgsky withdrew it, never to work on it again.
Because Mussorgsky lived a chaotic life, and many of his scores remained incomplete, master orchestrator Rimsky-Korsakov virtually re-composed the work. This is the version heard almost exclusively ever since.
The opening of the work evokes an eerie, supernatural atmosphere and the revelry begins with a savage Russian dance, starting quietly, but developing into demonic wildness. The excitement subsides, and a quieter dance is played by the woodwind and strings, but it is not long before the demons rise again until the climax of the piece is reached. There is a sudden pause as the church bells sound. Finally, muted violins suggest the departure of the evil spirits, and the clarinet announces the approach of dawn. Morning has come.
Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre
Danse Macabre was composed in 1874 for orchestra reworking an earlier song vividly describing the figure of death scraping on his violin at midnight, cold winds blowing, as dancers leap. The vocal part became a solo violin, accompanied by an orchestra including a xylophone evoking rattling bones. The harp opens with twelve strokes of midnight, followed by the solo “fiddle” of death.
Two themes are used as the basis of the piece: a dancing one, announced on the flute, and a descending scale in the violin, until the Dies irae (day of wrath) from the Requiem Mass is heard. Here it is unusually played staccato in the woodwinds. The frenzied dance continues, when dawn is announced by the oboe depicting the cock’s crow. The solo violin, now plays a sadder melody, and the skeletons return to their graves - until next time.
Mahler - Symphony No. 5
Mahler wrote his Fifth Symphony while he was in the midst of his courtship with Alma Schindler, whom he married in the spring of 1902. He completed the work that summer — the time of year when he was able to be most prolific, as he was on a break from conducting.
While Mahler’s previous symphonies incorporated voices or text addressing programmatic elements, his Fifth Symphony is purely instrumental and shows the development of his writing for orchestra. The work is structured in an arch-like design, with two longer parts flanking a shorter middle part, and Mahler connects movements within the piece through common musical ideas. His choice of keys, beginning in C-sharp minor and ultimately concluding in D major, is both symbolic of a dark-to-light progression and also shows his disregard for tradition. Standard practice before Mahler was to have a work begin and end in the same key, or at least the relative major or minor key. His choice to break this precedent solidifies his role as a link between the Romantic and Modern eras
Bringing classical music to life: WSO in concert
