Chiswick Chamber Orchestra concert

On Sunday 23rd November 2025 at 4pm there is a concert by the Chiswick Chamber Orchestra

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Andrew Pears writes:
Antonio Vivaldi’s masterpiece The Four Seasons contains such familiar and well-loved music, it’s easy to overlook just how extraordinary and how radical these four violin concertos are.  Vivaldi didn’t invent the Baroque concerto, but he made the three-movement form his own, composing hundreds of them, each one with the stamp of his virtuosity and imagination.

The Four Seasons are special in the way they tell stories with music.  In the score, each season is described by a sonnet and the music paints pictures around the words, from birdsong and barking dogs in Spring, sultry heat and thunderstorms in Summer, drunken songs at Autumn harvest time, to shivering cold and cracking ice in Winter.  All brought to vivid life through the sounds of a virtuoso violin and a small baroque orchestra.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is a journey in musical time of a quite different kind.  Written in 1910 for a multi-layered string orchestra, Vaughan Williams weaves tapestries of sound with variations on a haunting hymn tune by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis.  The music exists in a world that is simultaneously ancient and modern.  It has become one of Vaughan William’s best loved masterpieces.

I am thrilled to have one of West London’s finest musicians, violinist Iwona Boesche, as our soloist and director for this concert.  And lending Italianate authenticity in The Four Seasons, Father Fabrizio Pesce will be reading from Vivaldi’s sonneti to steer our way through the musical year.

Book tickets here