Harrogate's new professional chamber orchestra prepares for inaugural season

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The new professional chamber orchestra based at Harrogate’s Royal Hall has announced details of the first concert of its inaugural season.

Cuore will perform Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony and Grieg’s piano concerto at the Royal Hall on September 27. Beethoven is also on the programme.

Kazakh pianist Oxana Shevchenko will be the soloist and Freddie Fox, the actor and orchestra ambassador, will again be in attendance.

Details of the rest of the season, which will include Cuore’s Leeds debut, a fundraising concert in collaboration with St Gemma’s Hospice, and the first in a series of concerts aimed at younger people, will be announced at the event.

Cuore was founded by local violinist and composer William Dutton, who won the strings final of BBC Young Musician of the Year and was the first British conductor admitted to the Italian Conducting Academy in Milan.

You can read an interview with him here.

Mr Dutton has said he wants to give Yorkshire classical music lovers the chance to hear the quality of musicians usually reserved for places like the Birmingham Symphony Hall and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

Its first concert on the 80th anniversary of VE Day in May received widespread acclaim. The British conductor Barry Wordsworth and Lord Michael Berkeley, the presenter of Private Passions on Radio 3, were among those in attendance.

Now the orchestra is preparing for its first full season.

Ms Shevchenko said:

“I’m so excited to perform again in Yorkshire with my dear friend and colleague William. The Grieg is very close to my heart, having first performed it when I was just 11 years old.”