Classical: Talented young musicians

Roger Clarkson, the Artistic Director of the National Children's Orchestras of Great Britain, asks you to close your eyes 'and you will forget you are listening to an orchestra made up of players aged 13 years and younger'.

Roger Clarkson, the Artistic Director of the National Children’s Orchestras of Great Britain, asks you to close your eyes “and you will forget you are listening to an orchestra made up of players aged 13 years and younger”.

Never has the world known such a wealth of outstanding young musicians as we have today, and coming to Leeds Town Hall is the second oldest age group of the NCO’s four major orchestras, performing music that would have been totally beyond children seventy and more years ago.

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Squeezed onto the stage will be a 116 instrumentalists making up a complete symphony orchestra, and include the 12-year-old trombonist, Isaac Bousfield, from Cawood. He is following in the footsteps of his father who was a member of the first National Children’s Orchestra back in 1978, and is one of four members from Yorkshire.

“Many will continue into a life as a professional musician,” said Vivienne Price, the founder of the organisation. “But our aim is to make young people aware of music, and to find a life-long enjoyment playing and listening to the classics”.

Opening with Johann Strauss’s overture to his operetta, Die Fledermaus, the programme, conducted by Clarkson, also contains the Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens; Borodin’s In the Stepps of Central Asia; an excerpt from Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s virtuoso orchestral showpiece, Capriccio Espagnol.

National Children’s Orchestra, Leeds Town Hall, August 13, 7pm. Tickets 0113 376 0318.

By David Denton

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