We are delighted to welcome Nicholas Daniel OBE as soloist for tonight’s concert: he is one of the world’s great oboists and one of Britain’s best-known musicians. He won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 1980 with the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto and has made several award-winning recordings of it over the years.

Conductor Rebecca Miller has earned an international reputation for her compelling, insightful, and energetic presence on the podium and for her ability to communicate with audiences of all ages.

Tonight’s programme brings together Samuel Barber, Caroline Shaw and Tchaikovsky in a

celebration of the immense contribution they have made to the history of classical music.

American Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is one of the most recognisable pieces of classical music in the world – it was used at Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral and after JFK’s assassination. Tchaikovsky’s heartfelt Serenade for Strings is considered to be one of the late Romantic era’s definitive compositions. Caroline Shaw is the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music and described Entr’acte as ‘like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further; [it] suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition’.

The London Mozart Players will also be performing a second piece by Barber − an oboe Canzonetta −the middle movement of an unfinished concerto, his final work.

Barber, Shaw and Tchaikovsky would today be described as from the LGBTQ+ community, and we are pleased to celebrate their work during Pride Month.