Risingholme Orchestra would be delighted to have your company on our touring holiday of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, where we sample their musical pleasures at various stopping-off points along the way. 

Italy – the birthplace of opera – has classical and modern music deeply woven into its cultural fabric. And so we offer an orchestral “Intermezzo” from an opera by Puccini; a soprano aria from an opera by Donizetti; and – bringing us into the realm of contemporary music – a Bass Trombone Concerto by specialist brass and woodwind composer, Nicola Morello.

A skip eastwards across the Ionian Sea lands us in Greece, where we play some of a number of dance-based pieces on this afternoon’s programme – in this case, a selection of four “Greek Dances” by the early-20th-century composer Nikos Skalkottas.   

Moving due west, brings us to France, where we stay long enough to perform the complete, four-movement L'Arlésienne Suite No. 2 by Georges Bizet.

And further west to the sunny realms of Spain, we encounter Manual de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” from his ballet score The Bewitched Love, and the haunting “Andaluza”: the most popular of Enrique Granados’ Twelve Spanish Dances. Our remaining programmed work is an arrangement of a traditional Sephardic song of Turkish/Spanish origin.