Bay of Plenty Symphonia will perform their first 2024 concert next month – and you can win tickets to devour the musical feast!

‘Fate and Destiny: Beethoven and Brahms’ on May 5, is a collaboration with local chamber choir Scholars Baroque Aotearoa to present masterpieces great and small.

Pauline Logger says the Symphonia will tackle Beethoven’s towering Symphony No. 5 - arguably the most famous piece of classical music ever written - with its legendary theme: ‘Fate knocking on the door’. “New conductor William McElwee will guide the audience and orchestra through this spine-tingling masterpiece of sublime drama – orchestral music at its very heights!

“Another German masterwork accompanies this, where Scholars Baroque Aotearoa join the orchestra for Schicksalslied by Brahms – ‘The Song of Destiny’.

“Brahms weaves a contrasting fabric of peaceful heavenly sounds, and the buffeting fury and whirlwind of earthly life.”

The concert opens with ‘In Memoriam’, a miniature masterpiece by Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch.

“Then Scholars Baroque Aotearoa take to the stage with their maestro Chalium Poppy to perform JS Bach’s funeral motet Jesu, meine Freude – ‘Jesus, my joy’. Completing the concert is Sibelius’ ‘Valse Triste’. 

‘Fate and Destiny: Beethoven and Brahms’ is on Sunday, May 5, at 3pm at Holy Trinity Church, Devonport Rd.

Online tickets cost Adults $20 plus booking fee at: www.eventfinda.co.nz or phone 0800 BUY TIX (289 849). Under-18s gain free entry. Door sales cost $25 per adult.

The Weekend Sun has two double passes to May 5’s ‘Fate and Destiny: Beethoven and Brahms’ concert to give away to two lucky readers who can tell us who is the concert’s conductor? 

Enter online at: www.sunlive.co.nz under the ‘Competitions’ tab. Entries close Tuesday, April 23.