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Join us for our 45th Anniversary Season
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
Book multiple concerts and save!
3-5 concerts discount = 9%
6 concerts discount = 18%
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Sep 19 @ 7:30 pm
Sibelius Symphony No.4 in A minor, Op.64
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Piano: Freddy Kempf
Please note, a £2 ticket commission fee is included in the price of the ticket.
If you require a carer ticket, or have any accessibility requirements please book your tickets over the phone by calling 01242 528 764. The lines are open 9.00am – 5.00pm, Monday – Friday.
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English Symphony Orchestra announces Cheltenham concert
By David Wood | 20th August 2025
Reprinted from The Punchline
The world-class English Symphony Orchestra is an ensemble which in recent years has become synonymous with artistic excellence, innovative and visionary programming.
Worcester-based but with an international reputation, ESO has unveiled details of their 2025-26 season opening concert in Cheltenham Town Hall - home of its residency for the past two years.
The English Symphony Orchestra will be performing Jean Sibelius' Symphony No 4 in A Minor, Op.64, and Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 in C Minor, Op.18, on Friday, September 19, at 7.30pm at Cheltenham Town Hall.
Conducted by the ESO's artistic director and principal conductor Kenneth Woods, Ken will be joined by British pianist Freddy Kempf.
Freddy - who took up the piano at the age of four - first caught the attention of British concert-goers four years later when he played with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. In 1987, he won the first National Mozart Competition in England and in 1992 was named the BBC Young Musician of the Year
Read the whole thing here
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Welcome to Sue Voysey -
our new CEO!
Sue grew up in Gloucestershire and as a string player was an active member of many local youth orchestras before heading to Birmingham University, onto the RNCM for a performance postgrad and then joining the Hallé in Manchester as a member of their viola section.
In 2013 she was asked to join the management team, initially as maternity cover for Head of Ensembles and then moving into the programming department with specific responsibility for curation, development and delivery of the orchestra’s Pops, festival and Christmas output across Manchester and the orchestra’s national reach as well as building artistic and commercial partnerships Since returning to the south-west in 2016, alongside her part-time Pops programmer role she has also held the position of music programmer for Broadway Arts Festival, Programme Manager at the prestigious chamber music school Bristol Pre-Conservatoire, artist support to jazz singer Clare Teal, and since 2023 continues in the role of Executive Director of the Elgar Festival.
Sue is delighted to be joining the ESO team and is excited to be collaborating with such outstanding players to face both the challenges and rewards that lie ahead.
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Feature article from Arcana.Fm
interview by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Ben Ealovega
You do not move forward by standing still. That is evidently the maxim of the English Symphony Orchestra, whose first release on its new in-house label has just been issued. Apropos of this and other matters, Arcana spoke recently to Kenneth Woods, the principal conductor and artistic director of the ESO, about his plans for this audacious undertaking.
It made sense to begin with the motivation behind the establishing of ESO Records. ‘‘It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Being able to release whatever we want, and whenever we want, to is hugely empowering for us as an orchestra. It gives us a chance to align our concert work with our online presence and recording programme more strategically’’.....
Read the whole thing here!
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Congrats to our friend Ian Venables, the 2025 Featured Composer at the Elgar Festival, on being selected as Gramophone Magazine's Contemporary Composer of the Month
Richard Whitehouse
Friday, August 8, 2025
At 70, this British composer is at the peak of his powers, writes Richard Whitehouse
Venables has proved an innovative master of English song in a variety of forms
That certain composers are hailed as such from the outset while others only gradually come to prominence is an observation not relevant to the present alone. Yet the belated emergence of Ian Venables as a master of English song is of particular interest – whether in terms of his revivifying of a tradition that might have become moribund, or his drawing attention to authors whose poetry has been overlooked or, moreover, taken for granted as regards musical setting. The outcome is a corpus of songs and song-cycles that is second to none among those for whom the English language is a source of never-ending but often unexpected possibilities.
Although he studied the piano and the organ as part of his secondary education and had worked as a choirmaster when barely out of his teens, it wasn’t until he was in his mid-twenties that Venables had composition lessons in earnest. Earliest pieces find him adept in instrumental media, notably the Op 1 Piano Sonata In Memoriam DSCH (1975, rev. 1980; hearing the UK premiere of Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony in 1972 was a formative experience) with its powerfully inward finale. Piano collections include The Stourhead Follies (1985), which (with Op 1) has been recorded by Graham J Lloyd, while the Three Pieces for violin and piano (1986, recently recorded by Chu-Yu Yang and Eric McElroy on Somm, 6/25) have an expressive poise and rhythmic agility that has rightly ensured them a place among Venables’s most often performed works.
Read the whole thing here.
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Cheltenham Town Hall
English Symphony Orchestra:
Dec 2 @ 7:30 pm
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs (chamber version by James Ledger)
Mahler Symphony No.9 (chamber version by Klaus Simon)
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Soprano: April Fredrick
Composed in the difficult years just after WW2, Strauss’s final masterpiece could well have been a despairing, angry work. Instead, the Four Last Songs stand as one of music’s most inspiring expressions of gratitude – for long life, for long love and for a world abundant in music and nature.
The Ninth Symphony of Strauss’s friend & contemporary, Gustav Mahler – his last completed work – sees the composer working through deep despair and resignation (shaken to the core by the sudden death of his daughter in 1907) towards a resolution which abounds in gratitude and love.
Please note, a £2 ticket commission fee is included in the price of the ticket.
If you require a carer ticket, or have any accessibility requirements please book your tickets over the phone by calling 01242 528 764. The lines are open 9.00am – 5.00pm, Monday – Friday.
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Cheltenham Town Hall
1 Feb 2026 @ 3:00 pm
Vaughan Williams Overture to The Wasps
Philip Sawyers Symphony No. 6, A Pastoral
Elgar Violin Concerto, Op.61
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Violin: Zoë Beyers
Many consider Elgar’s Violin Concerto to be his most personal & confessional piece. Despite its titanic virtuosic demands, it is not a showpiece, but an expression of the inner world of a great man at one of life’s turning points. Philip Sawyers also found himself at a turning point when he gave up his career as a violinist to pursue composition full time. His courage has been validated many times over as he has been repeatedly hailed as one of Britain’s greatest modern symphonists. His Sixth Symphony is a touching homage to another great Sixth Symphony, Beethoven’s Pastoral.
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Cheltenham Town Hall
22 Mar 2026
@ 3:00 pm
David Matthews Early Spring (world premiere)
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for Violin & Viola, K364
Beethoven Symphony No.7 in A major, Op.92
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Violin: Zoë Beyers
Viola: Kate Musker
A celebration of the spring equinox, this matinee offers a generous portion of musical sunshine, hope and warmth. Beethoven’s Seventh is his most exuberant and energetic work, with several hugely popular melodies and themes, while Mozart’s evergreen Sinfonia Concertante has an unmatched abundance of lyricism, good humour and playful happiness. One of Britain’s greatest living composers, David Matthews, also contributes a new work, written in celebration of Spring and dedicated to the ESO.
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Cheltenham Town Hall
22 May 2026 @ 7:30 pm
Elgar Serenade for Strings
Matthew Taylor Romance for Strings
Copland Clarinet Concerto
Mahler Adagettio from Symphony No.5
Schoenberg Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Clarinet: Julian Bliss
Some of the most lyrical and romantic music ever written for string orchestra, Mahler’s heart-rending Adagietto needs little introduction, and is regularly in the Top 40 of Classic FM’s annual Hall of Fame, while Schoenberg’s impassioned Transfigured Night is a musical realisation of a Richard Dehmel poem, in which a young woman confesses to her betrothed that she bears another man’s child, conceived before they met. His acceptance of her, and resolve to raise the baby as theirs, is one of the most touching moments in classical music.
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ESO RECORDS
Jean Sibelius - The Symphonies Vol. 1
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