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.Aurora Orchestra’s Principal Players bring together four masterpieces of chamber music, each alive with the memory of a time long past.
Janáček’s Mládí (Youth), written in his 70s, reaches further back still: a bittersweet recollection of childhood folk tunes and youthful energy, coloured by the composer’s age and fragility. By turns quirky, lyrical, and poignant, it captures the way memory holds together joy and nostalgia in the same breath.
Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, K.452 was the work he most wanted to be remembered for, declaring it “the best thing I have written.” Its glowing textures and poised conversation between piano and winds became a touchstone for later composers — Beethoven among them — and stand as Mozart’s own act of musical self-memorial.
Judith Weir’s Airs from another Planet reimagines three traditional Scottish tunes, refracted through time and space, the echoes of a once-human race that has colonised Mars drifting by.
And Poulenc’s irrepressible Sextet paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of 1920s Paris: bustling, witty, and playful, yet shaded with moments of wistful melancholy. Revised years after its first draft, the piece is itself an act of looking back — Poulenc revisiting the exuberance of his younger self through more mature eyes.
£10 tickets available through Aurora Under-30s
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