Ripon’s renowned St Cecilia Orchestra will give its final concert of the 2025/26 season in the glorious setting of Holy Trinity Church on Saturday 13th June: a programme of beautiful music for chamber orchestra, featuring Rodrigo’s ever-popular Concierto de Aranjuez.
Written for guitar and orchestra, the concerto was brought to great popularity in the UK when it featured in the film Brassed Off in an arrangement for brass band. Named after the famous royal site near Madrid, the melodies evoke ‘the perfume of magnolias, the singing of birds and the gush of fountains’.
Rising star Chris Godhard joins the orchestra as guitar soloist. Based in Manchester, Chris is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music.
He has given solo performances in prestigious venues such as the Bridgewater Hall and Wigmore Hall, and in April made his debut with the BBC Philharmonic at the Bridgewater Hall performing Julia Wolfe’s ‘Big, Beautiful, Dark and Scary’. Chris is looking forward to the performance, saying: ‘I cannot wait to make my debut performing the famous Rodrigo Concerto with the St Cecilia Orchestra. This is something all guitarists dream of when we first hear this piece and it is a privilege to have the opportunity to fulfil that dream!’
Ravel’s beautiful and well-loved Pavane pour une Infante Defunte also makes an appearance in the programme. Often misinterpreted, Ravel chose the title (which translates as Pavane for a Dead Princess) purely because he enjoyed the alliteration of the words in his native French.
Chris Godhard said:
It is not a funeral lament for a dead child, but rather an evocation of the pavane that might have been danced by such a little princess as painted by Velázquez.
Kodaly’s pastoral Summer Evening and Poulenc’s light-hearted Sinfonietta complete the programme.
Directing the orchestra will be guest conductor Gary Matthewman, returning to Ripon following St Cecilia’s immensely successful Gala Concert last autumn. Gary has performed as a pianist and conductor alongside many of the most celebrated names in classical music, including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Imogen Cooper, Sir Thomas Allen, Joyce DiDonato and Peter Donohoe CBE. The orchestra is delighted to welcome him back for this last concert of its 30th anniversary season.
Tickets, priced at £20 for adults and free for under 18s are available online via Ticketsource (www.ticketsource.co.uk/st-cecilia), from the Little Ripon Bookshop, Harrogate Theatre box office and on the door from 6.45pm on concert day.
