Kensington Symphony Orchestra

Dohnányi, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky
2010-01-20 19:30 (Europe/London) | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Brett Dean, Britten and Holst
2010-03-20 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Schubert 8, Bruckner 9
2010-05-10 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Wagner, Sibelius, Arnold and Nielsen
2010-06-21 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Thomas Adès, David Matthews and Elgar
2010-10-19 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

HK Gruber, Dukas and Tchaikovsky
2010-11-29 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Poulenc, Rachmaninov and Beethoven
2011-01-25 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Martinů, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams
2011-03-12 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Lutosławski and Mahler
2011-05-10 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Smetana, Richard Ayres and Dvořák
2011-06-27 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Maxwell Davies, Rachmaninov and Stephen Goss
2011-10-17 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Arvo Pärt, Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams
2011-11-28 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Hindemith, Brahms and Dvořák
2012-01-24 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Elgar, Walton and Janáček
2012-03-10 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Puccini’s Tosca
2012-05-14 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Sibelius, Brahms and Peter Nagle
2012-06-11 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Edwardes Square Bicentenary Gala Concert
2012-06-16 20:30 | Edwardes Square, London, W8

Berlioz, Berg and Stravinsky
2012-10-15 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
We start our 57th season with an overture by Berlioz. His opera Benvenuto Cellini is nowadays very rarely performed, but its overture remains a popular and energetic concert opener. KSO’s first performance of a work by Berg follows: his Three Pieces for Orchestra, dedicated “to my teacher and friend Arnold Schoenberg in immeasurable gratitude and love”.
We end our concert with the original, full ballet version of Stravinsky’s Firebird, based on the legendary Russian creature that is both a blessing and a curse to its captor.

Magnus Lindberg, Prokofiev and Schumann
2012-11-26 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
The concert opens with Magnus Lindberg’s Gran Duo, a dialogue between woodwind and brass that was described in The Times as “a darkly brooding yet peaceful work that reflects something of a unique landscape”. From this string-free Finnish vista, we bring the violin to the fore, welcoming back Gina McCormack as soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2. We end with Schumann’s last symphony, his No. 4 in D minor.

Live Music for Ice-Skating at Westfield London
2012-12-12 19:00 | Westfield London, Ariel Way, London, W12 7GF, United Kingdom

A Night at the Oscars at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2013-01-21 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
To celebrate their return to Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, KSO would like to invite you to ’A Night at the Oscars’, an evening of music from Oscar-winning films from throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The programme ranges from arguably Max Steiner’s most famous film score, for Gone with the Wind, to memorable music from There will be blood by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
We also include works from the concert hall by Bernstein and Gershwin that are linked with Oscar-winning movies, as well as a suite from John Williams’s score for the original Star Wars movie. Something for everyone, and a night to remember!

Sponsored Play XIV
2013-02-10 12:00 - 18:00 | Westfield London, Ariel Way, London, W12 7GF, United Kingdom
KSO returns to its tradition of sponsored plays in aid of charity in 2013, with a six hour marathon in support of War Child. The musical theme for the day is “Love and…”.
For a suitable donation, you can have the chance to conduct a full-sized symphony orchestra in one of the exciting works below.

Glinka, Schoenberg and Rimsky-Korsakov
2013-03-09 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Two great Russian classics, from Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov, are separated by Schoenberg’s own arrangement for string orchestra of his famous early work, Verklärte Nacht.

Mahler’s 7th Symphony
2013-05-21 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony was poorly received by audiences in his own lifetime, who found it confusing. Certainly it is complex harmonically, and has something of a split personality, with its initial optimism and joy tempered by Mahler’s revisions, which were made following the death of his daughter and his own diagnosis of an incurable disease. But since then it has become far more popular and well known with audiences, even outside the concert hall with the opening theme of the second movement used in TV advertisements for Castrol GTX in the 1980s.

Lyadov, Dvořák and Matthew Taylor
2013-06-24 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Bartók, Barber and John Adams
2013-10-15 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Nikolai Demidenko plays Prokofiev 3
2013-11-25 19:30 | Milton Court, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DT, United Kingdom

A Night of the Macabre
2014-01-20 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Arnold, Britten and Walton
2014-03-15 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Berlioz, Tippett and Brahms
2014-05-12 20:30 | Milton Court, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DT, United Kingdom

Tchaikovsky, Kodály and Nielsen
2014-06-23 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Rachmaninov, Debussy and Lutosławski
2014-10-13 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

A Concert in Memory of Leslie Head
2014-11-25 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Heroes and Villains at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2015-01-19 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Sponsored Play XV
2015-02-15 12:00 - 18:00 | Westfield London, Ariel Way, London, W12 7GF, United Kingdom
After the phenomenal success of the 2013 sponsored play, KSO returns to Westfield London on Sunday 15 February 2015 for a six-hour charity fundraising marathon in aid of War Child.
For a suitable donation, you can have the chance to conduct a full-sized symphony orchestra in one of many exciting works. For full details of repertoire and how to book your place, see http://kso.org.uk/sponsored/

Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Charlotte Bray
2015-03-14 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Stravinsky, Beethoven and Seán Doherty
2015-05-19 20:30 | Milton Court, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DT, United Kingdom

Dukas, Ibert, Chabrier and Roussel
2015-06-29 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Strauss, John McCabe and Mussorgsky
2015-10-12 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Malcolm Williamson, Bliss and Copland
2015-11-23 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra acknowledges the support of the Bliss Trust for this concert

Moeran, Ravel and Vaughan Williams
2016-01-25 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Britten and Shostakovich
2016-03-12 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Janáček, Judith Weir and Martinů
2016-05-17 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Walton, Britten and Elgar
2016-06-27 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

John Adams, Colin Matthews and Bartók
2016-10-03 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Debussy, Dutilleux and Berlioz
2016-11-21 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Stravinsky and Bruckner
2017-01-23 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Beethoven, Korngold and Brett Dean
2017-03-04 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra is delighted to be joined by guest conductor Holly Mathieson for a typically ambitious and unusual programme of music at St John’s Smith Square.
Korngold’s opulent, full-blooded Symphony in F sharp boasts both glittering orchestration and an abundance of generous melody. Completed in 1952, it is the only symphony by the Austrian-born composer, who wrote Oscar-winning scores for Hollywood films after fleeing the Nazi regime. The work incorporates a theme originally written for the 1939 film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and the symphony stands as a memorial to the late US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in 1945.
The programme begins with Beethoven’s taut and intense Coriolan Overture, followed by a recent work by the award-winning Australian composer Brett Dean. Testament (2008), based on Dean’s 2002 work for 12 violas, takes its inspiration from the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter written by a despairing Beethoven to his brothers after he learned that the deterioration in his hearing could not be reversed. Numerous innovative effects convey the composer’s state of mind; for example, the strings use both rosined and rosinless bows, the latter (generously provided by Thwaites of Watford) imitating the feverish sound of Beethoven’s quill.

KSO’s 60th Anniversary: Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony
2017-05-15 20:30 | Barbican Hall, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom
“Caitlin Hulcup sings with unassailable intensity… it seems that her voice could survive anything” Observer
“I was very impressed by Kiandra Howarth’s incredible voice” Placido Domingo
“For proof that the symphony is alive and well, look no further than Matthew Taylor” Gramophone
Chorus: The Epiphoni Consort, Pegasus Choir & Vox Cordis

Nielsen and Arnold
2017-07-03 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Written to coincide with the Danish composer’s 60th birthday celebrations in 1925, the riotous, gripping Symphony No.6, “Sinfonia semplice” is Carl Nielsen’s final and, despite its title, most challenging symphony, moving from march to waltz to fanfare with boldness and bitter comic irony.
The concert, conducted by music director Russell Keable, opens with Nielsen’s 1927 overture An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands, which was commissioned by the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen and uses Faroese melodies in its depiction of a sea crossing, followed by a rare performance of Malcolm Arnold’s 1954 score for the magical yet tragic one-act ballet Rinaldo and Armida.

Strauss, Joseph Phibbs and Stravinsky
2017-10-09 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to St John’s Smith Square for the first concert in the orchestra’s 2017/18 season, featuring Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Causing a riot at its first performance in 1913, this unrelenting, barbaric score still has the power to shock.
Conducted by music director Russell Keable, the concert opens with Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche: the composer Richard Strauss at his most witty and nimble, recounting a German folk hero’s “merry pranks”.
Joseph Phibbs’s Rivers to the Sea, commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra for its 2012 season, features four sharply contrasting movements, culminating in Neon with Sunrise, a celebration of New York.

Bach, Schoenberg and Brahms
2017-11-20 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Stravinsky and Schubert
2018-01-23 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Bruckner’s 8th Symphony
2018-03-10 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Sponsored Play XVI
2018-04-29 13:00 - 19:00 | Westfield London, Ariel Way, London, W12 7GF, United Kingdom
Following the phenomenal success of its Sponsored Play at Westfield London (Shepherd’s Bush) in 2015, which raised more than £15,000 for War Child, Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Westfield on Sunday 29 April 2018 for another Sponsored Play, the third at Westfield London and the 16th in a series that began in 1989.
The format is simple: for six hours, between 70 and 100 musicians from KSO perform a continuous concert in front of Westfield’s shopping crowds, conducted by more than 25 volunteers from all walks of life, each of whom donates money in exchange for their few minutes of fame on the podium.

Puccini's La bohème
2018-05-21 20:00 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Delius, Bridge and Sibelius
2018-07-03 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Americana ’18 at St John’s Smith Square
2018-10-15 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
This all-American programme opens with Tower’s vibrant Fanfare, a feminist answer to Copland. The Divertimento is vintage Bernstein, a joyful reminiscence of his musical childhood while Adams’s powerful Symphony is taken from his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. The energetic drive of William Schuman’s buoyant Third Symphony which completes the programme, made it his first major success.

Holst, Rachmaninov and Vaughan Williams
2018-11-26 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Ninety-five years after Holst’s opera The Perfect Fool (1918-22) received its première at London’s Covent Garden Theatre, music director Russell Keable presents the magical ballet music from the score, danced by the spirits of Earth, Water and Air.
Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances (1940) – the last piece the composer wrote – is stunningly scored, drawing out the tone colours of instruments including an alto saxophone, while Vaughan Williams’s Job: A Masque for Dancing (1931) marks a crucial point in the development of British ballet, with its radiant melodies inspired by William Blake’s illustrated edition of the Book of Job.

Daphnis et Chloé at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2019-01-22 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Tuesday 22 January 2019 for a rare complete performance of Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé. The orchestra is joined by The Epiphoni Consort for the composer’s masterwork, a sweeping musical panorama that uses the full, vivid range of a symphony orchestra and chorus to depict the two eponymous lovers and the gang of pirates who abduct the heroine.
Award-winning pianist Richard Uttley is the soloist in Gershwin’s Romantic-style Concerto in F, in which the composer combines magnificently the popular rhythms of American jazz, the lively syncopations of the Charleston and the deep longing of the blues.
The concert opens with Kings Row by Korngold, who used the powerful, fanfare-like main theme of the 1942 film starring Ronald Reagan as the basis for the rest of his score for the movie, inspiring music for later films including John Williams’s soundtrack for Star Wars.

Enescu, Mahler and Lutosławski
2019-03-16 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Lyadov, Sibelius and Huw Watkins
2019-05-13 20:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Lyadov’s music inhabits a magical world, peopled with unearthly spirits. The Enchanted Lake grows from a rippling opening theme contrasted with more rhythmic ideas evoking the water nymphs who live there.
Huw Watkins says of his Symphony, written for the Hallé Orchestra who premiered it in 2017, that ‘the overall impression I hope the piece will generate is one of momentum and excitement’.
The vivid orchestration of Sibelius’s Four Legends conjures the atmosphere of the northern forests of the Kalevala, Finland’s great national epic, especially in the haunting second movement, depicting a swan gliding on a dark river – The Swan of Tuonela.

Kodály, Chris Long and Dvořák
2019-07-01 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Anna Clyne, Berg and Prokofiev
2019-10-07 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Written for the 2013 Last Night of the Proms, Anna Clyne’s Masquerade magically evokes London’s 18th century pleasure gardens, where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide range of music and entertainment.
The Lulu Suite, taken from Berg’s unfinished operatic masterpiece about a doomed seductress, is an intense and concentrated combination of chilling passion and voluptuous richness.
Prokofiev’s loftily heroic Fifth Symphony, written at the end of the Second World War, was immediately acclaimed both in Russia and abroad. It was, the composer claimed, ’a symphony of the greatness of the human spirit, a song of praise of free and happy mankind’.

Weber, Hindemith and Beethoven
2019-11-26 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Weber’s Der Freischütz was his most successful opera, a masterpiece of German Romanticism. The overture immediately creates a magical atmosphere, wonderfully evoking with deft orchestral colouring both the supernatural and the rustic.
Completed before his opera about the German painter Mathias Grünewald, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony is perhaps his greatest work. Its three movements each depict a panel from the painter’s famous Isenheim Altarpiece, the final section, with its brass chorale, being one of the composer’s most sensational achievements.
Subtitled the ’Pastoral’, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is his response to the countryside and despite a vivid depiction of a storm its five highly melodic movements are predominantly sunny.

James MacMillan and Brahms
2020-01-23 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.2 – a magnificent piece of musical architecture – is paired with the spiritual journey of MacMillan’s Symphony No.4.
Written on a grand scale, the symphonic Second Piano Concerto’s mellow and serene first movement is followed by an exhilarating tussle between piano and orchestra in the second. A solo cello shares the limelight in the lyrical slow movement, while the entertaining finale strews instantly memorable themes in profusion.
One of the leading composers of his generation, Scottish-born James MacMillan always aims at direct emotional and dramatic communication. Begun in 2014, his Fourth Symphony was written in homage to Robert Carver, the most important Scottish composer of the High Renaissance. In one continually evolving movement, the work explores the ’rituals of movement, exhortation, petition and joy’, with plaintive melodies, atmospheric string clusters and resplendent chorales.

Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony
2020-03-14 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Bernstein’s Candide is an exuberant fusion of European operetta and Broadway musical. The overture bursts with energy and wit, building to an exhilarating climax based on ’Glitter and be Gay’, a brilliant pastiche of every coloratura aria ever composed.
Written in 1957 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Shostakovich’s immensely successful Eleventh Symphony engaged both his sense of tragedy and his socialist conscience. At its centre it depicts with graphic realism the massacre of unarmed workmen in 1905. Preceded by a bleak introductory movement which sets the scene, it is followed by a haunting elegy for the dead and a final expression of revolutionary fervour.

Helen Grime, Casella and Rachmaninov
2021-10-18 20:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Bruckner’s 5th Symphony
2021-11-29 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Gershwin, Korngold and Prokofiev
2022-02-05 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Belshazzar’s Feast
2022-05-14 20:30 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom
Walton’s exuberant cantata Belshazzar’s Feast harnesses huge forces to tell the Biblical story of how the Jewish people regained their freedom from exile. Kensington Symphony Orchestra is joined by baritone Paul Sheehan and Epiphoni Consort for this richly orchestrated, jazz-influenced setting, commissioned by the BBC in 1929.
The concert opens with Strauss’s magnificently ambitious Festliches Präludium, while Sibelius’s ever-popular tone poem Finlandia, also performed with Epiphoni Consort, is paired with the composer’s Scènes historiques, Suite No.1 – patriotic music written amid growing Finnish nationalism in the face of Russian censorship.

Tutti rehearsal at London Nautical School
2022-06-09 19:30 - 22:30 | London Nautical School, 61 Stamford Street, London, SE1 9NA, United Kingdom
6.30 Bacewicz
7.00 Dvorak
8.00 Break
8.20 Shostakovich (with Joseph Spooner)
9.30 Finish

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew’s Site)
2022-06-16 19:30 - 22:30, 2022-09-15 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-09-22 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-10-06 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-10-27 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-11-03 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-11-17 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-11-24 18:30 - 21:30 and 47 more dates | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

String sectional rehearsal at Netley Primary School
2022-06-23 19:30 - 22:30, 2022-09-29 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-11-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-03-02 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-05-04 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-08 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-09-28 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-11-09 18:30 - 21:30 and 19 more dates | Netley Primary School, 74 Stanhope Street, London, NW1 3EX, United Kingdom

Woodwind sectional rehearsal at Pimlico Academy
2022-06-23 19:30 - 22:30, 2022-09-29 18:30 - 21:30, 2022-11-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-02-01 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-03-02 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-05-04 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-08 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-09-28 18:30 - 21:30 and 18 more dates | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew’s Site)
2022-06-30 19:30 - 22:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
6.30 Dvorak
8.10 Shostakovich (with Joseph Spooner)
9.30 Finish

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew’s Site)
2022-07-07 19:30 - 22:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
6.30 Bacewicz
7.15 Dvorak
9.30 Finish

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall (St Michael’s Site)
2022-07-10 12:00 - 18:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom
11.00 Shostakovich
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Bacewicz
2.20 Dvorak
5.00 Finish

Seating rehearsal at Cadogan Hall
2022-07-11 18:30 - 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
5.30 Shostakovich
6.00 Dvorak
6.25 Bacewicz
6.30 Finish

Bacewicz, Shostakovich and Dvořák
2022-07-11 20:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Conductor Russell Keable leads Kensington Symphony Orchestra in Dvořák’s lyrical Symphony No.8. Writing the work at his summer residence in Bohemia, the composer aimed for a marked contrast from his stormy previous symphony, drawing inspiration from the folk music he loved.
The orchestra is joined by soloist Joseph Spooner for Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.2, which marked the beginning of the composer’s late style. Written in Crimea, the work includes a theme based on an Odesa street song.
Spooner, who performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, has received widespread praise for his recordings, with his playing described as “ravishing” and “superb” by Gramophone and The Strad; “could not be better”, said International Record Review.
In Grażyna Bacewicz’s Overture for Orchestra, brass fanfares convey the sound of war, but the Polish composer included a message of hope, with timpani beating out the Morse code for “V”, symbolising victory.

Rebecca Dale - Night Seasons
2022-10-04 18:30 - 21:30 | St Andrew’s Holborn, 5 St Andrew Street, London, EC4A 3AF, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall (St Michael's Site)
2022-10-13 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Henry Wood Hall
2022-10-16 11:00 - 17:00, 2023-01-29 11:00 - 17:00, 2023-10-15 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-10-05 11:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-15 11:00 - 17:00, 2026-10-11 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-05-16 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-07-04 11:00 - 17:00 | Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London, SE1 4HU, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at St John’s Smith Square
2022-10-17 17:30 - 18:30, 2022-11-28 17:30 - 18:30, 2023-10-16 17:30 - 18:30, 2023-11-27 17:30 - 18:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Stravinsky, Sibelius and Anna Clyne
2022-10-17 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Sibelius’s tone poem The Oceanides (1913-14) depicts the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea. Building from a placid opening to a crashing climax, the piece was described on its première as “the finest evocation of the sea ever produced in music”.
This Midnight Hour (2014), by the British composer Anna Clyne, was inspired by poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire. The single-movement work has been variously described as “stormy”, “filmic”, a “tipsy dance” requiring out-of-tune strings to imitate an accordion, and “something Edith Piaf would have sung”.
The original 1911 version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka – scored for larger orchestra than his 1947 revision – tells the story of three puppets that come to life during a fair in 19th-century St Petersburg. The composer initially saw the piece as a concert work (including “diabolical cascades of arpeggios”), but was persuaded by Sergei Diaghilev to write a ballet, with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the title role in the première.
Watch the composer Anna Clyne talk about her 2015 piece for orchestra, This Midnight Hour.

Tutti rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall
2022-11-27 11:00 - 17:00, 2023-03-12 10:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-02 18:30 - 21:30, 2024-05-06 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-10-03 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-03-23 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

Berlioz, Blacher and Brahms
2022-11-28 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Berlioz’s overture Le roi Lear (1831) – individual in style and tone, but bearing the influence of Beethoven – was written in Nice, shortly after the composer had visited Italy as the winner of the 1830 Prix de Rome. Berlioz had also recently discovered Shakespeare and based the work on King Lear.
The orchestra also performs Concertante Musik (1937) by the German composer Boris Blacher (1903-75). Known for his colourful, French-inspired instrumentation, Blacher was accused of writing “degenerate” music by the Nazis, but he became a key figure in the musical life of post-war Berlin.
Following the tortuous 20-year gestation of Brahms’s first symphony, his sunny, lyrical Symphony No.2 (1877) was written in the space of a single summer in the Austrian Alps and Bavaria’s Black Forest, in the bright, resonant key of D. Pastoral themes and a beautiful slow movement give way to a jubilant finale, frequently described as a Kehraus – the last dance at a ball.

Tutti rehearsal at London Nautical School
2022-12-15 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-10-12 18:30 - 21:30 | London Nautical School, 61 Stamford Street, London, SE1 9NA, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Queen's Gate House (formerly Baden-Powell House)
2023-01-19 18:30 - 21:30 | MPW Queen’s Gate House, 65 Queen's Gate, London, SW7 5JS

Tutti rehearsal at Bishopsgate Institute
2023-02-02 18:30 - 21:30, 2023-05-14 11:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-26 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-02-04 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-01-19 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-05-18 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-06-29 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-09 11:00 - 17:00 and 3 more dates | Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2023-02-05 15:30 - 17:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Britten’s opera Peter Grimes
2023-02-05 18:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Queen Elizabeth Hall for a concert performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes. Music director Russell Keable welcomes the Epiphoni Consort and 12 exciting singers, including the tenor John Hudson (Peter Grimes), the soprano Mari Wyn Williams (Ellen Orford) and the baritones Nicholas Morris (Ned Keene) and Nicholas Folwell (Captain Balstrode).
Britten’s opera was conceived in the US, where the composer was living in the early years of the Second World War, and was completed on his return to the UK in 1943. Described by the Manchester Guardian on its première as “a kind of white-hot poetry”, it depicts ”a subject very close to my heart: the struggle of the individual against the masses”, Britten said.
Montagu Slater’s libretto for the work was based on George Crabbe’s poem The Borough (1810); the fisherman Peter Grimes lives and works in a fictional town similar to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where Crabbe and later Britten lived. Grimes, wrongly accused by townsfolk of murdering his apprentice, appoints another with the help of Ellen Orford, the schoolmistress he wishes to marry – but when another accident happens, a mob is roused to fury and the tale reaches a tragic end.
The première, in June 1945 – with Britten’s partner, Peter Pears, in the title role – marked the postwar reopening of Sadler’s Wells, and the opera matched the takings for a simultaneous production of Puccini’s La bohème. A young Leonard Bernstein, conducting the US première, was praised for bringing out the “drive and dissonance of a work that is far from ‘tuneful’ in the conventional sense”.

Tutti rehearsal at Queen’s Gate House
2023-03-07 18:30 - 21:30 | MPW Queen’s Gate House, 65 Queen's Gate, London, SW7 5JS

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew's Site)
2023-03-09 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-03-06 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-05-29 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-09-11 18:30 - 21:00, 2025-09-18 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-10-23 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at Cadogan Hall
2023-03-14 17:30 - 18:30, 2023-06-26 17:30 - 18:30, 2024-02-06 17:30 - 18:30, 2025-06-30 17:30 - 18:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom

Stravinsky and Rachmaninov
2023-03-14 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
One of the composer’s most popular works, Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony (1906-07) was written during his three-year stay in Dresden, away from the political tumult in Russia that would lead to revolution. After revising his drafts extensively, Rachmaninov conducted the première in 1908 to widespread acclaim, restoring the confidence that had been shattered by the hostile reaction to his First Symphony nine years earlier.
Lasting around 60 minutes, the work is a formidable piece, opening with a dramatic first movement and a vigorous but lyrical scherzo. The critic Alfred J. Swan notes that, at a time when composers were “preoccupied with tone colours, Rachmaninov’s genius manifested itself in the shaping of renewed melodic form”, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the famous Adagio, with its beautiful melody for violins and solo clarinet. The work concludes with an exultant, radiant finale.
The orchestra also performs Stravinsky’s ballet Agon (1953-57) – a Greek word meaning “contest” but also “anguish”. Its long gestation period encompassed the composer’s shift in musical style, so the piece both reflects his diatonic idiom and introduces his 12-tone technique. The work is a series of dance movements, some based on 17th-century French court dances such as the sarabande.

Duration: around 1 hour 45 mins (including interval)

Tutti rehearsal at Fairfield Halls
2023-05-20 15:30 - 17:30, 2024-05-11 15:30 - 17:30 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom

Mahler’s Third Symphony with Helen Charlston
2023-05-20 19:30 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Queen's Gate House
2023-06-25 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-11-24 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-09-30 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-10-02 18:30 - 21:30 | MPW Queen’s Gate House, 65 Queen's Gate, London, SW7 5JS

Sibelius, Maw and Tchaikovsky
2023-06-26 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
KSO’s season comes to a close with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the ‘Pathétique’ (1893). Written in Klin, near Moscow, the Symphony – which ends, unusually, with a slow movement – combines passion, tragedy and pathos.
Originally titled ‘The Passionate Symphony’ by Tchaikovsky, who considered it among his greatest works, it received an enthusiastic response at its premiere in St Petersburg in October 1893, conducted by the composer just nine days before his death.
The programme opens with Sibelius’ En Saga (1891-92, revised 1902), a tone poem that has been variously likened to a fantasy landscape, a hunting expedition or the storytelling of a bard.
KSO also performs Dance Scenes (1995) by the British composer Nicholas Maw, whose music has been described as modernist and neo-romantic. Maw puts various groups of instruments through their paces in this exuberant, vigorous set of four dances that fizz with influences from Walton to Britten.

Vaughan Williams, McCabe and Elena Kats-Chernin
2023-10-16 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
KSO opens its 2023/24 season at St John’s Smith Square on Monday 16 October in a performance of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony (1913-14, rev. 1918, 1934).

The four-movement work – his second symphony, reconstructed after the original score was lost and subsequently revised twice – is dedicated to his friend and fellow composer George Butterworth. An affectionate, atmospheric, detailed portrayal of Vaughan Williams’s adopted city, it features the Westminster Chimes and evokes memories of locations including Westminster Embankment, the Strand and Bloomsbury Square.
The programme opens with Elena Kats-Chernin’s Big Rhap (2017) – a musical sketch of her memories of hearing her mother play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 when the family lived in Russia. Featuring the Soviet-born Australian composer’s trademark motor rhythms and relentless drive, it aims to capture what she describes as “the pain of a shivering and wounded heart”.
The orchestra also performs the song-cycle Notturni ed Alba (1970) by the British composer John McCabe (1939-2015) with soprano Donna Lennard. A setting of four medieval Latin poems addressing various aspects of night, written for solo soprano and boasting a vast array of percussion, it has been described as “some of his most exotically and seductively beautiful music… a work of dark and intense passion”.

Czech Myths and Legends
2023-11-27 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
KSO returns to St John’s Smith Square on Monday 27 November in a performance of Martinů’s Symphony No.3 (1944).

Written during a summer retreat in Connecticut, the symphony was dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who gave the première in 1945. Featuring shimmering, luminous orchestral textures and a haunting chorale for solo string quartet, the work, which progresses from a dark opening in E flat minor to a bright conclusion in E major, takes a joyful turn in the finale – ascribed to news of the Allied landing in Normandy that June.
The programme opens with Dvořák’s The Wood Dove (1896, rev. 1897) – the composer’s fourth orchestral poem, premièred under the baton of fellow Czech composer Janáček in 1898. Drawing on a ballad by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben, it is an evocation of the story of a woman who poisons her lover, then remarries, but is overcome by guilt and takes her own life.
The orchestra also performs Janáček’s rhapsody Taras Bulba (1915, rev. 1918), based on Nikolai Gogol’s novel about the 17th-century Cossack-Polish war. Evoking the deaths of two of the title character’s sons, and finally his own, the work includes episodes of turbulent passion, a wild mazurka, a limping march and stirring passages for brass, organ and bells.

Tutti rehearsal at The Warehouse
2023-12-14 18:30 - 21:30, 2024-02-01 18:30 - 21:30 | The Warehouse, 13 Theed Street, London, SE1 8ST, United Kingdom

String sectional rehearsal at The Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew’s Site)
2024-01-18 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Beethoven's Eroica at Cadogan Hall
2024-02-06 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
One of Beethoven’s best-loved works, the ‘Eroica’ is a landmark in the transition between the Classical and Romantic periods. The four-movement symphony, originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte and conducted by Beethoven at its premiere in Vienna in 1805, has been described as ‘turning tradition upside down’ thanks to its wide emotional range.
KSO welcomes rising star Alexei Watkins as soloist in the Horn Concerto (1969) by the British composer Ruth Gipps who studied with Vaughan Williams, and was a soloist, conductor, lecturer and critic. The work – written for her son, Lance Baker – is in the Romantic tradition, featuring a scherzo in 7/8 time and a duet between horn and celeste.
The programme opens with Tone Poem (2012) by the Chinese-American violinist and Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer Chen Yi (b. 1953). Inspired by two 11th-century poems about southern Chinese landscape paintings, her work addresses ‘the brimming waves, the sunny day, the dimming hills, the rainy haze’.

Woodwind and horns sectional rehearsal at Pimlico Academy
2024-02-29 18:30 - 21:30 | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall
2024-03-17 11:00 - 17:00, 2024-10-13 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at St John’s Smith Square
2024-03-18 17:30 - 18:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
DOHNANYI Symphonic Minutes
2/1 2/1 2/1 2 : 4 2 3 0 : T 2P Hp Cel [15’]
MAHLER Rückert Lieder
2/1 2/1/ob d’am 2+1 2+1 : 4 2 3 1 : T 3P Hp Pf/Cel [24’]
BOULANGER D’un matin de printemps
2+1 2+1 2+1 2+1 : 4 3 3 1 : 2P Hp Cel [5’]
STRAVINSKY Symphony in Three Movements
3+1 2 3/1 2+1 : 4 3 3 1 : T 1P Hp Pf [22’]

Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements at St John's Smith Square
2024-03-18 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius at Fairfield Halls
2024-05-11 19:30 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom

Repertoire Day - Shostakovich 10
2024-06-02 11:00 - 17:00 | MPW Queen’s Gate House, 65 Queen's Gate, London, SW7 5JS

String repertoire session 1
2024-06-06 18:30 - 21:30 | Netley Primary School, 74 Stanhope Street, London, NW1 3EX, United Kingdom

Wind repertoire session
2024-06-06 18:30 - 21:30 | St Gabriel’s Hall, Churchill Gardens, London, SW1V 3AA

String repertoire session 2
2024-06-20 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Repertoire Day - Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
2024-06-30 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

Horn sectional rehearsal at Pimlico Academy
2024-09-26 18:30 - 21:30 | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at Smith Square Hall
2024-10-14 17:30 - 18:30, 2024-11-25 17:30 - 18:30, 2025-05-19 17:30 - 18:30, 2025-10-06 17:30 - 18:30, 2026-03-16 17:30 - 18:30, 2026-10-12 17:30 - 18:30, 2027-01-25 17:30 - 18:30, 2027-05-17 17:30 - 18:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

A Hero’s Life
2024-10-14 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra begins its 2024/25 season at Smith Square Hall on Monday 14 October, when conductor Russell Keable leads the group in a performance of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben, or ‘A Hero’s Life’ (1898).
Begun when the composer was staying in a mountain resort in Bavaria, the work was designed to illustrate the “ideal of great and manly heroism”. Although Strauss denied that he was the protagonist of the title, it features an effusive violin solo depicting his wife Pauline, plus caricatures in the woodwind and brass of his adversaries in the music press.
Alternately swaggering and sweet, the six-section piece – written while Strauss was simultaneously working on Don Juan – also contains more than 30 quotations from his earlier works, including Also sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote and Death and Transfiguration.
The concert opens with Samuel Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal (1931) – the young composer’s first work for full orchestra, which helped to establish his reputation. Written on holiday in Italy during a break from his studies in Philadelphia, and intended to reflect the spirit of Sheridan’s 18th-century comedy of manners, it is energetic, fast-paced and characterised by orchestral brilliance.
The orchestra also performs Vítězslava Kaprálová’s Suita Rustica (1938), written two years before her death from typhoid fever aged 25. Kaprálová, who studied with fellow Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, was commissioned by Universal Edition to write the three-movement work, which is by turns lyrical and exuberant, and bears the influence of Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony
2024-11-25 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Smith Square Hall on Monday 25 November, when soprano Monica McGhee joins the group for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No.4 (1899-1900).
Shorter in length and using smaller orchestral forces than the composer’s earlier symphonies, the four-movement work boasts a disarmingly tuneful opening, followed by a scherzo that depicts Death at his violin, contrasted with Ländler-style trios.
After an extended Adagio that Mahler considered his finest slow movement, the finale incorporates a song for soprano – Das himmlische Leben, or ‘The Heavenly Life’, completed in 1892 – that presents a child’s vision of heaven.
Although the work – inspired by the German folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn and largely written during Mahler’s summer holidays in Austria – was initially negatively received, critics have since argued that its accessibility was a driving force behind the post-war rise in the composer’s popularity.
The concert opens with Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi’s Serenade in Seven Colours (2013), written for woodwind and percussion. Inspired by Mozart’s Serenade for 13 Winds No.10, ‘Gran Partita’ and Quiet Nights by jazz musicians Miles Davis and Gil Evans, her kaleidoscopic showpiece progresses from shimmering impressionistic textures to an explosion of colour.
Conductor Russell Keable also leads KSO’s string section in Grace Williams’s Sea Sketches (1944), a five-movement work evoking life on and near the water, and featuring long flowing lines inspired by the sea. One of the Welsh composer’s most popular pieces, it was written while she was living in London but anticipating her return after the Second World War to her home town of Barry in South Wales.

General rehearsal at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2025-01-25 15:30 - 17:30, 2026-11-15 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto with Julian Bliss
2025-01-25 19:30 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra is joined by leading soloist Julian Bliss for a performance of Magnus Lindberg’s dazzling Clarinet Concerto (2001-02). One of the Finnish composer’s most frequently performed pieces, the work comprises a single five-section movement. Restless but rhapsodic, its joyous evocation of nature has been described as “contemporary in language but sensuously easy on the ear”.
“A perfect concerto… if there’s any justice, it will soon be as oft-performed as Mozart’s,” said The Times.
Music by Ravel book-ends the programme, which opens with Rapsodie espagnole (1907-08), one of the composer’s first major works for orchestra. Drawing on his Basque heritage, the colourful four-movement piece moves from the stillness of night to Spanish dances and a dazzling fiesta.
Ravel described La valse (1919-20) – originally conceived as a ballet – as a depiction of waltzing couples in an imperial court, initially seen through whirling clouds. Beginning with kaleidoscopic fragments of melodies, this popular work builds inexorably to a tumultuous, thrilling finale.
Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé (1933-34). The composer viewed his first film score, which accompanied a satire on Russian royalty, as an opportunity to adopt a more accessible style, and the resulting five-movement suite is one of his most popular works.

Repertoire Day - Shostakovich 7
2025-02-16 11:00 - 17:30 | Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH, United Kingdom

General rehearsal at Fairfield Halls
2025-03-29 13:30 - 16:15, 2026-06-20 11:30 - 13:45 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom

Holst’s The Planets with Epiphoni Consort at Fairfield Halls
2025-03-29 18:00 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra is back at Fairfield Halls where the group will join forces with the female voices of Epiphoni Consort to perform Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1914-17).
The perennially popular orchestral suite, premièred by Sir Adrian Boult at the Queen’s Hall in London during the final weeks of the First World War, comprises seven movements named after planets of the solar system and their supposed astrological characters.
Scored for large orchestra and featuring two women’s choruses, the work – which is said to have taken inspiration from Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra – was written after Holst’s interest in astrology was sparked during a holiday in Spain with fellow composer Arnold Bax.
KSO also performs Serenade to Music (1938) by Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. Written for solo singers, chorus and orchestra, and dedicated to conductor Sir Henry Wood, it features lyrics adapted from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Sergei Rachmaninov, who was present at the work’s première, was so overcome by the beauty of the music that he wept.
Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in John Foulds’s April-England (1926/32), a typically pastoral work described by the composer as a depiction of “the boundless fecundity and opulent burgeoning of springtime”, while Epiphoni Consort sing Michael Tippett’s madrigal ‘Dance, Clarion Air’ (1953) and movements from Patrick Hawes’s Revelation (2016).

Bruckner's 7th Symphony
2025-05-19 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
One of his best-known works, the symphony stands as Bruckner’s memorial to fellow composer Richard Wagner, who died while he was writing the piece.
The work opens with an Allegro moderato, featuring a cello theme that Bruckner said he had heard in a dream. Then follows an Adagio that he began while Wagner was ill and completed after the German composer’s death. In tribute to his longtime inspiration, Bruckner used four Wagner tubas, marking the instrument’s first appearance in symphonic music. A mournful elegy, the Adagio includes a cymbal clash that is said to represent the moment of Wagner’s death. A rustic Scherzo brings comic relief before the Finale opens with an echo of the first movement’s initial theme. This also recurs during the closing bars of a symphony that remains among Bruckner’s most popular works.

Rachmaninov and Shostakovich at Cadogan Hall
2025-06-30 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra is joined by BBC Young Musician finalist Firoze Madon for Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934).
A set of 24 variations on the last of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, this popular showpiece is most famous for its slow 18th variation which features on numerous film and TV soundtracks.
Music director Russell Keable also leads KSO in The Sea and the Seagulls (1911/orch. 1930), Respighi’s orchestration of a piano piece from Rachmaninov’s Études-Tableaux, Op. 33.
The concert opens with Anatoly Lyadov’s tone poem Kikimora (1909) which exhibits an exceptional flair for orchestral colour as it tells the story of a monster’s evil plans, and concludes with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 (1924-25), completed when the composer was just 19.
Combining tragedy with wit, the work was an immediate success. Critics have since argued that it was influenced by vaudeville music, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, and Richard Strauss.

Pimlico Academy Music Tracks rehearsal and concert
2025-07-03 16:30 - 19:30, 2026-07-02 16:30 - 19:30 | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Stravinsky's Firebird
2025-10-06 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
We begin our 2025/26 season with a performance of Stravinsky’s complete ballet The Firebird.
Written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the work – described as “a supreme example of how music can evoke a mood” – catapulted Stravinsky to international fame. Inspired by Russian fairy tales, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who enlists the help of the magical Firebird to battle the evil Koschei in his castle.
The concert opens with Rodion Shchedrin’s Concerto for Orchestra No.1, ‘Naughty Limericks’ (1963), a virtuosic single-movement work. Impish, humorous and energetic, it incorporates a number of Russian folk tunes.
KSO also performs Martinů’s Les fresques de Piero della Francesca (1955), which pays homage to the Italian artist’s cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross (around 1452-66), an early Renaissance masterpiece that Martinů had admired in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1954.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Grey Coat Place
2025-10-30 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-12 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-19 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-03-05 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-03-12 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street
2025-11-13 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom
E

General rehearsal at Smith Square Hall
2025-11-16 12:00 - 14:00 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Doreen Carwithen, James MacMillan and Ruth Gipps at Smith Square Hall
2025-11-16 15:00 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra performs an all-British programme of music including Ruth Gipps’ Symphony No. 4, a fiery, joyful and quintessentially English work.

Gipps studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, and her final symphony, written in 1972, was dedicated to fellow composer Arthur Bliss. This quintessentially English work comprises a fiery opening, a delicate Adagio, a playful Scherzo and a joyful Finale. The concert opens with Doreen Carwithen’s Bishop Rock (1952), a “unashamedly theatrical” overture by a composer known for her film scores. The piece pays tribute to Bishop Rock, one of the westernmost of the Isles of Scilly and, thanks to its famous lighthouse, the world’s smallest island with a building on it. KSO also performs James MacMillan’s The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990), a requiem for a woman burnt as a witch. Elegiac interludes are punctured by violent outbursts in the work, which incorporates Scottish folk tunes and Gregorian chant, and was rapturously received at its première at the BBC Proms in 1990.

KSO Festive Drinks
2025-12-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Cask Pub & Kitchen, 6 Charlwood Street, London, SW1V 2EE

KSO Festive Curry
2025-12-04 19:30 | Millbank Spice, 34-38 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2RY, United Kingdom

Repertoire Day - Rachmaninov 3
2026-01-18 11:00 - 17:30 | Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London, SE1 4HU, United Kingdom

Brahms 3 at Smith Square Hall
2026-03-16 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Smith Square Hall on Monday 16 March, when we are joined by guest conductor Matt Scott Rogers for a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No.3 (1883).
After spending the summer of 1883 writing the work at Wiesbaden, on the Rhine, Brahms played the first and final movements on the piano to Antonín Dvořák, who remarked that his fellow composer had surpassed his previous two symphonies, “if not, perhaps, in grandeur, then certainly in beauty”. Premièred by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter in December of that year, the work was well received, with Richter proclaiming it to be Brahms’s ‘Eroica’.
We also perform Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (1894-95), which was premièred by the English cellist Leo Stern, conducted by the composer, at the Queen’s Hall in London in March 1896. The opening Allegro is followed by a lyrical Adagio, in which Dvořák pays tribute to his seriously ill sister-in-law,and a lively Finale. Having corrected Dvořák’s proofs of the work, Brahms remarked: “If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!”
The concert opens with Berlioz’s Le corsaire (1844), a dashing overture that imagines the dangers and thrills of life as a pirate, its title suggesting Byron’s poem The Corsair. Dramatic and lyrical, it shares rhythmic energy with the composer’s Le carnaval romain.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-09 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.20 Nielsen
9.00 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-16 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.00 Nielsen
9.00 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-30 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.30 Nielsen
9.10 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-05-07 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Grieg (with soloist) – all rehearsal

Tutti rehearsal at Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street
2026-05-10 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
11.00 Blacher
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Nielsen (first movement up to Adagio)
2.30 Nielsen (Adagio and second movement)
5.00 Finish

Seating rehearsal Cadogan Hall
2026-05-12 17:30 - 18:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
5.30 Grieg
6.00 Nielsen
6.15 Blacher

Nielsen’s Symphony No.5 at Cadogan Hall
2026-05-12 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Cadogan Hall to perform Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony (1922), likened by the composer to “the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good”.
Alternately explosive and calm, the work features a famous battle between the orchestra and a snare drummer, who is instructed to improvise “as though determined at all costs to stop the progress of the orchestra”.
KSO is joined by former BBC Young Musician keyboard finalist Firoze Madon for Grieg’s much-loved Piano Concerto (1868), written when the composer was just 24. A lyrical Andante is bookended by a dramatic Allegro and an energetic Finale, both featuring motifs influenced by Norwegian folk music.
The concert opens with Boris Blacher’s virtuosic Orchestral Variations on a Theme by N. Paganini (1947), which brought the composer international renown after his work was deemed “degenerate” during the Second World War.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School (Greycoat Place)
2026-05-28 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-11 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-18 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-17 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-01 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-08 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-22 18:30 - 21:30 and 18 more dates | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall (Regency Street)
2026-06-14 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

Copland, Bernstein and John Adams at Fairfield Halls
2026-06-20 15:00 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Fairfield Halls with an all-American programme of music featuring John Adams’s Harmonium (1980-81).
The orchestra is joined by Epiphoni Consort for this three-movement work, regarded as one of the key compositions of Adams’s minimalist period. Based on poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, it is influenced by the music of Steve Reich and calls for a large orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic percussion section.
The concert opens with Copland’s Billy the Kid (Suite) (1938), taken from the one-act ballet commissioned by the impresario Lincoln Kirstein. One of the composer’s most popular and frequently performed pieces, it incorporates cowboy tunes and American folk songs in its depiction of the passions and dangers of the Wild West.
Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in a performance of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1960), an orchestral suite in nine movements adapted from the composer’s smash-hit musical, a version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set on New York City’s Upper West Side.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No.3 at Smith Square Hall
2026-10-12 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2026-11-15 15:00 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Schubert and Bruckner - Unfinished Symphonies at Smith Square Hall
2027-01-25 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

General rehearsal at Barbican Hall
2027-03-15 | Barbican Hall, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom

Korngold’s Die tote Stadt - KSO's 70th Anniversary Concert
2027-03-15 19:00 | Barbican Hall, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom

Vaughan Williams 9 at Smith Square Hall
2027-05-17 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at LSO St Luke's
2027-07-05 17:30 - 18:30 | LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, London, EC1V 9NG, United Kingdom

Sibelius 5 at LSO St Luke's
2027-07-05 19:30 | LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, London, EC1V 9NG, United Kingdom
