Saturday 9th March 2024 @ 19.30
Invicta Grammar School for Girls
Huntsman Lane, Maidstone ME14 5DS
Alice Mary Smith - Lalla Rookh Overture
Imogen Holst - Suite for Orchestra
Alice Mary Smith - Symphony No. 2 in A Minor
Our Spring concert takes place a few weeks after International Women's Day and features only female composers. The programme choices were inspired by recommendations by the musicologist Leah Broad, whose 2023 book Quartet, a group biography on four female composers of the 19th/20th century, made huge waves in the musicology world when it was released.
Alice Mary Smith's second Symphony closes the programme and has been recorded once before, but the real excitement is in the first half: Smith's Lalla Rookh Overture and Imogen Holst's Suite for Orchestra have never been published or recorded. With Smith having died in 1884, no one alive has heard the Lalla Rookh Overture prior to this performance. Alice Mary Smith's music is superlative and to discover a previously unheard work by this composer is a truly noteworthy event not to be missed.
Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav, composer of The Planets Suite, lived until 1984, however, her Suite for Orchestra remains unpublished so it is unlikely many will have heard this music either.
