We’re delighted to open our Spring season of International Orchestral Concerts with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. It is indeed appropriate that we should start the programme with their nation’s greatest composer, Aram Khachaturian, with music from his most popular work, the ballet Spartacus. The Adagio from this suite became extraordinarily popular after it was famously used as the theme music in the BBC’s drama The Onedin Line. We are very pleased to welcome back as our first soloist of the season our old friend the violinist Chloe Hanslip, who has been performing regularly at Fairfield Halls since the age of 12, with a performance of Mendelssohn’s effervescent Violin Concerto. In the second half, the orchestra’s music director - the renowned Sergey Smbatyan - will conduct Tchaikovsky’s epic Fourth Symphony which he wrote soon after his disastrous, short marriage, a crisis that inspired him to write this highly dramatic work with its famous fate motif.

Armenian State Symphony Orchestra's concert tour in the United Kingdom, in honour of the 120th anniversary of Aram Khachaturian, is held under the auspices of the Embassy of Armenia to the UK.

Conductor - Sergey Smbatyan

Soloist - Chloe Hanslip

Khachaturian Spartacus Suite: 7:30pm-7:43pm

I. Variation of Aegina, Bacchanalia
II. Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia

Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto: 7:43pm-8:09pm

Interval: 8:09pm-8:30pm

Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4: 8:30pm-9.14pm