As part of their ongoing performance project encompassing the symphonies and concertos of Beethoven, the Highland Chamber Orchestra has reached one of the composer’s most celebrated pieces, the epic Fifth Symphony.

With its famous fate motif which opens the work along with some of Beethoven’s most inspired symphonic writing, this symphony has always enjoyed a special place in the repertoire. It astonished audiences when it was first played in Vienna in 1808, and still has the power to impress almost two hundred years later. The HCO has had to enlarge its forces for the occasion, with prominent roles for three trombones and contrabassoon. Opening the concert will be Beethoven’s dramatic Egmont Overture, a work inspired by the tragedy of the same name by Goethe.

The orchestra’s string section will also be performing the delightfully melodic and wistful St Paul’s Suite by Gustav Holst. Perhaps best known for his titanic composition The Planets’ Suite, Holst was also a skilled miniaturist, and the present piece shows him at his most inventive and imaginative on a smaller canvas.

The celebration of the 250th birthday of Mozart continues too with the final work in the programme, the master’s stunning setting of ‘Exsultate jubilate’ composed for a virtuoso castrato in Salzburg but now more normally sung by a soprano voice. Notwithstanding its provenance or perhaps precisely because of it, the work is famously challenging technically, and the HCO is delighted to be performing this masterpiece with Shiona Cormack. A student of Patricia MacMahon, Shiona’s extensive concert experience and training at the RSAMD and in Australia where she studied Concert Singing at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and with Robert Mitchell (Opera Australia) make her the ideal exponent of this spectacular music.

The Highland Chamber Orchestra with soloist Shiona Cormack and conductor Susie Dingle will be performing this exciting programme at Grantown Grammar School on Saturday 26th August 2006 at 7.30pm and in Fortrose Academy on Sunday 27th August 2006 at 3pm, and tickets and further information are available from the secretary at 01463 223 171.