Symfoni Kernow - Programme 
Erich Korngold - The Sea Hawk (suite for orchestra)
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Karl Lutchmayer (piano)
interval
Ethan Anholm Mass for string orchestra
Leonard Bernstein West Side Story: Symphonic Dances
The Sea Hawk Erich Korngold (1897 – 1957)
Korngold was a Vienesse prodigy. Admired by such great composers as Mahler and Richard Strauss while still a teenager, he wowed Viennese opera audiences with his opera The Dead City – showing astonishing control of a vast, romantic orchestra. This shiny, opulent style was to fall out of fashion by the 1920s and Korngold moved to the centre of the burgeoning film industry, Hollywood, where his hyper-expressive music would be welcomed.
He fell on his feet by scoring the film Captain Blood – a swashbuckling Errol Flynn epic – and in doing so, set a template for film music that would be influential for the next 70 or more years.
In 1940, he was still working Flynn and the MGM ensemble of Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains and others. Able to compose at great speed, he completed the 96 minute score for The Sea Hawk in just seven weeks (and all by hand!). It is considered one of his greatest scores.
This short suite alternates a dashing fanfare with a swooning love theme and other melodic marvels.
Rhapsody in Blue George Gershwin (1898-1937)
George Gershwin grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in amongst Russian, East European, Yiddish and African American cultures. He devoured music as a young boy – studying European modernists like Debussy, Ravel (who he would later meet) and even Schoenberg. But a pianist with such easy and precocious technique as he had could earn good money in New York – on Broadway and it’s off-shoot, Tin Pan Alley. Here, Gershwin could play, write and sell songs. One of his earliest – Swannee – for Al Jolson became his first great hit and subsequent songs, like Fascinating Rhythm, showed a growing compositional sophistication.
In 1924, Paul Whiteman (a former viola player in the San Fransisco Symphony Orchestra and now popular dance-band leader) planned a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music” – an evening dedicated to the fusion of jazz and classical music. He commissioned Gershwin to compose a piece and advertised it as a ‘jazz concerto’.
Later, Gershwin said “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer ... I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. And there I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston, I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.”
The piece was orchestrated by Ferde Grofe – the pianist in Whiteman’s dance band and a composer in his own right. Due to the lack of time, Gershwin did not write down much of the piano part but improvised the solo passages.
The premier, at the Aeolian Hall, New York was a great success. In the audience were many notable figures from music: the conductor Stokowski, violinists Heifetz & Kreisler and legendary composers Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. The audience reaction was enthusiastic and within a few years Rhapsody in Blue had been performed over 100 times and a recording had sold over a million copies.
Mass for string orchestraEthan Anholm
Mass was originally written over a year ago for a composition competition as a choral setting of a religious text. It was then re-written for string octet a few months later. Despite the religious and choral origin, the title refers mainly to gravity, inertia and slow, heavy movement.
Premiered by string octet (i.e. 8 solo players) as part of the Golowan Festival in Penzance in June, tonight’s performance is the premier of a version for full string orchestra.
Ethan is 19 years old and has just finished studying A levels at Truro College. He takes up a place at Kings College London later this month, hoping to specialise in composition.
West Side Story: Symphonic Dances for Orchestra.
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Leonard Bernstein was a composer, conductor and public speaker. And in all of these fields he excelled at a level few people reach even when specialising in only one of them.
He shot to fame as a last-minute stand in conductor with the New York Philharmonic before becoming their music director for over 10 years. He guest conducted with all the world’s greatest orchestras and recorded a huge amount of music including much music by living American composers as well as European heavyweights like Mahler. His televised Young People’s Concerts set a bench mark for how to introduce classical (or, even, all) music to young audiences.
While his career trajectory as conductor followed a straight forward line to greatness, his compositional career was less consistent. His greatest compositions mainly stem from the period before his international conducting career took off. As many conductor/composers have found, it is difficult to properly combine both disciplines. But, in that short time, he produced works for stage (On The Town, Candide), for film (On The Waterfront), his own jazz concerto (Prelude, Fugue and Riffs for clarinet), a stunning first symphony and many others.
Arguably his greatest work though was the musical West Side Story from 1957. Set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the work updates Romeo and Juliet into this multi-cultural, working class neighbourhood. The warring families are now gangs: the Jets (white, Italian) and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans, the more recent incomers). The love story centres on Tony (a Jet, best friends with gangleader Riff) and Maria (Shark, sister of gangleader Bernado).
Bernstein fills his score with jazz inspired music, latin rhythms, song and dance. But underpins all of it with detailed and thoughtful compositional technique – using much he had learnt from conducting the music of the twentieth century from Stravinsky to Copland.
In 1961 he and his orchestrator, Sid Ramin, put together the Symphonic Dances for large symphony orchestra. The movements play without a break but consist of the following from the show:
Prologue: The growing rivalry between two teenage gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.
Somewhere: In a dream ballet, the two gangs are united in friendship.
Scherzo: In the same dream, the gangs break away from the city walls, suddenly finding themselves in a playful world of space, air and sun.
Mambo: In the real world again, the competitive dance at the gym between the gangs.
Cha-cha: The star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, see each other for the first time, they dance together.
Meeting Scene: Music accompanies their first words spoken to each other.
Cool Fugue: An elaborate dance sequence in which Riff leads the Jets in harnessing their impulsive hostility, figuratively “cooling their jets.”
Rumble: Climactic gang battle; the two gang leaders, Riff and Bernardo, are killed.
Finale: Maria’s I have a Love develops into a procession, which recalls the vision of Somewhere.
Karl Lutchmayer - Piano
Karl Lutchmayer is equally renowned as a concert pianist and a lecturer. The first Steinway Artist of Indian origin, Karl performs across the globe and has worked with conductors including Sir Andrew Davis and Lorin Maazel, and with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Calcutta, Goa, and Bombay Chamber Orchestras, and numerous symphony orchestras across the UK.
He has also broadcast on BBC Television and Radio, All India Radio, and Classic FM,and his 2025 recording of Busoni’s solo and duo piano music for Chandos in collaboration with Peter Donohoe received wide critical acclaim.
As a regular chamber music performer Karl has worked with artists including Dame Evelynn Glennie, Patricia Rozario, and the Belcea Quartet. He has also given over 90 world premieres and worked with composers including Julian Anderson, George Benjamin, Vanraj Bhatia, Henri Dutilleux, Dai Fujikura, Frederic Rzewski, and Errollyn Wallen, the Master of the King’s Music.
Karl was a professor for 15 years at Trinity Laban (formerly Trinity College of Music) and has been a regular guest lecturer at conservatoires and universities around the world, including the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools in New York and the University of Oxford. Additionally, for the last decade Karl has focussed much of his time and attention on nurturing the burgeoning Western Classical music scene in India, his family home. It was for this work that he was awarded the Bharat Gaurav (Pride of India) Lifetime Achievement award in 2015 and the Indians of the World Medal in June 2022.
In 2025 Karl was also awarded his PhD in Musicology from The University of Cambridge.
A pianist of brilliant attainments
David Dubal, Author of The Art of the Piano
Lutchmayer’s uncompromising objectivity and textural clarity oddly seem to work more effectively here than, say, Hamelin’s ethereal and mystical approach.
Jonathan Dobson, International Piano
... a fiery virtuoso, full of poetry and warmth.
Cyrus Poonawala, Times of India
Lutchmayer’s performance was compelling, drawing a wide expressive range of sonoritiesfrom his instrument.
Rob Witts, The Classical Source
Patrick Bailey has conducted concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and many others. He has given concerts across Europe and in Dubai, India, Oman, China and the USA. In this country he has appeared at festivals in Aldeburgh, Brighton, Bath, Buxton and Cheltenham and broadcast concerts and opera for BBC Radio 3. He has recorded several releases of contemporary music for NMC with Philharmonia Orchestra, The Opera Group and New Music Players.
Whilst he was Music Director of The Opera Group, he conducted numerous new productions and tours including Blond Eckbert (with Royal Opera House), The Nose (also arranger and co-translator)), The Shops (world premiere, Bregenz Festival, Austria) and Street Scene (Young Vic & winner of the Best Musical at the Evening Standard Awards). Other notable performances include the UK premiere of Nono’s gargantuan Prometeo with the London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall.
As a composer, workshop leader and presenter, Patrick has led projects and written and presented concerts for BBC orchestras, BBC Proms, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Royal Opera House, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Music for Youth.
He is the founder and Artistic Director of Kevos, a group of Cornwall-based musicians dedicated to performing contemporary music and co-directs Leskyn Kernow, a big band of fine Cornwall jazz musicians. He has arranged music for the Eden Project’s Christmas Shows including, Ibiza Christmas Classics. For the Minack he has conducted Firework Maker’s Daughter, Orfeo, Soldier’s Tale, Ocean World and Glassworks. and Ethel Smyth’s opera - The Botswain’s Mate. He is conductor of Duchy Opera and he conducted Die Fledermous, The Merry Widow, and will return in 2027 with Bizet’s Carmen. He is the Creative Director and conductor of The Christmas Orchestra tour. He continues to divide his time between Cornwall, where he lives, and working across the UK.
Symfoni Kernow was formed in 2022 as an ensemble for orchestral musicians in Cornwall and beyond, giving players the opportunity to perform great symphonic repertoire that is not usually heard in Cornwall, while at the same time raising money for chosen charities.
This is the fourth year that Symfoni Kernow has performed in the delightful setting of St Petroc’s Church. Previous concerts have featured *Symphony No. 10* by Shostakovich, *Symphony No. 5* by Sibelius, and *Symphony No. 5* by Tchaikovsky.
Every performer tonight is giving their time and talent freely, helping us to raise as much money as possible for Cornwall Air Ambulance.
Symfoni Kernow
1st Violin
Nick Beach, leader
Nicki Farris
Jo paradise
Fathyma Parker
Martin Coath
Alyssa Ralph
Serena Stephenson
Alex Fraser
2nd Violin
Hywel Webley,
Darren Julian
Jake Loewendahl
Karen Frost
Claire Hamlen
Deborah Reep
Nat Jones
Gillian Maude
Claire Harries
Viola
Jeff Stanford, section leader
Simon Jones
Phil Montgomery-Smith
Seth Bailey
Kerry Edwards
Violoncello
Jane Pirie, section leader
Olivia Loewendahl
Alison Stott
Liz Brazier
Iain Buzza-Blackwell
Charles read
Debbie Renwick
Katy Dainton
Double Bass
Zoe Curnow, section leader
James Scourse
James Macphail
Flute
Amelie Donovan
Emma Vidler
Piccolo
Maia Roberts
Oboe
Tamsin Robinson
Colin Friend
Cor Anglais
Talulla Lee
Eb Clarinet
Rowan Tidball
Bb Clarinet
Jacob Perry
Rowan Tidball
Chloe Stone
Bass Clarinet
David White
Alto Saxophone
Sarah MacDonagh
Chloe Stone
Tenor Saxophone
Verena Watkiss
Bassoon
Sally Bartholomew
William Kinnear
French Horn
Jacqueline Kershaw
Roger Langford
Gus Lewis
Gemma Peasegood
Simon Thomas
Trumpet
Bob Farley
Joe Hamlen
Paul Drew
Matthew Jones
Trombone
Matt Harrison
Sinne Brock
Leighton King
Tuba
David Coad
Piano /Celeste
Paul Comeau
Harp
Karl Lutchmayer
Percussion
Ross Hamilton
Jacob Allen
James Robinson (drums WSS)
Timpani
James Robinson/Jacob Allen (WSS)
Thank you for choosing to support Cornwall Air Ambulance, providing life-saving and critical care across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
Find out more:
This concert would not have been possible without the help of the following individuals and organisations to whom we are hugely grateful:
Roland Oakley & St. Petroc’s Church
intoBodmin - Promotion and Ticketing
Everyone who donated raffle prizes
Organising Committee: Barbara Degener, Jacqueline Kershaw, Tamsin Robinson, Jacob Perry, James Robinson, Phil Montgomery-Smith, Matt Harrison & Patrick Bailey
