J Strauss II Waltz: Wine, women and song | A Spilsbury Eyebright | R Strauss Horn Concerto No. 1 | Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 Italian

Tickets: £23.00 stalls, £18.00 gallery | Full Time Students and Under 18s Free

We are delighted to welcome principal horn of the BBC Philharmonic, Ben Hulme. Brought up in Manchester, studying at Chetham's, Ben was on trial for the principal job whilst still a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He plays the first horn concerto by Richard Strauss, who wrote it for his father, principal horn of the Munich Court Orchestra on his 60th birthday.

Adrienne Spilsbury's Eyebright (2019), inspired by visits to wildflower meadows in Cheshire, has beautifully atmospheric writing – very much in the great English string tradition. We begin with Johann Strauss II – one of his finest waltzes with his most substantial and impressive introduction. Mendelssohn's exhilarating Italian symphony, which he composed at, for him, the mature age of 22, concludes this box of delights.