Remembrance Day Concert

The Basingstoke Symphony Orchestra marks Remembrance Sunday and the 90th anniversary of the Royal British Legion with rousing and reflective music of war, including some of the great wartime film scores and popular songs. The Dam Busters March is evocative of some of the Second World War's momentous exploits, while the Warsaw Concerto, written for the film Dangerous Moonlight, features romantic melodies evoking a love story set in war-torn Poland. Four of the songs made famous by Vera Lynn during the war are sung by Sorelle Marsh (currently in Legally Blonde in the West End), accompanied by specially commissioned orchestral arrangements. The orchestra's leader, Rebecca Totterdell, plays John Williams's heartfelt theme from Schindler's List, a more recent reaction to the losses of war, while Walton's thrilling Spitfire Prelude and Fugue relives our 'finest hour' during the Battle of Britain. The concert finishes with the first movement of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, composed while the Russian city was under siege by the German army and smuggled out of the country to be performed around the world.