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Despite it now being less than two months since the concert, “British Sojourns” seems like a warm but distant memory. Here’s a little something from that performance: yours truly conducting the Sinfonia of St Andrew’s with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. It was a pleasure working with the orchestra for this performance, and in time I’ll share some other footage from this concert. There’s only a month now until my next conducting commitment, and the next four months will see me conducting five performances. However, my next performance with the Sinfonia will be in October, when they join forces with the Queensland University Music Society for a performance of Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor. This performance will mark 200 years since the work’s first performance, which was to commemorate the anniversary of the beheading of King Louis XVI of France. More about this marvelous and influential work later. In the meantime, enjoy the Mendelssohn.

It’s been a pleasant first week here in Ostrava, on the Moravia/Silesia border in the Czech Republic; home of the Janacek Philharmonic, who are current hosts of the International Orchestral Conducting Masterclass, with renowned pedagogue Jorma Panula, from Finland. After a week of rehearsals, we had our first of two performances last night, consisting of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, the prelude to Mussorgsky’s Kovanshchina, Beethoven’s Leonore III, and Wagner’s Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. All conductors and the orchestra performed well. Next week’s rehearsals start tomorrow, with the repertoire consisting of Dvorak’s Carnival Overture, Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen Suite, and Mahler’s First Symphony. These rehearsals will culminate in our second concert on the Friday night.