Teenager to perform solo at Reading Symphony Orchestra’s autumn concert

A teenager will be the special guest at the Reading Symphony Orchestra’s autumn concert.

Jamaal Kashim won first prize in the orchestra’s Young Musicians competition earlier this year.

It’s just one of several accomplishments for the 17-year-old.

For much of the past 10 years, he has been a harpist studying under Professor Daphne Boden at the Royal College of Music Junior Department (RCMJD), performing for recitals and in concerts.

He has won first prize in this year’s Rickmansworth Young Musician of the Year Competition, second prize in the Bromsgrove Young Musicians’ Platform, and is a three-times winner for the RCMJD’s Gordon Turner Harp Competition.

If that wasn’t all, he has performed for the king and received the inaugural Junior Musician Award from the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Sir Andrew Parmley.

He has even performed with the National Youth Orchestra GB at the BBC Proms.

The Symphony Orchestra’s concert is entitled Russian Spectacular! and will see four pieces performed.

The concert opens with Borodin’s Overture to his opera Prince Igor, about the prince’s campaign against the invading Polovtsians in medieval Russia.

Completed from memory by Glazunov after Borodin’s sudden death in 1887, the overture is full of galloping rhythms, fanfares and melodies.

Jamaal will perform Glière’s Harp Concerto, a melodic work written in 1938 and compared to the works of Rachmaninov for its sweeping lyricism.

The second half of the programme features Theme and Variations (the finale) from Tchaikovsky’s Suite No.3.

Said to be one of the jewels of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral writing, it is often performed as a standalone work. It has a Russian theme and is followed by a dozen variations, ending with a polonaise.

The concert concludes with Stravinsky’s Suite from his ballet The Firebird.

Originally written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1911, it tells of the downfall of an ogre-like figure of evil, Kastchei, who seizes young princesses as captives while turning the knights who try to rescue them into stone.

The Crown Prince Ivan enlists the Firebird, so called for her beautiful feathers that glitter and flicker like flames, to help destroy Kastchei and free his victims. A solo horn, intoning the score’s most famous tune, announces the joyful arrival of sunlight at the end.

The concert takes place from 7.30pm on Saturday, November 16.

It will be performed in the Great Hall, at the University of Reading’s London Road campus.

Tickets cost £15, while under 18s and those in education can enjoy the concert for £5.

For more details, or to book, log on to: www.rso.org.uk/next-concert