Aurora Orchestra makes its debut at the Barnes Music Festival with a chamber concert featuring its Principal Players, who bring together four nostalgic and reflective masterpieces.

Programme:

Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, K.452 was the work he most wanted to be remembered for, declaring it “the best thing I have written.” Its glowing textures and poised conversation between piano and winds became a touchstone for later composers — Beethoven among them — and stand as Mozart’s own act of musical self-memorial.

Poulenc’s irrepressible Sextet paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of 1920s Paris: bustling, witty, and playful, yet shaded with moments of wistful melancholy. Revised years after its first draft, the piece is itself an act of looking back — Poulenc revisiting the exuberance of his younger self through more mature eyes.

Judith Weir’s Airs from another Planet reimagines three traditional Scottish tunes, refracted through time and space, the echoes of a once-human race that has colonised Mars drifting by.

Janáček’s Mládí (Youth), written in his 70s, reaches further back still: a bittersweet recollection of childhood folk tunes and youthful energy, coloured by the composer’s age and fragility. By turns quirky, lyrical, and poignant, it captures the way memory holds together joy and nostalgia in the same breath.