“A symphonic conductor of stature…”

IV. Adagio

III. Rondo Burleske

Mahler's Manners

Mahler's Means and Methods

Cowboy Mahler on electric guitar?

First post-Covid Festival festival to take place in Boulder August 24-28

"As a whole, the ESO and Woods portrait concert is an immense discovery, providing a splendidly multi-faceted portrait of Adrian Williams’s inspiring work, and whetting the appetite for the future collaboration between the orchestra and their Composer-in-Association. An hour more than well spent, the concert is a must-watch for any contemporary music lover...A feast of imagination, the string textures are woven together with sensitivity and detail by Woods and the twenty two string players of the ESO, giving rise to an intense musical meditation, one immediately etched into living memory. The narrative arch is well conceived throughout, resulting in a gripping series of journeys and farewells... Written in the memory of director Ken Russell and conductor and pianist John Russell, the ten-minute Elegy constitutes a moving memorial; striking in its eloquent simplicity and utmost connectivity." Jari Kallio - Adventures in Music

"That the ESO’s music director Kenneth Woods should have described Migrations as ‘‘one of the very greatest works in the rich canon of string music’’ is not mere hyperbole. Scored for 22 solo strings and inspired by migratory patterns of birds in the environs of the composer’s Herefordshire home, this substantial piece unfolds with a seamlessness of purpose in which cluster-like outbursts of great emotional force are integrated into melodic writing of distilled poignancy. The textures are highly variegated while always consistent – not least in the final minutes when, after a fateful pause, solo strings exchange interjections of an intensity which gradually subsides into fatalistic acceptance. In conception if not in content, Migrations can be compared to Strauss’s Metamorphosen for the sheer precision and eloquence of its writing. It helped, of course, that here (as throughout the programme) the ESO was so committed to this idiom, rendering the often dense and exacting nature of its writing with an unwavering commitment." Richard Whitehouse - Arcana.FM

"Its idiomatic nature was enhanced by the ESO’s attentive playing under Kenneth Woods, a natural follow-on to their take on the Piano Quintet in Donald Fraser’s arrangement (Avie). Heard together, these two parts of Elgar Reimagined should make for a desirable recording." Richard Whitehouse - Arcana.FM

When brought to sounding reality with such commitment and enthusiasm as Artistic Director Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra on their latest online concert outing, the communicative powers of the Elgar/Matthews score have an absolutely spellbinding effect over the listener... Performed with sensitive translucence and astonishing intensity by Woods and the ESO strings, the central movement transports the listener in time and space in quasi-theatrical manner, without ever resorting to any exaggeration or routine; a case in point of music-making at the highest level." Jari Kallio - Adventures in Music

I think David Matthews’s arrangement of Elgar’s String Quartet is a conspicuous success. His work seems to me to have been undertaken in complete sympathy with Elgar’s original, but he has enabled us to hear the music in a fresh way. Thus, the title given to this presentation, ‘Elgar reimagined’, was entirely apt. Matthews’s arrangement works on another level too; it adds to the string orchestra repertoire music by Elgar in a version that sounds completely authentic... Kenneth Woods and the string players of the English Symphony Orchestra gave a performance that showed Matthews’s work to best possible advantage." John Quinn, Seen and Heard International

Five wonderful new storytelling works for narrator and orchestra by Kile Smith, David Yang, Jay Reise, Tom Kraines and Ken Woods, performed by the English Symphony Orchestra.

Starring Hugh Bonneville, Davood Ghadami, Henry Goodman and Gemma Whelan.