Name: A Concert of Favourites, old and new
Start: 2024-11-16T19:30:00+00:00
Location: Albert Hall Conference Centre

Nottingham Symphony Orchestra starts the 2024-25 concert season with a Concert of Favourites - Old & New.
Overture to Prince Igor - Aleksandr Borodin
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor - Sergei Rachmaninov
Soloist: Simon Callaghan
Symphony No 1 in E Minor - Florence Price
This is the first time NSO will be performing a composition by Black American composer Florence Price (1887-1953). Her 1st symphony was composed in 1931-32. For those who are unfamiliar with the wonderful symphony, you can listen to it here on YouTube:

Tickets are £18 (general admission), £15 (concessions [age 60+]) and £6 (children, students). Family tickets are available for £36 (for 2 adults and 2 children). An automatic 10% discount is applied at checkout for a single booking of 4 or more adult tickets.
You can also get a 10% discount for all ticket types when booking via TicketSource using the discount code NSONOV24 - but make sure you book ASAP as this discount ends on 16th October.
The easiest way to buy tickets is from TicketSource via the link below. Alternatively you can email [email protected]
or order by phone (07733 312322)
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For this next concert, Nottingham Symphony Orchestra is delighted to introduce their newly appointed Music Director and Conductor Mark Prescott.
Mark was born in Madrid and is of Romany heritage. He was educated in Edinburgh where he studied the piano and cello. At the age of 16 he made his conducting debut leading performances of Beethoven and Schubert with the Orchestre Jeunesse de Liège et Tournai following masterclasses with the Greek conductor Alexandre Myrat. A scholarship enabled him to study conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he had the opportunity to participate in masterclasses with Colin Davis, Mark Elder, and Rostropovich among others.
Mark has conducted many professional and amateur orchestras in chamber, symphonic and operatic repertoire. These include the BBC Philharmonic, Orchesta Sinfonica de Galicia, City of London Sinfonia and Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated with musicians such as Alison Balsom, George Benjamin and Angela Hewitt.
2024-25 will see him give concerts with a range of orchestras in the UK and Europe. Alongside symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Dvorak and Sibelius he will be performing a range of diverse and contemporary repertoire, including works by Augusta Holmes, Dobrinka Tabakova, John Woolrich, Florence Price, Grace Williams, Ruth Gipps and Elizabeth Maconchy.
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Pianist - Simon Callaghan
Simon Callaghan performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, in parallel with a highly successful career as a recording artist. A favourite performer at the internationally-renowned Husum Festival of Piano Rarities in Germany, Callaghan’s recent sell-out concert was praised by VAN Magazine as a “cleverly curated recital full of discoveries” and by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “technically brilliant”.
Callaghan has developed a wide following and appears on a regular basis in the UK’s major concert halls, and on tours to Asia, North America and Europe. Recital partners have included Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Nicholas Daniel, Adrian Brendel, Feng Ning, Samuel West, Prunella Scales and Timothy West. BBC Young Musician of the Year Finalist Coco Tomita and Callaghan have a successful duo partnership which saw their first record released in 2022 on Orchid Classics. He is also a founding member of the London Piano Quartet, joining colleagues from the renowned Piatti Quartet to showcase the repertoire for piano quartet with a particular focus on revivifying works that have fallen into obscurity.
Simon Callaghan’s distinguished and eclectic discography includes recordings for Hyperion, Nimbus and Lyrita. He has a strong profile on BBC Radio3 and on a variety of streaming platforms, his most recent single on Apple Music with Coco Tomita surpassing one million streams in the first month of its release. He is a strong social media enthusiast, using it as a form of promotion for classical music in general but seeing it as a particular tool in his advocacy of the rare and unexplored.
Simon Callaghan’s distinguished and eclectic discography includes recordings for Hyperion, Nimbus and Lyrita. He has a strong profile on BBC Radio3 and on a variety of streaming platforms, his most recent single on Apple Music with Coco Tomita surpassing one million streams in the first month of its release. He is a strong social media enthusiast, using it as a form of promotion for classical music in general but seeing it as a particular tool in his advocacy of the rare and unexplored.
Callaghan has also made first recordings of the complete piano music by Rebecca Clarke, George Dyson and William Busch. He has recorded four albums for Hyperion’s celebrated The Romantic Piano Concerto series. His first disc for Hyperion, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins, formed part of his PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music and was praised by BBC Radio 3’s Andrew McGregor: “I have nothing but praise for the performances... impressive pianism”.
In 2020, Simon recorded L’Histoire du Babar with actor Miriam Margolyes. The album received five stars from The Independent, reviewer Michael Church commenting that: “Here, thanks to Harry Potter actor Miriam Margolyes’s artistry and Simon Callaghan’s excellent pianism, is Poulenc’s delightful musical response. And as I listened to this recording, I found the original drawings reappearing in my mind with all their detail intact – extraordinary. It lasts just 30 minutes, but my god does it resonate.” Simon Callaghan’s reputation and experience in chamber music led to his appointment as Artistic Director at London’s celebrated Conway Hall, only the sixth incumbent since the founding of the series in 1887. He is Professor of Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music, and was elected a Steinway Artist in 2012.