The brilliant Orion Orchestra, conducted by Toby Purser, will bring their celebrated combination of passion and poetry to this exhilarating programme. Highlighting the journey between the first and last works of great composers, the Orion Orchestra’s Alpha & Omega series continues with Shostakovich’s first and last symphonies.

Written aged 18, as a graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatoire, the First Symphony already bursts with his trademark gestures including sarcasm, banality, contemplation and revolutionary energy.

At the other end of his life, and knowing he was close to death, the Fifteenth Symphony comes from the period of his darkest compositions. His most ambiguous and enigmatic work, Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony is a summation of his entire symphonic output, notable for the similarities as much as the differences which remain between his first and last symphonic works.