Thursday 13th November 2025 (Conductor: Natalia Luis-Bassa)
OUO’s long-time Principal Guest Conductor Natalia Luis-Bassa returned to the Sheldonian Theatre in a concert that featured Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony (1878), a powerful and emotionally charged work that explores fate, struggle, and personal turmoil. Tchaikovsky moves from melancholy to frenzied energy, before culminating in a triumphant finale in which joy and resilience overcomes.
In the first half, the orchestra played Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra (1943), a soloistic showcase! Blending Hungarian folk influences with 20th century harmonies and dynamic rhythm drive, Bartok moves similarly from darkness to triumph, echoing his years of exile and enduring optimism.
Friday 21st November 2025 (Conductor: Louis Benneyworth)
The Oxford University Sinfonietta presented its Michaelmas Term 2025 concert: Symphonic Stories, inviting listeners young and old to be taken on a journey through orchestral and narrated stories. The evening began with Prokofiev's narrated Peter and the Wolf, which assigns each orchestral instrument to a farmyard animal, before Wiseman's The Fairytale of the Selfish Giant, which takes inspiration from Oscar Wilde's fairytale about a giant who learns to show compassion. The evening concluded with Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, which guides the listener through each section of the orchestra before a vast tutti fugue.
Saturday 14th February 2026 (Conductor: Peter Stark) (Soloist: Lilya Zilberstein)
OUO joined Conductor Peter Stark at the Sheldonian Theatre for a programme of Prokofiev, Boulanger and Ravel. The orchestra was delighted to be joined by internationally-renowned soloist Lilya Zilberstein to perform Prokofiev's witty and virtuosic 3rd Piano Concerto. Zilberstein regularly appears with major orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Claudio Abbado and Michael Tilson Thomas, and has recorded over 20 albums for Deutsche Grammophon and EMI Classics.
The second half featured Lili Boulanger's vibrant D'un matin de Printemps, filled with luminous colour and rhythmic energy capturing the optimism of a spring morning. Also featuring was Suites 1 & 2 from Ravel's kaleidoscopic ballet Daphnis et Chloé, an evolutionary ballet score depicting a mythical tale of love between shepherds, nymphs and gods.
