Freemans Bay Community Hall
3pm Sunday 2 August 2026
Our August concert features Anita Austin performing the beautiful Mozart Horn Concerto No. 3. A superb soloist, this will be a special performance where Anita will play on a natural horn, the instrument of Mozart's time, which doesn't have the valves of the modern French Horn.
Anita will be joined by Jill Ferrabee in Introduction and Polonaise for Two Horns by German Romantic composer Franz Strauss.
George Bizet's bright and breezy 'Dr Miracle' Overture opens the programme. The opera won the 18-year-old Bizet a prize in an opera competition organised by Offenbach, which led to introductions to a circle of composers that included celebrities such as Rossini.
Mozart was a freemason for the last 7 years of his life, during which he wrote music for Masonic lodges, music for the public built on masonic themes, and other pieces adapted for masonic use. His Mauerische Trauermusik (Masonic Funeral Music), written in memory of two Masonic brethren in 1785, provides some reflective repose.
Folk Songs of the Four Seasons is an orchestral arrangement of the cantata for large orchestra and women's choir written by Ralph Vaughn Williams in 1949. He had collected some of the folk songs himself, together with fellow composer Gustav Holst, during efforts in the early twentieth century to save this heritage for later generations.
There are nine folk songs in this suite, including May Song, The Green Meadow, The Sprig of Thyme, The Cuckoo, and Children's Christmas Song.
Two selections from our heritage music collection round out the programme. Edris and Hyperion and Daintiness by Gruenwald are expressive character pieces often used in silent movies from around 1890 to 1934.
Admission is free.
Soloists
Anita Austin, Jill Ferrabee (French horn)
Programme
Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 3 in E♭
Vaughn-Williams: Folk Songs of the Four Seasons
Strauss: Introduction and Polonaise for Two Horns and Orchestra
Mozart: Mauerische Trauermusik
Bizet: 'Dr Miracle' Overture
