27 London Rd
Reading RG1 5AG
UK
Please join us for this social, when we’ll be watching a performance of some incredible classical music on a space theme – music so awe-inspiring that even Professor Brian Cox would probably be lost for words trying to describe it.
The concert will be performed by the talented Reading-based Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra at Reading University’s Great Hall – a really excellent venue for live music.
The pieces performed will be Gustav Holst’s The Planets, which is an orchestral representation of each of the planets in our solar system. The most famous of these is probably Mars, the Bringer of War. Another of the movements – Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity – was adapted as the theme song of the 1991 Rugby World Cup, World in Union, sung by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
The other piece to be performed is arguably more famous – it’s the Sunrise movement of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra – listen here. To a lot of us this will be familiar as the main theme from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It may also remind you of an old Simpsons episode which spoofs that film!
Tickets are available here If you book in good time tickets are a very reasonable £10 (plus booking fee). Seats are unreserved so if you can please go ahead and book your own. Important note: Please ensure you book for the 8.00 performance, as there is an earlier one at 4.00.
If you’d like Steve to reserve one for you, please let him know by Sunday 19th January, and he’ll book after that date. However, the concert may be very popular so booking yourself is recommended.
On the night, please meet at 19:45 in the front entrance of the venue – a porch area just off the venue’s London Road front door. The venue is 15 minutes’ walk from Reading station. From there we can select our seats together.
After the concert – probably around 21.45 – we’ll head to the nearby pub The Lyndhurst for a Saturday night drink. Those not attending the concert are welcome to join at that point.