Freya Waley-Cohen reimagines a movement of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Das Jahr for Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a concert on 23 March at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre. 

Mendelssohn’s 50-minute cycle of piano pieces, performed by Olga Pashchenko, depicts each month of the year.

Waley-Cohen’s 11-minute version of June draws on Mendelssohn’s ​“beautiful and elegant June serenade, with visitations or memories of the darkly playful February scherzo”. OAE perform the world premiere of After June alongside reimagined movements by Electra Perivolaris, Errollyn Wallen and Roxanna Panufnik.

Perivolaris draws inspiration from the March movement, Wallen takes April as a starting point, and Panufnik reimagines the closing movement, Nachspiel.

Commissioned by Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, these reimagined movements aim to expand the repertoire for period instrument orchestra by female composers.

“I’m really excited to dive into the sound worlds opened up by the period instruments of the OAE: the quirks of each instrument, the possibilities, the restrictions…”

Freya Waley-Cohen