The New Forest Orchestra to perform classics at All Saints Church in Milford

LOVE stories are the inspiration for a concert of 19th century music taking place in Milford on Saturday.

The New Forest Orchestra will be at All Saints Church performing works by Wagner, Schumann and Rossini, conducted by experienced musical director Ieuan Davies.

The concert of “music of awakening and renewal” will feature Rossini’s Semiramide, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Benoit’s Overture to The King of the Alders, and Schumann’s Symphony No 4.

New Forest Orchestra spokesperson Dr Alan Ford said: “In tribute to the orchestra’s longstanding member Liliane Apers who is retiring this year, a rare Belgian piece is included.

“De Elzenkoning (the Erl-King) tells the story of a father riding through the night with his son clasped in his arms. The lad becomes alarmed at the sight of the Erl-King, a sinister elf who kills children with a touch.

“When the lad cries out he is being seized, the father increases to a gallop, holding him tightly, but on arrival finds the boy dead. The poem was famously set as a song by Schubert.”

The concert also features Rossini's scintillating overture, Semaramide, an opera about a queen of Babylon.

Siegfried Idyll was written by Wagner as a gift to his wife Cosima in 1870. On Christmas morning Cosima woke to sublime music performed by 16 musicians, who had been rehearsing in secret, assembled on the stairs outside her room.

Schumann's Fourth Symphony concludes the concert. Dr Ford said: “The four delightful movements flow in to each other without a break.

“There are themes and variants of them which act as portents of things to come later on and memories of what has gone before.”

The concert begins at 7.30pm. Tickets are £15 via www.nforchestra.org or on the door.