Welcome to our website. We are an orchestra based in the Highlands of Scotland, founded in 2013 by the conductor Tomas Leakey. You can read more about the orchestra’s history here.
Our next performances are on 2nd and 3rd November 2024.
Wagner
Prelude to Act 1 and the complete Act 3 from Parsifal
Saturday 2nd November – 8pm at Inverness Cathedral
Sunday 3rd November – 3pm at Strathpeffer Pavilion
Gurnemanz Sir John Tomlinson
Parsifal Julian Hubbard (replaces Peter Wedd)
Amfortas Paul Carey Jones
Kundry Barbara Scott
Conducted by Tomas Leakey (2nd November) and Anthony Negus (3rd November)
Version for chamber orchestra prepared by Matthew King
In November we will perform Act 3 from Wagner’s opera Parsifal in concert. We are delighted to welcome back three extraordinary artists: Sir John Tomlinson, Peter Wedd and Paul Carey Jones. This is a chance to hear Wagnerian singing of the most extraordinary power and expression in the intimacy of our small venues. Parsifal, Wagner’s final opera, contains some of his most hauntingly beautiful music and this is sure to be an unforgettable occasion. The first performance will be conducted by Mahler Players Music Director Tomas Leakey and the second by noted Wagnerian Anthony Negus, Music Director of Longborough Festival Opera.
Our debut album
The album presents Wagner not as the famous composer of operas but as a radical composer of symphonies, both real and imaginary.
The Mahler Players present the world premiere recording of Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony, by Matthew King. Composed in 2021, this Symphony brings to life for the first time many of Wagner’s late sketches, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1883, and until now largely unknown and unheard outside specialist circles.
Matthew King describes it as “a piece that plays with history, and tries to imagine something that never happened, drawing connections between tiny scraps of music which would otherwise remain forever separate and fragmentary”. Also on the album is Wagner’s beautiful masterpiece for chamber orchestra, originally titled “Symphony” and written for his wife’s birthday on Christmas Day 1870, Siegfried Idyll.
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
unpretentiously and convincingly Wagnerian . . . a very fine debut album from an enterprising group.
Ken Walton, The Scotsman
Geoff Brown, The Times
…a moving 21st-century adventure into the late 19th century by Matthew King that raises intriguing questions about the nature of authenticity and the as ifs of music history
John Deathridge, Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music, King’s College London and author, Wagner Beyond Good and Evil
Listen to Matthew King discussing Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony with Tom Service on BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters. Segment starts at 16:00.
With thanks to Tony Shoults, The Hugh Fraser Foundation, The Wagner Society of Scotland, The Wagner Society, High Life Highland and HRI-Munro Architecture for their support towards the commission and recording of Matthew King’s Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony.
Album artwork San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight (1908) by Claude Monet, Courtesy of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
I must have seen a complete Ring Cycle at least five times in my life and can honestly say that I have never been as excited by a performance as I was by yours last night.
Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith
