History of the NBYCO
The North Bedfordshire Youth Chamber Orchestra was founded in 2005 to give the opportunity for our young musicians to play the works composed for a classical size orchestra used by Mozart and Schubert and their contemporaries, as well as giving the strings and wind the chance to play string orchestra and wind ensemble repertoire. The super Bedfordshire Youth Orchestra system, with a hierarchy of five orchestras and three bands, was designed to allow everyone to play large, symphony orchestra and band repertoire, but this meant that the classical repertoire was virtually untouched.
From its earliest days the orchestra has had strings, all above grade 5, two wind players from each section, flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons together with horns and trumpets but now we have to be a little more adaptable.
Over the years our repertoire has included many symphonies by Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Beethoven together with their concerti, overtures and incidental music. We have performed Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony as well as much music by Bizet, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Dvorak and Brahms.
Meanwhile, the strings have played so much of the great string orchestra repertoire, from Handel Concerti Grossi and Bach’s third Brandenburg concerto to Bartok’s Divertimento, including frequent performances of Elgar’s ‘Introduction and Allegro’, and Serenade, Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia’, Suk’s Serenade for strings, Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Nielsen’s Little Suite as well as contemporary music by Dobrinka Tabakova.
The wind ensemble have played wind pieces by Gounod, Verdi, Faure, Dvorak, Bernard, Strauss, Enescu and much more.
We have consistently featured our outstanding players as soloists, from every section of our orchestra. Most recently Nelly Palmer who performed the Clara Schumann piano concerto. Also, since 2009 we have organised an annual tour of schools, giving Secondary, Middle and Primary school pupils the opportunity to hear a live orchestra and to show what they can achieve, if they practise!
It is marvellous to see such a strong, talented group of players continuing to this day, The conducting of the orchestra was always shared between Jan Kaznowski and David Knight, who together led the orchestra to successes in the national Music for Youth competition. Now we welcome Ian Smith to share the conducting of our ‘Friday Night Orchestra’. The photos below are from one of our concerts on 2007!
