A stack of well-used hardback books sits against a dark grey background. The books vary in size and age, with worn covers, visible page edges and a ribbon bookmark hanging from one volume, creating a quiet, scholarly atmosphere.

Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra: The Scholar's Pact; Light, Shadow and Fire

What's On Brahms, Schumann and LisztAssembly Hall

About Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra: The Scholar's Pact; Light, Shadow and Fire

WPO concludes its 2026-27 concert season with Liszt's monumental Faust Symphony, an imaginative and gripping musical response to Goethe's most famous play. Disillusioned with the limits of human knowledge, the ageing scholar Faust makes a wager with the demon Mephistopheles: the devil will provide him with ultimate worldly pleasures and experiences in exchange for Faust's soul in the afterlife. 

By contrast, Brahms's Academic Festival Overture places scholars front and centre of a celebration, having been composed as a tribute to the University of Breslau on awarding the composer an honorary doctorate. It remains one of Brahms' most frequently performed works, and is both lyrical and exuberant in equal measure, even including various student songs in an orchestral context for comic effect. 

To complete the programme, we welcome the winner of the 2025 Coulsdon and Purley Concerto Prize to play Schumann's Piano Concerto. 

Programme

  • Brahms: Academic Festival Overture
  • Schumann: Piano Concerto
  • Liszt: A Faust Symphony

Sherri Lun, Piano Soloist

Dominic Grier, Conductor

Dates and times

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