Ezo Sarici, a finalist at the Haslemere International String Competition earlier this year,  makes a welcome return to the local concert platforms on October 14.

She  will play Mendelssohn’s iconic violin concerto with the symphony orchestra of Haslemere Musical Society, its third concert celebrating its centenary year.

Mendelssohn wrote another much earlier violin concerto. The second, in E minor, and by far the best known, is original in structure  and melodically inventive, with the soloist introducing the first theme in the second bar.

Still a student at the Royal Academy of Music, Ezo is as versatile as she is prodigious. She founded her own orchestra aged 17, has played at the London Jazz Festival, and composed a piece premièred at Beethoven’s house in Bonn during his 250th birthday celebrations. 

The orchestra is enjoying rehearsing three other works that are, most undeservedly, less frequently performed.  

Gounod is best known for his opera Faust, though in 1855 Mendelssohn encouraged him to write his first (of two) symphonies. In four movements it sets a high standard of energetic charm. 

Haydn’s reputation was boosted across Europe by his sacred oratorio Il Ritorno di Tobia – first performed by a chorus of 180; the concert will start with its overture. The first half is completed by Constant Lambert’s  Aubade héroïque, inspired by Lambert’s personal experience of being trapped in Holland  when on tour with the Sadler’s Wells ballet company during the German invasion on May 1940 (mercifully, all escaped.) 

The concert takes place at St Christopher’s Church, Weyhill, Haslemere at 7.30pm. Tickets are via Haslemere Hall website or by calling 01428 642161.