THE Misbourne Symphony Orchestra is gearing up for its next concert which includes a varied programme of cheerful music.

The orchestra starts 2014 with Elgar’s overture Cockaigne, a lively and colourful musical portrait of Edwardian London.

From a quiet but bustling theme to cockneys, church bells, cockney lovers, and a ragged band, it finishes with a grand military band in a blaze of Elgarian orchestral sound.

Matt Meyer then plays his favourite horn concerto, Richard Strauss’s first. Matt is from the area and plays regularly with the Misbourne, having played the horn since he was nine, and has a wide orchestral repertoire, as well as work with the BBC.

Strauss was himself a horn player, and this late-Romantic concerto is full of lyricism and sweetly-haunted tunes, closing with typical hunting calls.

After the interval Richard Jacklin conducts the orchestra in Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes.

These evocative portraits of the Suffolk coast include ‘Dawn’, full of bird cries and the sound of the sea, ‘Sunday Morning’ with its melodic movement, ‘Moonlight’, and ‘Storm’, raging on the edge of insanity.

As a contrast, the concert finishes with Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra, a light-hearted set of eight pieces consisting of Dances, Waltzes, a Polka and a March, taken from his previous works.

Tickets are available by phoning 01494 784479; or from Perfect Pitch, Chesham; or from The Record Shop, Woodside Rd, Amersham; or at the door of Amersham School. They are £12 for adults, concessions £10 and £5 for children.

The concert is on Saturday at 7.45pm at Amersham School, Stanley Hill, Amersham