There are hundreds of short orchestral works in the Wise Music catalogues which can be performed by amateur and young performers and non-professional orchestras. Here we select just a few which are appropriate concert openers. 

You can also view and filter all suitable repertoire by duration, scoring, topic, composition date and more using our catalogue search: 

Orchestral music for young and amateur performers

 

Malcolm Arnold 
Four Scottish Dances 9'

A firm favourite for many, these dances were composed early in 1957 and are dedicated to the BBC Light Music Festival. They are all based on original melodies, except one, the melody of which was composed by Robert Burns.

The first dance is in the style of a slow strathspey. The second, a lively reel, begins in the key of E flat, and rises a semitone each time it is played until the bassoon plays it, at a greatly reduced speed, in the key of G. The final statement of the dance is at the original speed in the home key of E flat. The third dance is in the style of a Hebridean song and attempts to give an impression of the sea and mountain scenery on a calm summer’s day in the Hebrides. The last dance is a lively fling which makes a great deal of use of the open strings of the violins.

Richard Rodney Bennett 
Partita 17'

Partita for orchestra was commissioned by BT plc in co-operation with the Association of British Orchestras, to be performed by seventeen different orchestras between October 1995 and July 1996.

Bennett responded to this exciting but rather daunting commission by writing a lively and very accessible piece, which, he decided before he started composing, should be full of tunes. The Partita is basically in D major, it features the front desk players, is written for medium size orchestra with no heavy brass or percussion, apart from timpani, and lasts about 17 minutes. There are three movements: Intrada, Lullaby and Finale.

 

 

Geoffrey Burgon 
Brideshead Variations 18'

Brideshead Variations is a sequence of six movements taken from the music for Brideshead Revisited, the extremely popular television serial made by Granada Television from Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel. Much of the music for the series is in strict variation form, based on the sixteen-bar theme heard at the opening the theme, there is a bright six-eight movement, the music of which is associated with Julia’s blossoming romance with Rex Mottram. The third movement is also associated with Julia but this time with the breakdown of her marriage to Rex. The fourth movement is taken from the music which accompanies the hunt at Brideshead and the fifth, which is fugue, takes the bass line of the theme as its melodic idea. The last movement begins quietly with a melody for bassoon and violas and gradually builds to a restatement of the opening theme, expressing the gleam of hope which Charles at last glimpses on his return to Brideshead.

John Corigliano 
Promenade Overture 8'

Corigliano says: "The premise of Promenade Overture took root years ago when the composer was caught off guard by Haydn’s delightful Farewell Symphony. This Haydn work is often used to end a concert because during the last movement the players gradually exit, leaving two violins to finish the symphony on a bare stage.

Since overtures usually begin concerts, a reverse of this procedure – the entrance of an orchestra while playing – became both an interesting idea and a compositional challenge.

Offstage brass announce the start of the work, with the trumpets playing the last five measures of the Farewell Symphony – backwards. This forms a fanfare announcing the promenade of performers, which starts with the piccolo, concludes with the tuba, and contains a variety of motives which eventually form a lyrical melody that is built to a climax by the full orchestra."

 

Jonathan Dove 
Sunshine 5'

"Sunshine was written for the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, who wanted a piece scored for classical orchestra which they could take on tour, to play as an encore after any classical symphony in their repertoire", says Jonathan Dove. "However, it was first to be heard (in January 2017) after a work for much larger forces: Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. I initially found it hard to imagine anything I might want to hear after that extraordinary piece, but one day a little woodwind dance started in my mind, with a singing violin line floating over the top, and I thought the combination of singing and dancing would offer a nice contrast to the high energy of many symphonic finales. It made me think of standing in a patch of sunlight, feeling warmth spread through my body, and a glow of happiness."

 

 

Edward Kennedy Ellington
Three Black Kings, Ballet for Orchestra 15'

Propulsive dance rhythms accompany this musical depiction of Balthazaar, King of the Magi; King Solomon; and Martin Luther King — a rousing Gospel style treatment wraps up the work.

 

Joseph Horovitz 
Sinfonietta for Light Orchestra 11'

A popular classic - Sinfonietta was originally written in 1970 and used as test piece for the National Brass Band Championships in 1972. It was his first work for Brass Band, and he later rescored it for orchestra: 'legitimate orchestra' as he called it. The first movement, Allegro, is in sonata form, though the second subject is an emerging variant form of the first.

The second movement, Lento moderato, is based on a hymn-tune, which Horovitz says he heard in a dream. The morning after, he looked in various hymn-books to see what it might be, couldn't find it, and came to the conclusion that he must have composed it himself! Its principal interest is harmonic, and it exploits the sustaining quality of the lower instruments of the band.

The finale, A Con brio, is a rondo on a rather cheeky theme, which is always treated in its basic triads. The work has become a popular classic with bands and audiences alike.

 

Missy Mazzoli 
Violent, Violent Sea 9'30"

 

John McCabe 
The Golden Valley 14'

On the borders of Herefordshire and Wales, the Golden Valley is a particularly beautiful area. It contains the great church of Abbey Dore, currently being painstakingly restored, and the River Dore flows down from the hills at the head of the valley. I have felt for many years a distinctly Arthurian ambience in this place, despite the lack of any evidence to support my instinct, and when I was asked to write the music for a diptych of ballets on the legends of King Arthur, the Golden Valley was one of the inspirations behind some of my musical ideas. The ballets (Arthur, Part I: Arthur Pendragon and Arthur, Part II: Le Mort d'Arthur) were commissioned by Birmingham Royal Ballet, with choreography and scenario by David Bintley, and written during the period 1998-2000. The very last scene of all was one of the first specific ideas for the music, and was specifically connected in my mind with the Golden Valley, and this forms the final, slow section of this piece.

One of the strongest aspects of the whole composition was the extent to which, as I discovered while working on this tone-poem, the Kyrie from William Byrd's Mass for Three Voices imbued so many of the thematic ideas of both ballets. I had always intended to incorporate a quotation from it into the score, but as time went on I changed this somewhat for the purposes of integrating the ballet score more fully (though even then, the Byrd quotation still pervades the music), and when I came to write this orchestral piece, therefore, I was able to quote the Byrd more directly in certain places. All the music is taken from different sections of the two ballets, with a good deal of recomposition in line with my original impulse.

The piece has four sections, a slow introduction, in which the Byrd is heard on trombones, a somewhat quicker section associated in the first ballet with Caerleon, some faster music associated with outdoor sports and the kind of merry-making that, in medieval times, was probably somewhat fiercer than in the equivalent today (though I am open to correction on this point), and finally the main slow part, which was always designed to express my feelings about the Golden Valley but in the second ballet is the closing scene for Lancelot and Guinevere. The piece, more reflective perhaps than most celebratory pieces normally are, was written with immense pleasure for the Merseyside Youth Orchestra, who commissioned it - as an ex-member of their percussion section in the 1950s, it was a particular delight to be able to contribute to their 50th anniversary in this way.

© 2000 John McCabe

Thea Musgrave  
Festival Overture 11' 

The Festival Overture was written in 1965 in response to a commission from the City of Glasgow on the occasion of the Commonwealth Arts Festival. The work is festive in the sense of being light-hearted: before settling down to the fast, main tempo (almost a moto perpetuo), a slow introduction presents several contrasting motifs. Most of these return later in various guises and build up in a whirl of sound to the final cadence.

 

 

Joan Tower 
For The Uncommon Woman 5'

All four fanfares are dedicated to women who are adventurous and take risks. The first Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman was inspired by Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and is scored for the same instrumentation of 3 trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba and percussion. This fanfare was premiered by the Houston Symphony as part of their Fanfare Project in 1987 with Hans Vonk conducting.

The second fanfare, which is the same instrumentation as the first with one added percussion, was commissioned by Absolut Vodka and premiered by the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s at Lincoln Center in 1989.

The third was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in commemoration of their 100th anniversary on May 5, 1991. Scored for double brass quintet, the ensemble was the Empire Brass and members of the New York Philharmonic brass section with Zubin Mehta conducting.

The fourth fanfare is scored for full orchestra and was commissioned by The Kansas City Symphony with funding from AT&T.

Joan Tower

 

Roxanna Panufnik 
Twenty (2022) 4'

Roxanna on her short orchestral work written for Southbank Sinfonia's 20th anniversary overture. Twenty is based on a progression of 20 harmonies, which we hear initially in a chorale-like fashion with quintuplet flourishes throughout the orchestra. The time signature is always in divisibles of 20 – multiples of 5, 4 and 10. The percussion starts with a complex rhythm that pits 5 against 4.

In A. With anticipation of joys to come, the harmonies (1 – 5) become excited ostinato (including some nifty double-stopping in the horns), accompanying various instruments as they play their carefree, light, cheerful melodies. A request for 6/8 + 2/4 (neatly becoming 10/8 and an opportunity to combine 6/8 against 3/4) gives us a driving rhythm, played with spread pizzicato and open string arpeggios in the strings. Soloistic playing in the double basses start the melodic ball rolling. Then the bassoons carry on the melody with glissandi and rising scales in 3rds. The ‘cellos take over, fulfilling their wish to duet with other orchestral instruments in a different pitch zone, the flute and piccolo. The double basses further accentuate the 10/8 rhythm with Bartok pizzicatos.

Interestingly, the wind and upper players unanimously requested some ethereal effects so the next section B. Mysterioso, makes use of fluttering and pitch-bends in the winds, harmonics in the violins and bisbigliando trills on the bassoons. The woodwinds pass the melodies between themselves as the harmonies (6 – 15) gracefully propel us towards C. Locomotively. In the players’ thoughts about the number 20, their sense of excitement at having all the freedoms of adulthood with no responsibilities and the anticipation at the decade to come was pretty much universal. So, we start this last section slowly and at the bottom end of the orchestra with harmonies’ 16 – 20’s bass line. At first trepidatious, more instruments join in becoming faster and faster as the train of adulthood gathers in pace, finishing in a pyrotechnic display of all 20 harmonies.

 

Joby Talbot
Hovercraft 5'

Hydrofoils are nothing compared to hovercrafts. They might be cheaper and more reliable but where’s the romance in a hydrofoil? I well remember my family’s annual pilgrimage to Pegwell Bay in the 1970s to watch the hovercrafts come in from France; terrifying machines pounding across the ocean then remorselessly surging up the beach spouting great fountains of surf and with the noise of a thousand Lancaster bombers. Where did they all go?

Joby Talbot 

 

 

 

Judith Weir 
Heroic Strokes of the Bow 15'

Ever since Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition, the idea of writing a musical composition inspired by a painting has been fairly commonplace. The work of one particular painter, the Swiss-born artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), has generated an extraordinary number of musical tributes; more than 550 to date have been catalogued by American scholar Stephen W.Ellis. Well known 'Klee pieces' by Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle and Gunther Schuller readily spring to mind.

Klee's appeal to composers is easy to understand in biographical terms. The son of a music teacher, he became an accomplished violinist, and performed professionally in Berne's Municipal Orchestra. It is said that before starting to paint each day, he would practise the violin for an hour. His large output includes many paintings and drawings with musical titles. (A random selection: Fugue in Red; Recital by a Large Tenor, Masterly Playing amidst a Bad Orchestra.)

The connection between the painting and the musical response of composers is harder to explain. My personal observation is that perhaps Klee himself was influenced in some of his work by the visual imagery of musical notation with which he was so familiar. To a musician's eye, Klee's geometrical shapes and regularly repeated simple patterns seem to release information directly into the mind; looking at a Klee picture feels like reading music.

The subject of my piece Heroic Strokes of the Bow (Klee's original title was 'Heroische Bogenstriche') is a blue and black painting on pink newspaper, dating from 1938, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Said to be a tribute to the famous violinist Adolph Busch, whom Klee knew personally, it seems to show a simple pattern of violin bows and pegs against a hypnotic blue background.

My piece is not principally meant as a depiction of the picture, but rather as a literal response to the title, with its suggestions of excessive physical energy applied to a small piece of wood. Accordingly, energetic violins predominate throughout the piece's 15-minute duration. The first part of the piece builds up a restless momentum; a twittering ensemble of lower woodwinds finally puts the brakes on, leading to a broad, spacious close.

Heroic Strokes of the Bow was commissioned by the Sekretariat für gemeinsame Kulturarbeit in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and first performed by the Westdeutsche Sinfonie and their conductor Dirk Joeres in Leverkusen, Germany in 1992.

© Judith Weir