GO: CLASSICAL: BACH ON FAMILIAR GROUND AGAIN.

Byline: By Patsy Fuller

A CHAMBER orchestra with its roots in Warwickshire will be back on home territory with a concert next week.

The Orchestra da Camera will be performing at Leamington's Royal Pump Rooms on Wednesday, with a varied programme of works including pieces by Handel, Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart.

The orchestra was set up in 1957 by the late Kenneth Page and is now run by his daughter, Kenilworth violinist Rosalind Page. She is its artistic director and her husband Gary Doidge, principal viola.

Gary will be the soloist in Telemann's Concerto in G major for viola, which will be part of the Leamington concert.

Rosalind says: "The viola isn't often featured as a solo instrument so this is a fantastic opportunity to hear it in its solo capacity."

Orchestra leader Philip Gallaway and Coventry oboist Julie Robinson will also be joining forces for Bach's Double Concerto in D minor.

As well as running the orchestra together, Rosalind and Gary share the post of team leader for strings with the Performing Arts Service, Coventry.

Rosalind is confident that Wednesday's concert will have huge appeal. "It's a programme covering a range of styles, full of energy and sparkle," she promises.

Tickets for the concert, which starts at 7.30pm, cost pounds 12 with concessions.

The programme will be repeated at Emmanuel Church, Wylde Green, Sutton Coldfield, on November 27.

BEDWORTH Symphony Orchestra is preparing an autumnal treat for the north of the county.

They are presenting a concert called "a potpourri of autumnal favourites" at Nicholas Chamberlaine Technology College, Bedworth, tomorrow at 7.30pm.

The programme includes Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and Dvorak's Symphony No 8, as well as works by Tchaikovsky, Faure and Grieg. Tickets pounds 5 (children free) will be available on the door.

IF ANYONE should be marking this year's centenary of the death of Antonin Dvorak it is the Birmingham Festival Choral Society.

They premiered his Requiem in 1891 - with Dvorak himself conducting - and tomorrow their successors will be performing this inspiring piece again.

Dvorak apparently quite took to Birmingham. During a previous visit, he wrote: "I am here in this vast commercial town, where they make excellent pen-knives, pens, files and lord knows what else, and in additional also music."

He said the choir and orchestra of the time were "excellent" and the audience "absolutely electrified".

The choral society had originally asked Dvorak to compose a work based on Cardinal Newman's Dream of Gerontius, but he decided on the Requiem Mass instead.

At the Birmingham premiere, one of the violinists was a certain Edward Elgar, who himself set the Dream of Gerontius to music nine years later.

The Requiem will be performed at the magnificent Oratory in Hagley Road. Anthony Bradbury will be conducting the chorus and the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra and the soloists are Constance Novis, Elizabeth Sikora, Joseph Cornwell and Stephen Holloway. Tickets are pounds 10 from 0121 202 5000.

THE choral society also premiered Mendelssohn's Elijah back in 1846. That is also being performed tomorrow, at a concert by the Coventry Philharmonic Choir and Finham Choral Society at the Central Methodist Hall in Coventry. Tickets are pounds 5 on 024 7641 4746 or at the door.

CAPTION(S):

TEAM WORK: Partners Gary Doidge and Rosalind Page bring the Orchestra da Camera to Leamington's Royal Pump Rooms on Wednesday