THE curtain is about to rise on another memorable season of music in Melrose.

Next Friday, Melrose Music Society opens its 2017-2018 season with a concert of Romantic music to be performed by the gifted Italian pianist and piano teacher, Alvaro Siculiana.

Born in Parma, Alvaro started playing the piano at the age of 11, entering the Martini Conservatoire in Bologna two years later, and studying under internationally-renowned pianists.

Supported by a scholarship form Trinity College, London, he went on to become a celebrated performer himself, as well as a passionate teacher in one of the best conservatoires in Italy.

The concert opens with Debussy’s Images Volume 1, composed between 1901 and1905, and consisting of three pieces in the French impressionistic style of the period.

Reflets dans L’Eau, one of the composer’s most loved works, captures the play of light on water.

Hommage à Rameau, which follows, is a more sombre sarabande in honour of the French baroque composer, Jean-Phillipe Rameau, whereas the final ‘image’ is simply entitled ‘Mouvement’, living up to its name.

The programme continues with Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, written about ten years later, in homage to Franz Schubert. Ravel’s eight waltzes are, however, a world apart from those of the Viennese composer.

Concluding the programme, Alvaro will play Mussorgsky’s much-loved Pictures at an Exhibition.

Written by the Russian composer in 1874, a year after his artist friend’s death, it is a musical tour of an exhibition of paintings by Viktor Hartmann, and a jewel of Russian Romantic music.

The opening night concert takes place in Melrose Parish Church Hall on Friday, September 15 from 8pm.

Tickets at the door are priced at £14, with accompanied children admitted free.

Oliver Eade

01896822013