Foyle & Carroll return with a Brahms Double
Saturday 26 September 2026, at 7:30pm
Duration - 120 minutes
West Road Concert Hall
Tickets : £25 adults, £22 concessions, £10 students, £5 under 18s
Rossini : William Tell Overture
Brahms : Double Concerto for Violin & Cello
Malcolm Arnold : Four Scottish Dances
Mendelssohn : Symphony no.4‘Italian’
Conductor Toby Purser
Michael Foyle: Violin
Thomas Carroll: Cello
The East Anglia Chamber Orchestra returns to the West Road Concert Hall with an attractive and ambitious programme directed by the gifted and inspiring Toby Purser.
The concert will open with Rossini’s romantic and exciting William Tell Overture, describing life in the Swiss Alps. We are then joined by TWO internationally acclaimed soloists: Michael Foyle and Thomas Carroll performing the monumental and bittersweet Double Concerto for violin and cello by Brahms. Written after his last symphony, the concerto is an elderly composer’s gift of reconciliation to a friend being performed by friends.
In a more light-hearted vain, the concert resumes with the colourful and lively Four Scottish Dances by Malcolm Arnold, written for the BBC Light Music Festival in 1957. It was the warmth and richness of Italy that inspired the young Mendelssohn to compose his A major Fourth Symphony, which he described as the “jolliest piece I have ever done”.
Passion, romance, friendship, dancing, and a tour of European culture with talented companions – what a divine combination!
So, join us for a wonderful evening of marvellous music-making.
Guest Soloist: Michael Foyle: Violin
.jpg)
Praised by The Daily Telegraph for “playing of compelling conviction", Michael Foyle launched his international career by winning the Netherlands Violin Competition in 2016. His performance of Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra led to a recital debut at the Concertgebouw and two sold-out performances of Korngold’s Concerto with the orchestra the following season.
Since then he has made concerto debuts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Polish Baltic Philharmonic, Wuppertal Sinfonieorchestra and Münchner Kammerphilharmonie, in collaboration with conductors including Jonathan Bloxham, Patrick Hahn, Ben Gernon, Pawel Kapula and Rafael Payare. He has appeared as a soloist across the world, including at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Cadogan Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Buckingham Palace in London, Salle Cortot in Paris, Stephansdom in Vienna, and the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory.
Michael performs regularly at Wigmore Hall, where his debut recital was described by The Strad as 'full of sparkling detail, with tonal beauty and incisive rhythmic clarity, balancing wit and poetry.' A popular recitalist, he is invited to leading festivals worldwide, including Cheltenham, Edinburgh and St. Magnus (UK), Verao Classico (Portugal), Geneva Puplinge Classique (Switzerland), Cervantino (Mexico), Mravinsky St Petersburg (Russia) and the New York Chamber Music Festival (USA). He has broadcast live for BBC Radio 3 (UK), NPO Klassiek (Netherlands), Klassikaraadio (Estonia) and Polskie Radio 24 (Poland).
In 2024, his recording of Ravel's works for violin and piano with François-Xavier Poizat for Aparté featured in 'Recording of the Month' in Gramophone Magazine (“one of the most lucid yet intensely focused versions on record”), while in 2023 his survey of the complete Beethoven Sonatas with Maksim Štšura for Challenge Classics received five stars in BBC Music Magazine (“more Classically contained than Kremer and Argerich, better musically balanced than Menuhin and Kempff and less interventionist than Faust and Melnikov ... the result is an engaging set of performances that casts fresh light on this much-recorded area of the repertoire”).
His discography also includes Lutosławski and Penderecki: Complete Violin and Piano Works and The Great War Centenary: Debussy, Janáček, Respighi, Hesketh, both of which received similar critical acclaim (“vividly and beautifully conceived and executed”- BBC Music Magazine; “richly detailed and impassioned performances” - The Daily Telegraph; “Foyle produces an absolutely gorgeous sound” – Fanfare; “a dream debut' – Luister; “an extraordinary release” - Stretto). In 2026, he will release a disc of Elgar, Walton and Adès on Delphian with pianist Iain Burnside.
Alongside his solo career, Michael is violinist of Trio Balthasar. His chamber-music collaborators have recently included pianists Kit Armstrong and Huw Watkins, cellists Natalie Clein, Nadège Rochat and Gabriel Schwabe, singers Kristina Mkhitaryan, Ailish Tynan and Andrey Zhilikhovsky, as well as the Brodsky Quartet and the London Conchord Ensemble. He has premiered works by over thirty living composers, most recently Philip Cashian's Violin Concerto (2024).
In 2016, Michael was made Professor at the Royal Academy of Music (the youngest violinist in the institution's 200-year history), and in 2021 he was appointed Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. In 2026, he gives masterclasses at L'Académie Internationale de Musique (Paris), Schlossakademie (Berlin), and the Järvi Academy (Pärnu). He was recently invited to join the Artistic Board of the City Music Foundation and the jury of the Royal Over-Seas League String Competition, both of which he is a former winner.
In 2022, Michael was invited to perform the 300th anniversary concert of the 'ex-Rode' Stradivarius displayed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He currently performs on a Gennaro Gagliano violin from 1750, on private loan.
Guest Conductor : Dominic Grier
.jpg)
Toby Purser’s conducting is distinguished by its exceptional stylistic versatility, and a thrilling combination of passion and musical intelligence. Equally at home in symphonic, contemporary and operatic repertoire, his work also encompasses film music programmes and inter-cultural collaborations. Toby is Artistic Director of the Peace and Prosperity Trust which supports charitable projects for young artists in the Middle East.
Head of Conducting at London’s Royal College of Music, he is also recognised as a leading pedagogue and mentor in the conducting community. He launched ‘Conductors in Isolation’ during the Covid Pandemic, an online forum which now has over 1,800 members worldwide.
Symphonic work
He has received guest invitations from UK orchestras including Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and London Concert Orchestra, amongst many others. He founded the Orion Orchestra in 2005, and has recently returned as their Artistic Director. In 2025 he was appointed Honorary Conductor of Il Cimento Armonico in Padua.
For Raymond Gubbay Ltd, he regularly conducts Christmas at the Movies, Zimmer vs Williams, and The Music of the Lord of the Rings and Beyond at all the leading UK concert venues. Recent international work has included his debut in China with the Chengdu Symphony Orchestra, in Mexico with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Sonora, and the Kenyan premier of Beethoven Symphony No.9 with the Nairobi Symphony Orchestra. He also conducted the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Maxim Vengerov for a public masterclass and concert at the RCM, and recorded the songs of Ernest Kaye with the Britten Sinfonia.
Guest Soloist : Thomas Carroll
Thomas Carroll enjoys a distinguished and varied career as a cellist and, more recently, as a conductor. Since conducting his debut performance in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2006, he has gone on to work with many orchestras in the UK and abroad. He founded the London Beethoven Chamber Orchestra and, in April 2012, was made Artistic Director of the Orpheus Sinfonia, with whom he recorded the orchestra’s first CD, and works regularly with soloists Dame Felicity Lott, Tasmin Little, Jack Liebeck, Roderick Williams and Tamsin Waley-Cohen.
As a concerto soloist he has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the Bayerische Rundfunk. He made his conducting debut this season with The Presidential Symphony Orchestra in Turkey and next season will debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has recorded over 20 CDs as a cellist on labels such as Decca, Quartz, Champs Hill, Orchid and Paladino, and as a conductor he has recorded for Naxos and Signum. He is a member of the London Conchord Ensemble with whom he regularly performs, most recently in a Chamber Music Prom at the Cadogan Hall in London, and is also a member of Trio Apache, with whom he has appeared numerous times on BBC Radio 3.
