Andante
Young People’s Workshop Sunday 10 May 2026
This year’s workshop was our biggest ever!
More than 70 children from Essex primary and secondary schools joined 40 orchestra members and friends for a wonderful morning of music making. Parents formed an encouraging audience around the edges of the hall.
We were led by Robert Hodge, who started off the morning with some fun questions and activities to break the ice and then it was down to business.
We began with ‘Rondeau’ from Purcell’s ‘Abdelazer Suite’. We played through the music and then Rob drew our attention to all the details – articulation, dynamics, repeat marks – and our performance just got better and better.
Grieg’s ’Hall of the Mountain King’ came next. It started with some beautiful staccato playing from bassoons and clarinets and pizzicato notes from the strings. We got faster and louder which was challenging but fun and very exciting!
After a break for refreshments, we tackled our final piece: the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. It was tricky for the whole orchestra to come in together after a single quaver rest at the beginning but, with Rob’s expert guidance, we achieved it.
We finished the morning with a performance of all three pieces. We all stood to applaud our leading violinists and conductor as they made their entrance and then we showed how far we’d come in just one morning by playing with attention to detail and with confidence and enthusiasm!
As ever, because ESO is passionate about encouraging young players to follow in our footsteps, we provided parents with details of local youth ensembles and orchestras that their children might like to join. Happily, we know that many of our past participants have done just that and are now fully fledged orchestral players around the county.
We’ve had some great feedback from our workshop this year:
What did you/your child enjoy about the day?
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Making beautiful music. Biscuits! He also loved learning about how to make the noise with the French horn and being exposed to other instruments he had never seen before. |
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The experience of playing with the full orchestra and a professional conductor. |
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Being able to be a part of an orchestra |
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Child : it helped me improve my bass playing and also my improving skills. Being surrounded by other playing was helpful and have no a conductor allowed me to improve my timing and awareness of playing in an orchestra |
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Child: I enjoyed playing in an orchestra. The conductor Rob was funny and helped me to relax. |
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Playing alongside other instruments |
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playing with a lot of people |
Favourite thing?
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Listening to the performance back. |
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How well the day was run and perfectly aligned for children. Rob did a fantastic job of engaging with the kids. |
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Having an experienced musician guiding my daughter through the pieces. |
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Playing with everyone |
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The final performance |
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the concert at the end |
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Playing the Hall of Mountain King |
So, thank you children, parents, ESO members, visiting players and Rob for coming together and making another memorable musical morning!
See you next year!
ESO SCHOOLS’ PROGRAMME
Our first Childrens’ Concert was in 2002. It took the form of performing music such as Peter and the Wolf and the Toy Symphony to children from local primary schools.
Other concerts followed, and took on a new format in 2012 when we worked with a group of schools including Little Waltham and Newlands Spring. Concerts became more interactive, with a facilitator or our conductor explaining the story behind the music and what the orchestra was doing. Some children got to volunteer to use our props and act out various roles. In 2012 we also had children from the Gifted & Talented registers to play in the orchestra.
In 2019, the format changed again and in this year we held our first Young People’s Orchestral Workshop. We invited young instrumentalists from all the primary and secondary schools in Chelmsford and the surrounding area to come and join us at St John Payne School, playing alongside our members to rehearse and perform some fantastic music.
We have found that to help schools participate we need to obtain sponsorship specifically for the concert. In 2007, Making Music generously provided funding and we were especially fortunate that the finance group M&G contributed substantial funding to the orchestra’s childrens’ concerts from the very beginning until 2019 as part of their community sponsorship programme.
