The Cavatina Story
Max Todes, Artistic Director
I originally founded the Cavatina orchestra in September 2017 as part of a three-night production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. I had agreed with my parents that the production could not interfere with my GCSE exams, which I was due to sit at the end of the year, and so despite the show being in July, we began rehearsing in earnest in September. This was the first time I had ever conducted a full orchestra, and I felt that I would benefit from having at least one concert under my belt before doing a three night opera run, and so I decided to put on a concert that February with the players from the opera orchestra. Cavatina played its first Concert on the 16th of February 2018. It featured my father playing the Beethoven Violin concerto, with Sibelius 1st Symphony in the second half.
Cavatina has always been made up of a some of the best Undergraduates and Postgraduates from the London Conservatories and it has been our mission from the outset to give talented young musicians the opportunity to study and perform some of the best of the orchestral repertoire. It has been a particular privilege to see how some of the founding members of Cavatina have gone on to perform with orchestras such as the LSO, BBCSSO, Philharmonia and many others.
From 2017 Cavatina has gone from strength to strength. It has been privileged enough to perform a Haydn’s Creation in Guildford’s magnificent Cathedral and a Mahler 4 in St John’s Smith Square. Other performances have included symphonies by Sibelius, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Beethoven and the world premiere of BBC Young Composer, Senior Category Prize Winner, Gregory May’s `New Work’.
I have always felt that music has a pivotal role to play within the community. With the support of the City of Westminster Community Contribution scheme, the Cavatina Orchestra put on six concerts in Westminster to bring audiences and musicians together in person after lockdown. Covid posed a particular challenge to the arts, and even as lockdowns began to lift, music was still struggling. I therefore stablished the Concordia Chamber Orchestra in 2020 to perform Beethoven’s 7 during partial lockdown in a recorded setting and bringing singers and musicians together from Cambridge and London to record Bach’s St John Passion, in a socially-distanced performance at St. James’ Church Paddington in the Easter of 2021.
I have been very lucky to conduct the Cavatina Orchestra in concerto performances with leading soloists such as Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Thomas Kelly, Martyn Jackson and David Campbell and a performance of Mozart’s Symphonia Concertante with my father and sister, Rafael and Isabella Todes. I hope to be able to continue to bring together musicians from all parts of the country, and I hope that our next generation of musicians will be able to look back fondly on the years they spent with Cavatina orchestra.