Kensington Symphony Orchestra begins its 2024/25 season at Sinfonia Smith Square on Monday 14th October, when conductor Russell Keable leads the group in a performance of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben, or A Hero’s Life (1898).

Alternately swaggering and sweet, this six-section piece – written while Strauss was simultaneously working on Don Juan – contains more than 30 quotations from his earlier works, including Also sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote and Death and Transfiguration.

The concert opens with Samuel Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal (1931) – the young composer’s first work for full orchestra, which helped to establish his reputation. Written on holiday in Italy during a break from his studies in Philadelphia, and intended to reflect the spirit of Sheridan’s 18th-century comedy of manners, it is energetic, fast-paced and characterised by orchestral brilliance.

The orchestra also performs Vítězslava Kaprálová’s Suita Rustica (1938), written two years before her death from typhoid fever aged just 25. Kaprálová, who studied with fellow Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, was commissioned by Universal Edition to write the three-movement work, which is by turns lyrical and exuberant, and bears the influence of Stravinsky’s Petrushka.