Saffron Walden Symphony Orchestra performing spring concert at Saffron Hall on Sunday May 11

A Bishop’s Stortford High School student will perform as a soloist at Saffron Walden Symphony Orchestra’s (SWSO) spring concert next month.

Evan Badcock, who is in Year 12 at the Beaumont Avenue secondary, will take to the Saffron Hall stage to perform Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major on Sunday May 11.

The teenage clarinettist, who also plays the saxophone, won the orchestra’s Barker Bursary senior prize against stiff competition in the autumn.

Composed in 1811 for the celebrated clarinettist Heinrich Bärmann, the work he will perform is one of the great Romantic concertos for the instrument – technically brilliant, full of character and unfailingly entertaining.

Its lilting rhythm, playful interjections and breathless pace make it a dazzling showcase for both the clarinet and the orchestra.

Badcock performs with bands and ensembles at school, is principal clarinet with the Hertfordshire Schools Symphony Orchestra and has led the London Youth Wind Band.

The spring concert will also see SWSO, conducted by Richard Hull, perform one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ most atmospheric symphonies and a dramatic seascape by Frank Bridge.

The concert will open with Bridge’s orchestral suite The Sea. This 1911 composition, a four-movement orchestral tone poem inspired by the composer’s native Sussex coastline, captures the sea in all its moods.

The work had a lasting impact on Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten, who described being “knocked sideways” when he heard it as a boy.

To conclude, the orchestra will perform Vaughan Williams’ A London Symphony – a portrait of the capital filtered through the composer’s deeply personal lens.

First performed in 1914 and revised several times, this sweeping symphony evokes the city’s hustle and bustle, its foggy dawns and quiet riverbanks, its street cries and Westminster chimes.

Vaughan Williams himself described it as “a Symphony by a Londoner” and the result is a powerful blend of impressionistic scene-painting and emotional depth, ending with a haunting epilogue as the city fades quietly into the mist.

The concert starts at 3pm. Tickets, priced £21/£18 for adults, £11 for people aged 18 to 25 and £6 for under-18s, can be bought at www.saffronhall.com, by calling 0845 548 7650 or at the Saffron Walden Tourist Information Centre in Market Place.