Philomusica will perform a spring-themed concert on Saturday, 25 March, under the baton of Iwan Teifion Davies.

The concert will take place in the Great Hall at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, and Gwynedd soloist Gareth Owen will join them to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No1 n F sharp minor, op.1.

Gareth (pictured), who hails from Dyffryn Ardudwy, studied with Gillian Jones, Bala and attended Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, studying with Alicja Fiderkiweicz.

He won a scholarship to study with Joan Cavill at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He won the Leszek Dessent prize and was awarded the Premier Prix in 2000.

Following further study at the Academie de Musique de Maurice Ravel in France and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, Gareth has performed as both soloist and chamber musician worldwide.

Gareth is head of piano at Eton College and teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Rachmaninoff completed his first concerto in July 1891 when a composition student at the Moscow Conservatoire and completed revisions to this concerto in 1917 before settling in America.

The public were already familiar with his Second and Third concertos so perhaps it did not attain the popularity of those later much loved concerti but it is a very fine work with much youthful vivacity and impetuosity.

The opening piece for the concert is the vibrant yet delicate D’un matin de Printemps (Of a Spring Morning) by Lili Boulanger (1893-1918).

There will be a free pre-concert talk on Lili Boulanger by Rhian Davies at 6.30pm in the arts centre studio.

The younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, this piece was completed in early 1918 just before her premature death.

She was the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome for musical composition in 1913. As music lovers we often lament the many great composers who died far too young.

Schumann’s Symphony No.1, in B-flat major, Op.38, ‘Spring’ will bring the concert to a close.

Schumann wrote this first symphony early in 1841 and it had it’s premiere in Leipzig on 31 March conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.

Where Mendelssohn stood between the classical and the Romantic worlds, Schumann was planted firmly in the latter and emerged from the shadow of Beethoven with a rich and ground breaking original palette.

Tickets are available from the arts centre box office.