Saffron Walden Symphony Orchestra

SWSO - Saffron Walden Symphony Orchestra is a community orchestra formed of both professional and amateur musicians based in and around Saffron Walden, Uttlesford, Essex

The orchestra is commonly known as SWSO and has been performing for over 70 years.

Our next concert…

Sunday 14 June 2026, 3pm

SWSO celebrate 70 years with a new commission from local composer Sarah Cattley.

SWSO’s 70th anniversary year celebrates the past but also looks to the future. The first performance of a new commission from talented local composer Sarah Cattley opens the concert. We follow with Kabalevsky's youthful Violin Concerto, played here by rising star and winner of the 2025 Barker Bursary, Alice Cumberbatch. Written in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, Dmitri Shostakovich’s monumental 10th Symphony vividly characterises life under the dictator, but finishes with a positive vision of the future.