The Loughborough Orchestra’s 2009 Winter Concert was held in the Baptist Church on Baxtergate and featured guest soloist Gillian Ramshaw. The programme opened with Beethoven's Egmont Overture, a piece composed to accompany a play by Goethe. The music opens in sombre mood and moves through a vigorous allegro, becoming increasingly rhythmic and dark to the point of Count Egmont's execution after which the mood turns triumphant and celebratory. The orchestra depicted these moods well with seamless changes getting the concert off to a rousing start. The Orchestra were then joined by Gillian Ramshaw, an experienced oratorio singer and recitalist. The audience were treated to a selection of well known operatic arias and Gillian showed her versatility with a wide selection of styles and moods. Her programme - O mio babbino caro (Puccini), Habanera (Bizet), Song to the Moon (Dvorak), Je veux Vivre (Gounod), Un bel di (Puccini) and The Brindisi (Verdi) was very well received by the audience and brought the first half to joyous close. The second half consisted solely of the Symphony No 7 by Schubert. Entitled the "Great" it lives up to it's name lasting well over an hour although Loughborough Orchestra sensibly omitted some repeated sections to keep it to a more reasonable 55 minutes. The orchestra captured the differing moods well from lively dance rhythms to majestic horn and trombone melodies, the almost russian sounding second movement to the wonderful scherzo rounding off with a noisy finale.