SWANAGE’S St Mary’s Church will resound to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons next month, as part of the Purbeck Strings Festival.

The Festival Strings Orchestra, conducted by Ian Pillow, right, will be performing this much -loved clas-sical work, with solos from violinist sisters Laura and Eleanor Stanford.

The two-day festival opens at St Mary’s on March 15 with a candle-lit performance from the Stanford Quartet. This is set to include Beethoven’s Opus 18 No.1, Webern’s Langsamer Satz and Borodin’s String Quartet number two.

The festival strings will play the following day at the same venue. An event spokesman explained: “To partner the Seasons, there will be a perfor-mance of another most popular work, Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite.

“Written in 1927 the English composer freely adapted seven attractive pieces from a collection of French dance tunes published in 1588.

“Another use of an old tune by a modern composer is the Adagio for organ and strings, again freely adapted by the Italian Giazotto in 1958 from a theme allegedly by Tomaso Albinoni in 1708.”

Adagio for organ and strings will also accompany the Four Seasons performance.

“Whatever the truth is about the origin of this music,” said the spokesman. “It has become famous through its use in television such as The Sopranos and the comedy Butterflies.”

The Standford Quartet plays on Saturday, March 15, from 7.30pm.

Tickets for the event are £12.50.

The Festival Strings play on Sunday, March 16, from 3.30pm and the tickets are priced at £8.

For details visit purbeckstrings.com or call 07964 410443.