EVERY musical form has its ‘blockbusters’ – those pieces of music that, due to their scale, are seldom performed and when they are the anticipation preceding them is especially keen.

In the world of chamber music, one such piece is the Serenade in B flat, K.361, by Mozart, variously known as the ‘Gran Partita’ or the ‘Serenade for 13 Instruments’.

It is a giant in both length and instrumentation and it is coming to the Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, on Tuesday, February 3, at 7.30pm, as part of the 2014/15 Music in Peebles season.

Most of Mozart’s 30-plus serenades, in keeping with the fashion of the time, were written as light-hearted occasional pieces, often to be played as background music at social occasions. With K.361, however, Mozart broke free of these conventions.

At over 50 minutes, it is longer than any of his symphonies, and the huge expansion in instrumentation from its predecessors is a clear statement of intent: this is no lightweight wallpaper music but a piece that demands serious attention.

Pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns (darker-toned cousins of the clarinet) and bassoons, plus a contrabassoon and no fewer than four French horns give Mozart a wonderfully rich and varied tonal palette, which he exploits with characteristic mastery, leading us in seven movements from the noble to the lyrical, the brooding to the joyous.

Over 200 years later, in 1995, London-born Gary Carpenter wrote ‘Pantomime’ using exactly the same instrumental line-up as Mozart used, but to rather different effect. Here, the composer evokes the shadowy and half-forgotten world of smoky music halls, vaudeville and burlesque over five movements with titles including ‘Grand March of the Chief Executive’ and ‘Waltz Finale – Depravity’. This attractive and highly entertaining work provides the perfect foil to Mozart’s masterpiece and its sometimes raucous humour would surely have appealed to Mozart’s sense of fun.

We in Scotland are very fortunate to have a group of young musicians dedicated to the performance of large-scale works for wind band, ranging from eight up to 15 instruments. Award-winning graduates of all the UK’s leading conservatoires, they first performed together in 2011 and the following year officially became the Scottish Wind Ensemble.

Since then, they have appeared across Scotland, including during the 2013 Edinburgh Festival. As well as performing the Gary Carpenter and Mozart pieces, the ensemble will also be taking on the role of educators as they present a series of music workshops in Peebles High School and the three local primary schools.

Both the concert and the school workshops receive funding from Enterprise Music Scotland, which supports live chamber music events and education across the country through a network of over 70 community-based music clubs.